Gregg Allman born 8 December 1947

Gregg Allman (December 8, 1947 – May 27, 2017) was an American musician, singer and songwriter. He was known for performing in the Allman Brothers Band. 

Castle Heights

The son of Willis Allman, a US army captain, and his wife, Geraldine (nee Robins), Gregory LeNoir Allman was born in Nashville, Tennessee, about a year after his brother Duane. In 1949, Geraldine found herself responsible for raising her sons when Willis was shot and killed during a robbery by a hitchhiker he had picked up. She trained as an accountant and sent the brothers to Castle Heights military academy in Lebanon, Tennessee. In 1959 she moved the family to Daytona Beach, Florida.

In 1960 Gregg bought himself a cheap acoustic guitar from Sears, though it was Duane who proved the virtuoso of the family, with Gregg gravitating to keyboards (the Hammond B3 organ became his signature instrument). The pair played with a racially mixed band, the House Rockers, and worked their way through various combos before forming the Allman Joys, going on tour in 1965 after Gregg graduated from Seabreeze high school. By 1967 they had formed the Hour Glass and moved to Los Angeles, where they made a couple of unsuccessful psychedelic-flavoured pop albums for Liberty Records. 

While Gregg stayed in LA, the other band members returned to Florida, where Duane joined a band in Jacksonville, the 31st of February, led by the drummer Butch Trucks. Duane persuaded Gregg to join as lead vocalist. Along with the guitarist Richard Betts, percussionist Jai Johanny Johanson (alias Jaimoe) and bass player Berry Oakley, Trucks and the brothers formed the Allman Brothers Band. Their self-titled debut album was released on the Capricorn label in 1969, and a follow-up, Idlewild South, the following year. Duane was killed in a motorcycle accident on October 29, 1971, in Macon. The band unanimously decided to carry on, and enlisted Lamar Williams on bass and Chuck Leavell on piano. 

                                  

Gregg’s solo career began in 1973 with the album Laid Back, which won considerable critical acclaim and reached 13 on the Billboard album chart, as well as spinning off the moody Top 20 hit Midnight Rider (previously recorded by the Allman Brothers on Idlewild South). It was his highest-charting solo release until Low Country Blues (2011), which went to No 5, though he made the Top 50 with The Gregg Allman Tour (1974) and Playin’ Up a Storm (1977), and reached No 30 with I’m No Angel (1987). The album he made with Cher, Two the Hard Way (1977), flopped disastrously. 

The couple divorced after three years of marriage, in 1978. Also that year, the Allman Brothers Band reunited for the album Enlightened Rogues, which gave them a Top 30 hit with Crazy Love. With the Capricorn label falling into bankruptcy they signed a deal with Arista, for whom they made Reach for the Sky (1980) and Brothers of the Road (1981), but split up again in 1982. 

The band’s 20th anniversary in 1989 prompted not only the excellent box set compilation Dreams (named after one of Gregg’s early songs for the band), but also another comeback. This delivered a satisfying album in Seven Turns (1990), the title track and Good Clean Fun becoming hits. The group re-established itself as a popular touring act, making further albums including Shades of Two Worlds (1992), An Evening With the Allman Brothers: First Set (recorded during their 1992 residency at the Beacon theatre, New York, which would become a recurring engagement for the band), and Where It All Begins (1994). In 1995 he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with the Allman Brothers Band.Their last studio album was Hittin’ the Note (2003). 

In 2007, Allman was diagnosed with hepatitis C, which he blamed on a dirty tattoo needle. In 2010 he had a liver transplant, and went into rehab in 2012 in an attempt to beat alcohol and drug addictions. In 2012 he published the memoir My Cross to Bear, a warts-and-all record of his arduous rocker’s life, written with Alan Light. In 2014, another run of shows at the Beacon theatre was curtailed when he contracted bronchitis. The live album All My Friends: Celebrating the Songs and Voice of Gregg Allman (2015) featured Gregg alongside Dr John, Eric Church, Jackson Browne, John Hiatt and others, and in the same year he released Gregg Allman Live: Back to Macon GA. Health problems forced him to cancel his 2016 summer tour, and his last concert was at his own Laid Back festival in Atlanta in 2016. 

Allman died at his home in Richmond Hill, Georgia, on May 27, 2017, due to complications from liver cancer at the age of 69. His funeral took place at Snow's Memorial Chapel in Macon on June 3, and was attended by once-estranged bandmate Dickey Betts, his ex-wife Cher, and former President Carter, among others. Greggs final album, Southern Blood, was released posthumously on September 8, 2017. 

(Edited from Adam Sweeting obit @ The Guardian & Wikipedia)