Duane and Dickey.
binations, we were at The Second Coming’s - Dickey and Berry’s band- house and six of us got into a jam that lasted about 2-3 hours. It was incredible. When we finished, Duane walked to the door and said: "anyone in here that’s not gonna play in my band is gonna have to fight his way outta here." The group was Duane, Dickey, Berry,
Jaimoe, me and Reese Wynans -he went on to play with [Stevie Ray Vaughan &] Double Trouble.” The two-guitar, two-drummer band be-
came the obvious way to go. All they needed was a singer. Duane called up his brother Gregg who was struggling out in California. Gregg made a beeline back home to Jack- sonville, Florida. "Gregg was on the West coast, and he
didn't join the band for several weeks or maybe even for a couple of months," Phil Walden told Goldmine magazine. "When he did come in, he sounded great, of course, but even after Gregg got there, if the Allman Brothers played an hour set probably forty minutes of it would be instrumental." With Gregg in the fold, the band had found their missing ingredient, although the initial call from Duane to Gregg left Gregg confused.
His brother told him he had the band they had dreamed of, and it had two drummers. Gregg had a hard time wrapping his head around that and the fact that Duane also hired a lead guitar player. Why would his brother hire a lead player? He was the ulti- mate lead player. As always, Gregg simply put all of his trust in his big brother. The very first song the band played together was the Muddy Waters song "Trouble No More," a staple of the Second Coming live shows. The next weekend Second Coming was playing in Jacksonville when Berry Oakley announced to the audience," We have a spe- cial surprise for y'all tonight." Out came Duane and Gregg for a smoking set that in- cluded "Trouble No More," "One Way Out" and "Dreams." By all accounts, they raised the roof on the venue that night, and the Allman Brothers Band was off and running with a full head of steam. The band started performing locally
around Macon as well as playing free concerts at Piedmont Park in Atlanta. In late May of ’69, the Brothers were booked on their first shows outside the south. Along the way, they were expanding their set list, covering songs like “Sweet Home Chicago,” “Hoochie Coochie Man,” “Crossroads,” “Rock Me Baby,” “Outskirts of Town” and “Stormy Monday.” They opened for Lou Reed's Velvet Un-
derground in Boston. At the time, the guys were only playing old blues numbers, albeit in their own style. The closest they had come to an original song was their improvised "Moun- tain Jam." Duane had been fooling around on guitar, playing the melody line for the Dona- van song "First There is a Mountain," and the band joined in. Thus, was born another Brothers staple, the extended jam known as "Mountain Jam." Duane told Gregg that he wanted him
to write some original songs for the group. Gregg showed the band about twenty tunes and each as met with a lukewarm reception.
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