Duane Allman may be the most underrated guitarist of all time. Listen to any of the “Layla” tracks where they isolate his slide guitar, and you realize how awesome he was as a studio session guitarist with some of the top bands of his day.
“the most underrated guitarist of all time.”
Not by the Rock and Roll crowd I’ve hung out with for the last 50 years.
>Duane Allman may be the most underrated guitarist of all time.<
No one who knows anything about music underrates him. But yeah, you don’t hear him mentioned many times when people talk about great guitar players, Dickey Betts too. You hear Hendrix, SRV, Clapton etc..
>Listen to any of the “Layla” tracks where they isolate his slide guitar, and you realize how awesome he was as a studio session guitarist with some of the top bands of his day.
Layla is basically all Duane Allman. All Clapton had was the slow, piano section, Duane came in and did the rest.
Duanne literally camped out in the parking lot of the Macon studio till they let him audition. He went on to do session work with Aretha Franklin, Boz Scaggs, Percy Sledge, Wilson Pickett and just about everyone else who recorded there.
Duanne and Boz Scaggs, Loan Me A Dime. Some of Duanne’s best guitar ever.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oTFvAvsHC_Y
That studio was one of everyone’s favorites, everyone you can think of recorded there. Even British bands like the Who knew about it. Steve Miller recorded there, Roy Buchanon, REO Speedwagon, The Guess Who, Peter, Paul & Mary, I can’t remember who else. Very long list. I saw a good documentary a while back. Long list of musicians recorded there. Duanne was part of the regular back up band, rotating crew of about 2 dozen musicians, all the best in the business. I think that’s where guys like Donald “Duck” Dunn and Steve Cropper got their start. Most of them knew what the others would do before they did it. They were that tight as a band.
Gregg got Duanne to join his band, the Allman Joys, later renamed Allman Brothers. Clapton was recording Layla when his manager shut it down and got him to go see the Allman Brothers onstage. Then got him backstage. Duanne and Eric were so intimidated by each other neither would pick up a guitar. Eric thought Duanne was one of the best he had ever seen. Ditto for Duanne, Eric’s reputation was well established by then. Eric was recording under the bands name, Derek and the Dominoes, to try and slide under the recognituon of rock and roll fans. That ended soon as he opened his mouth, his voice is very recognizeable. This is after someone spray painted “Clapton is God” on a London subway wall. Clapton wanted out of the rock superstar business.
I think it was Eric’s manager finally got them to pick up 2 guitars, not long after that Eric was inviting Duanne to do some tracks on what became Layla. Both junkies, they got along well. The story I got long ago was they would do heroin and jam till they passed out, wake up and do it again. Bowls of heroin and speed sitting around the studio, the producer freaked out. I’ve read that in several legitimate articles about the recording sessions, it’s not just a rock n roll rumor. It’s definite they were both junkies. Clapton admits that much.