and Midwest and played in some of the worst places you ever heard of and we did that for a few months which seemed like years. And the first of the year of 1967, all of our gigs fell out, it was a slow time of the year. We didn’t know that there would be down times like that and here we were, three out of four of us in the- band were married. We had wives to support. We didn’t have any kids yet but even when we were playing and getting paid weekly we got real skinny and then all of a sudden there was no gigs for a couple of months and you know, we had some car payments and a few things in life that required cash, and Eddie decided he didn’t want any more of it. He wanted to get in the studio and be a session guitar player, so he left. He was our front man and main guitar player so he went and moved to Muscle Shoals. So here we are, stranded in Johnny Sandlin’s parent’s garage and we were auditioning singers, guitar players, and every time we’d hear about somebody, we’d ask ‘em to come and audition. We hadn’t found any- body and then we found Pete Carr, he was sixteen years old but he wasn’t a singer, he was a guitar player, so we still needed a front man/singer. See, Eddie was both. He was a guitar player and singer. So it was taking two really good players to equal one Eddie Hin- ton. During that time, Duane called me up and he said, “Man, it looks like the Allman Joys are breaking up. We fired our bass player. Bill Connell’s drummer’s getting drafted and what do you think about us join- ing forces with you guys?” And so it was a match made in Heaven right there. They drove to Decatur and we started bashing around tunes in Sandlin’s garage and we had a lot of the same standard songs that they had. All the Southern bands just about at that time played “Stormy Monday Blues,” “Turn on Your Love Light,” by Bobby Bland and a whole bunch of tunes like that that were just standards, so between what songs we knew and what songs they knew we threw together, we had enough for about two sets - two good


sets. So they said as the Allman Joys, St. Louis had been a good town for them. There was an area called Gaslight Square which was sort of like Bourbon Street in New Orleans and they could get a booking there. And here we’d been about three months without any work, we were starving and so I said, “Let’s get to St. Louis and quick!” And so we got a job at Pepe’s a-G0-Go and while we were playing there, about the first week or so, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band came through St. Louis on a tour and some of them came into the club. Their manager was with them heard us play and he immediately went to the pay phone and called some people at Liberty Records in California and said, “Man, I’ve just discovered the next Rolling Stones!”


Oh boy! And here we’d only been together probably two weeks. We’d just come out of the garage, right to Pepe’s a-Go-Go and already we were being compared to the Rolling Stones so they came over the next day and talked to us and said, “If you’ll move to L.A. I’d like to be your manager, I’d like to sign you a contract and I’ll get you a record deal.” And so within a month, it seems like, we were sittin’ in L.A. and within two or three weeks, we had a record deal with Liberty, such as it was. And so we spent a little under two years out in L.A. Had two very forgettable albums. Actually, looking back on it, we were the first Southern Rock band.


Yeah, that’s right. There were other bands from the South but the music wasn’t called “Southern Rock.” There wasn’t that sound that we’re so familiar with now called Southern Rock. So here we were a Southern Rock band and had a little bit of a black sound, you know, Gregg had that black blues voice and they kept compar- ing us - calling us a Motown band, and so they just kind of ignored Duane if you can imagine that, and they treated Gregg like a


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