With the band: 1969–1971
Instruments: Lead and slide guitar
Nashville to Daytona Beach
Howard Duane Allman was born in Nashville, Tennessee, on November 20, 1946, a year before his brother Gregg. After their father’s death the family eventually settled in Daytona Beach, Florida, where both boys caught the rhythm-and-blues bug as teenagers. Gregg got a guitar first; Duane borrowed it, then practically refused to put it down.
The brothers worked the Southern club circuit through the mid-1960s in bands such as the Escorts and the Allman Joys. A move to Los Angeles brought a record deal as the Hour Glass, but the label’s polished approach frustrated them, and Duane headed back east looking for something more honest.
The Muscle Shoals Years
In 1968 Duane landed at FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. His suggestion that Wilson Pickett cut a version of “Hey Jude”—and the searing guitar he played on it—made him one of the most sought-after session players in the South. Over the next two years he recorded with Aretha Franklin, King Curtis, Boz Scaggs and many others, earning the nickname “Skydog” along the way.
Founding the Brotherhood
Manager Phil Walden signed Duane and encouraged him to build a band of his own. In Jacksonville, Florida, in March 1969, he gathered Dickey Betts, Berry Oakley, Butch Trucks and Jaimoe, then called Gregg home from California to sing. The new group relocated to Macon, Georgia, and recorded its debut album that same year.
Duane and Dickey developed an approach to twin lead guitar that was more conversation than competition—harmony lines, call and response, and long improvisations shaped by jazz as much as blues. Duane’s slide playing, often done with a glass medicine bottle on his ring finger, gave the band its most recognizable voice.
Layla and Fillmore East
In 1970 Duane joined Eric Clapton in the studio for Derek and the Dominos’ Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs, contributing slide guitar that remains among the most celebrated in rock. The following March, the Allman Brothers Band recorded its shows at Bill Graham’s Fillmore East in New York; the resulting double album, At Fillmore East, became the band’s breakthrough and is widely regarded as one of the finest live records ever made.
A Short Life, A Long Shadow
Duane Allman died after a motorcycle accident in Macon on October 29, 1971. He was 24. The band completed Eat a Peach, released early in 1972, with studio and live recordings he had made before his death. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with the band in 1995, and generations of guitarists still point to him as a touchstone.