“We were up in places no one else was thinking about”: Nine albums by the Allman Brothers Band you should listen to… and one you should ignore

It’s no small feat to single-handedly invent a genre of music. But that’s what the Allman Brothers Band did with southern rock back in the early 1970s. Not that you’d want to say that to certain members of the group. “When I hear people describe us as southern rock I get fighting mad,” said drummer Butch Trucks.

Though they lived in Macon, a city nicknamed “the heart of Georgia,” and spoke with southern accents, when it came to music, the band’s tastes were all over the map: blues, country, rock, gospel, even free jazz.

“We took it to where Cream and the Grateful Dead took it,” said Trucks, “then added John Coltrane and Herbie Hancock to the mix and stirred it a bit, and we were up in places no one else was thinking about.”

Reaching those lofty places took time. The band evolved out of two 1960s-era West Coast ventures, the Allman Joys and Hourglass, in which brothers Gregg and Duane Allman had attempts at everything from blue-eyed soul to psychedelia. It wasn’t until they moved back to Georgia in ’69 that they started clicking. Or, in Allman lingo, “hittin’ the note”.

‘Hittin’ the note’ was all about interplay and musical telepathy. And that’s what made the original line-up of the Allman Brothers Band so exceptional on their early records (the best of which, At Fillmore East, remains a strong contender for the greatest live album of all time).

After Duane’s death in October 1971, what followed was a head-shaking, decades-long tale of deaths, drugs, break-ups, lawsuits and even, amid the 20 or so albums they put out in that time, the occasional triumph.

Until the end, survivors Gregg Allman, Butch Trucks and Jaimoe Johanson kept the flame burning with live shows, until Gregg announced that the band would be wrapping things up for good after their 45th anniversary celebrations in 2014. Just three years later, he was dead.

Even now the spirit of the departed members lives on, with The Brothers – including former members Jaimoe, Warren Haynes and Derek Trucks – performing the Allmans’ catalogue live in concert in 2020 and again in 2025.

The real legacy of the Allman Brothers Band lives on not only in classic albums like Eat A Peach and Brothers And Sisters, but also in a sprawling southern songbook that includes Lynyrd Skynyrd, Georgia Satellites, Drive-By Truckers, Kings Of Leon and Alabama Shakes. But they’re still resistant to easy labels.

“I’ve heard that damn expression ‘jam band’ so many times,” Gregg said. “It’s b.s. The Brothers are not a jam band, we’re a band that jams.”

…and one to ignore

Bill DeMain is a correspondent for BBC Glasgow, a regular contributor to MOJO, Classic Rock and Mental Floss, and the author of six books, including the best-selling Sgt. Pepper At 50. He is also an acclaimed musician and songwriter who’s written for artists including Marshall Crenshaw, Teddy Thompson and Kim Richey. His songs have appeared in TV shows such as Private Practice and Sons of Anarchy. In 2013, he started Walkin’ Nashville, a music history tour that’s been the #1 rated activity on Trip Advisor. An avid bird-watcher, he also makes bird cards and prints.