The Allman Brothers Band are the very best blues-rock group that America has ever produced. There’s nothing even vaguely controversial about that statement. They’re a lean, mean—and very well-rehearsed—music making machine capable of the sort of nearly telepathic improvisations normally only heard from jazz players. There’s a reason why the group’s original bandleader Duane Allman was so often compared to John Coltrane. Their legendary prowess on their instruments, especially in a live setting, made their shows incendiary. At the time that they recorded their Live at Fillmore East in March of 1971, the razor-sharp Allmans had played on the road approximately 300 days in the twelve months immediately prior.
The group’s peak performances tended to be at Bill Graham’s theaters, the Fillmore West in San Francisco and the Fillmore East in New York’s East Village. The Allmans were sort of the unofficial “house band” at the Fillmores and Graham was wildly enthusiastic about them (as can be heard in recordings of his laudatory onstage introductions of the group). They were stages where the band felt very comfortable. It was only fitting then that the Fillmore East would be seen as the best venue to capture the lightning in a bottle of their shows for an album aiming to showcase what they could do live.
The group scheduled three nights for the recording, two sets per evening, from March 11-13. The first night included a horn section that didn’t work out, but the second and third nights the group was absolutely on fire. It was these four shows, judiciously produced by the great Tom Dowd, that went into the making of the classic Live at Fillmore East, a record that’s on practically every “greatest” album list worth taking seriously.
Below, the Allmans Brothers Band live at the Fillmore East on September 23, 1970. Dig Berry Oakley’s rumbling bass line—one of the most familiar in all of rock music—as “Whipping Post” begins in 11/4 time, almost placing the Allmans—for one song at least—into some sort of quasi Southern-fried prog rock continuum. The band—Gregg Allman, Duane Allman, Dickey Betts, Berry Oakley, Butch Trucks, and Jai Johanny “Jaimoe” Johanson (with their pal Tom Doucette sitting in on harmonica and percussion) are still young and hungry at this point. They’ve clearly got something to prove—producing full “lift-off” here.
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