Gregg Allman - Southern Blood (Deluxe Edition) '2017

Tracks list

	Tracklist
---------
01. My Only True Friend
02. Once I Was
03. Going Going Gone
04. Black Muddy River
05. I Love The Life I Live
06. Willin'
07. Blind Bats And Swamp Rats
08. Out Of Left Field
09. Love Like Kerosene
10. Song For Adam [feat. Jackson Browne]
11. I Love The Life I Live (Live From The Clay Center, Charleston, West
Virginia, May 6, 2016)
12. Love Like Kerosene (Live From The Tower Theatre, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,
April 1, 2016)

Gregg Allman's most visible contribution to rock music was as lead singer,
organist, and songwriter with the Allman Brothers Band, founded by his brother
Duane in 1969. He never threatened to eclipse the band that carried his family
name, but he found occasional success and popularity with his solo work, which
was distinctly different, more soulful, and less focused on high-wattage
virtuosity.

Allman's instrument was the organ, and he was most effective, when in top form,
as a singer. His first instrument, ironically enough, was the guitar, and he
took it up before his older brother Duane did. But Duane learned it better and
quickly eclipsed Gregg. Where Gregg did excel, however, was on the organ and as
a singer (a role Duane was never comfortable with), which proved important but
not at the center of a group that became famous for its 40-minute instrumental
jams and three-hour sets. Through their early efforts, in bands like the Allman
Joys and the Hour Glass, they shared the spotlight, with Duane taking the
lengthy solos and Gregg fronting the band and offering Booker T. Jones-type
keyboard playing. Liberty Records signed the Hour Glass and tried making Gregg
into the focus of their efforts during the late '60s, but it never quite worked.

When the Allman Brothers were organized, the flashy (and vital) instrumental
moments belonged to his brother and Dickey Betts and, later still, Warren Haynes
and Derek Trucks, nephew of Allman Brothers drummer Butch Trucks. Gregg's songs,
however, including "Whipping Post" and "Midnight Rider," were among the group's
notable originals during its classic period, 1969-1972. Beginning with Brothers
and Sisters, Betts' songwriting and singing assumed increasing prominence.

It was during the period that Brothers and Sisters was burning up the charts
that Gregg Allman emerged as a solo artist with his first album, the critically
well-received hit Laid Back, which put the softer, more serious, soul- and
gospel-tinged side of his work in sharper focus. A tour followed, which yielded
a live album that was also a success. This first period of solo popularity was
interrupted by a combination of professional and personal conflicts; the Allman
Brothers Band toured extensively and struggled to come up with a follow-up to
Brothers and Sisters, and Gregg Allman began a relationship with Cher, the
ex-wife and singing partner of Sonny Bono, which resulted in a tumultuous
marriage for the two. These activities were played out amid Allman's
well-publicized drug problems, which culminated with his testifying against a
band employee in a federal drug case, which, in turn, led to the temporary but
extended dissolution of the Allman Brothers Band.

Ironically, it was during this period, in 1977, that he delivered Playin' Up a
Storm, a pop-soul effort that proved to be one of his most accomplished and
successful albums. His next two albums, I'm No Angel and Just Before the Bullets
Fly, released at the end of the 1980s, were quickly eclipsed by the re-formed
and reinvigorated Allman Brothers Band's success on-stage and on record. His
1997 release Searchin' for Simplicity and the double-CD anthology One More Try
didn't match the urgency or success of the band's activities. In 2009,
Australia's Raven Records imprint issued a 19-track, single-disc retrospective,
entitled The Solo Years 1973-1997: One More Silver Dollar, that covered the
whole of Allman's solo career to that date from his years at Capricorn and
Columbia. In 2011, some 14 years after his last solo album, Allman released the
T-Bone Burnett-produced Low Country Blues on Rounder Records.

Allman published his autobiography, My Cross to Bear, in 2012, which was the
beginning of several retrospective, or at least nostalgic, projects from the
singer. Most of these came to fruition in 2014. He kicked off that year with All
My Friends: Celebrating the Songs & Voice of Gregg Allman, a star-studded show
in Atlanta, Georgia that was released later that year as a live DVD and CD. A
few days after that show, he went to his hometown of Macon, where he gave a set
that was released in 2015 as Back to Macon. The Allman Brothers Band gave a
series of farewell concerts at the Beacon Theater in New York City that fall and
Allman continued to perform with his own band, and also entered FAME Studios in
Muscle Shoals, Alabama to record another solo album, Southern Blood, with
producer Don Was and a host of friends.

Allman's health began to fail and he had to cancel scheduled live appearances.
He returned to working on th album, completing it shortly beforepassing away
from complications due to liver cancer on May 27, 2017. Southern Blood was
issued that fall. 




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