Twiggs connection occurred when Phil Walden heard about Duane playing sessions at Muscle Shoals. Phil sent Twiggs to Muscle Shoals to check it out. Twiggs brought Jaimoe along with him to the Muscle Shoals studio. Jaimoe had played with Otis Redding and some other black bands. Twiggs came back raving about Duane and eventually Phil got the contract with Duane and then ultimately the Allman Brothers were put together. Twiggs was the original road manager and I was going to be hired at some point to be part of the group because Twiggs didn't really want to be a road manager, but rather a stage crew guy. So nothing really happened for a while. The band couldn't afford to take on anybody then. Then the incident happened where Twiggs stabbed the guy in New York.
JW As I recall the incident with Twiggs occurred near Buffalo? WP Yeah. It was actually in Buffalo. The guy Twiggs stabbed was apparently a low-level Mafioso guy. The story goes that the guy Twiggs killed was named Aliotta. Twiggs got into a fight with Aliotta because he wouldn't pay him money that was due the band for playing a gig. Apparently the word came down to lay off this kid because he was only trying to collect money that was due him. It was pretty intense. Twiggs and Aliotta got into a fight and Twiggs stabbed him a number of times. Aliotta's kid was flipping out and wanted to get Twiggs. Twiggs went on trial and I guess it was one of the last cases of tem- porary insanity in New York.
JW Well,l from reading about Berry Oakley's bizarre antics at the trial I can see why the judge might have con- cluded Twiggs was insane! WP Yeah. Twiggs sentence was that he was to be confined to a mental institution.
JW So what happened next? WP Well, at first he spent some time in jail
from the time of the killing which was in April of 1970. I went to work for the band in June of 1970. The band had called me and said Twiggs had told them if anything ever hap- pened to him that I was the guy to replace him. I can remember we played a gig in At- lantic City in the late summer of 1970. We were there for like a week and some of us took turns flying up to Buffalo to visit Twiggs in jail. I can even remember his cell number. It was cell J2 in the Erie County jail. Twiggs did some really amazing things while he was in the mental institution. He got some guy to speak who had not spoken in nearly thirty years. He got some other people to read who had never read before. He was an amazing guy.
JW He was quite the motivator wasn't he?
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