ALLMAN BROTHERS 50 GUITAR TOWN
by Michael Ray FitzGerald
“If you’re gonna come to this town with a guitar in your hand, you’d better know how to play that thing.”
My family moved from Lemoore, Calif., a
navy town, to Jacksonville, Florida, in 1968. A high-school chum told me I would love it here— musically, Jacksonville was “really happening.” Man, was he right. We arrived the day Martin Luther King got
shot. I was sitting in the bathtub in the hotel at Naval Air Station Jacksonville when the news from Memphis came over the radio. My parents had gone to nearby Orange Park to look for a house. They decided to live in Clay County be- cause Duval County schools had been disaccred- ited. Also on the radio that day was “Spooky,” a song by the Classics IV, a band from Jacksonville who had hit the No. 3 spot on Billboard ’s Hot 100.
I was surprised to discover there were
bands all over the place. There were half a dozen rock groups at Orange Park High alone: The Day- breakers, the Nu-Sounds, the Six Teens, the Sound Vibrations and others. The Daybreakers even had a hit being played on 50,000-watt pow- erhouse WAPE-AM. My friends in the Daybreak- ers recorded at Sound Lab, the same Edgewood Avenue studio the Classics IV had started their careers. “Jacksonville was the place to be,” said
Mack Doss, a guitarist who moved to the city from Bradenton after forming the Thunderbeats with Larry “Rhino” Reinhardt. “There were hun-
Jacksonville in the Late 1960’s and the Beginnings of the Allman Brothers Band
Rhino Rhinehardt
dreds of gigs to be had.” One of the hottest pick- ers from Sarasota County was Dickey Betts, who used to fill in for 16-year-old Reinhardt on school nights. Betts, who had played often in Jack- sonville, told Doss to get his butt up to up to Jacksonville to find work. So he did. Doss moved to Jacksonville in 1966 and by 1967 had replaced guitarist J.R. Cobb in the touring version of the Classics IV. “I was 19 years old,” he said. “I was playing on some demos at Sound Lab. Wally [Eaton, bassist for the Classics IV] heard me and hired me on the spot.” Doss was replaced a year later by Jacksonville guitarist Auburn Burrell, who went on to become a sought-after session player in Atlanta and Los Angeles. The hippie movement hit Jacksonville in
1968 like a scene from Easy Rider. Being a long- 40
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