It’s Turntable Tuesday because life is too short not to listen to great music! This week on Turntable Tuesday I am looking through my vinyl collection to find a copy of the Allman Brothers Band album released on February 12, 1972 on Capricorn Records titled “Eat a Peach.” I bought this album when I was 13 years old. As of two days ago as I write this the album is 50 years old and I cannot believe it. More on all of that in a moment.
I hope you are having a great start to your year and things are going your way wherever you many be. Crank up your music device, enjoy vinyl, or get out there and support your favorite live band! What are YOU listening to right now?
Winter 1970. I was living in Meridian, Mississippi and was already listening to music from blues to rock and roll. My Dad would play country music constantly in the car or on Sunday when he played through his growing album collection of country hits from Jim Reeves to Johnny Cash. Given I was a typical child with a dislike for the music of your parents it was years before I realized how great country music can be. At the time I was tuned into records from Johnny Winter to the Allman Brothers Band and I was only 11 years old at this point.
Over the winter of 1970 I visited my friend David Shaw in Greenwood, Mississippi in the delta where I went to first grade and lived for 7 years. It was not uncommon for us to spend weekends together even after I moved away as we only lived a couple of hours from each other. I have talked about my friend several times as he was extremely smart and was a virtuoso musician. He had the capability of a senior electrical engineer before he was in high school. He could play any instrument fluently having started piano at age 6 and had taken over his adopted parents’ living room as a practice studio with everything from a full drum kit to amplification that he had built from scratch. I mean the bass head, the amp heads, the mixer, the 4 12″ speaker cabinets, even the lighting! Not to mention he was sawing on electric guitars to customize them long before Eddie Van Halen showed his to the world.
I say all of that to start the story of how I found out about the Allman Brothers Band. David had a poster of Duane Allman on his wall in the practice room. He had put gaffer tape on the back of the thing and taken his Mother’s framed painting off the wall. I guess that was his guitar inspiration in that day as he could play a Gibson Les Paul as well as anyone. I remember asking who that was in the photo and soon I was listening to the Allman Brothers’ “Beginnings” live album. The road started in the delta of Mississippi where some say blues music was born and I will be listening to this music for as long as I can. I only wish David was still here to talk about old times and enjoy new things. He left the planet 8 years ago after a bout with cancer. I still miss him.
Winter 1972. Fifty years ago this week as I write this. I was still living in Meridian and the new “Eat a Peach” album had just released. I had saved some money to buy this album and was very excited to play it on the “console cherry stereo” that was roughly eight feet long. It had a built in AM/FM tuner and a Garrard turntable with a massive arm. There were two built in speakers on each side with one of the first color television sets in the center. This now aged console was the first color TV in our neighborhood when it was purchased by my Dad in the 1960’s. By this time it was mostly being used for playing vinyl as the TV was long dead likely from being used too much. At any rate I was wearing this “Eat a Peach” album out playing it constantly.
I remember only months before this album came out I was standing with a friend on the edge of the street a couple of blocks from my house on 52nd Avenue. His older brother had some awesome rock and blues albums in his collection and his mother worked for Peavey Electronics so I thought he was cool. As we listened to the portable FM radio on this October evening after dark it was still warm outside in the deep south. The word came on the small radio that Duane Allman had been killed in a motorcycle accident in Macon, Georgia. I was stunned. I remember just looking up in the dark at the street light and I can still remember the bugs flying around the haze of the light. I can even remember just hoping that somehow this news was not true. But it was.
By the time “Eat a Peach” came out I was hoping the Allman Brothers Band would find a way to continue. At this point there was a lot of uncertainty about things but as history tells us now they did continue as a band in many forms. I have witnessed most all of those forms through the recorded music and live shows one after another through the decades.
My first Allman Brothers concert. The brand new at the time New Orleans Superdome. It was Sunday, August 31, 1975. Over 12 hours of music from Charlie Daniels and his band, the Marshall Tucker Band, Wet Willie, and the headliner was the Allman Brothers Band. WHAT a show! Somewhere in my blog I have told the story of this concert but there were so many more shows through the years. In 1975 some of the songs from “Eat a Peach” were etched into the set list of the Allman Brothers Band. I remember how it felt to see them for the first time. It was pretty magical and a 5 hour road trip but that story is for another day. I could write a book just about my first hand experiences of seeing this band. I am sure there are many others still out there just like me who know the stories and have felt the awesome power of this music coming from a live stage. It is really hard to describe some of these moments but I can tell you the ride was a great one.
The following is something I wrote after taking my daughter to an Allman Brothers show in Raleigh in August of 2012. “My daughter wore this shirt to the show with me last night. Now she actually is a small size and just a few weeks from being fifteen years old so the shirt was slightly big on her as I was a medium size back in 1975. She doesn’t like having her picture taken although she is a beautiful girl. As we walked through the crowd last night people kept asking me and my daughter about the shirt. They could tell it was something very different. The guy at the “Hittin’ the Note” booth really liked it. “Old School” he called it. Funny that is what a 25 year-old told me the other day when he overheard me talking about the show I was going too…”Allman Brothers, Man that’s some old school stuff” Funny at my age I think old school is Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf.” That last paragraph was written ten years ago. Man time flies.
“Eat a Peach” is an album that I would personally include in my collection if I could only have 10 records on a deserted island. The tracks are awesome. I won’t elaborate here as you can go read all about each one but I highly encourage you to give this album a listen when you are wanting to relax and have time to reflect on life. With that I “Ain’t Wastin’ Time No More” as track one goes.
Until next time I’ll see you, down the road.