The Allman Brothers Band

Could there have been such a thing as Southern rock if there’d been no Allman Brothers? Maybe, but the brothers brought — and the remaining brother still brings — a raunchily graceful musicality that spans blues, jazz, rock, country, and jam, deep fat fried and rebel-ready. If Southern rock has a national anthem, it’s gotta be the three-chord genius of “Ramblin' Man,” the perfect stripped-down showcase for the twin talents of guitarists Duane Allman and Dickey Betts. Swinging back to the other emotional pole, “Whipping Post” takes a 6/8 quick waltz time into a dark place, with screamy six-strings and the story of a man who’s just on the edge of doing something he’ll regret . . . maybe forever. And in “Little Martha,” a gorgeous duet that Leo Kottke called “the most perfect guitar song ever written,” Allman and Betts prove that some of the sweetest stories are best told without words.

In Next Steps, we’ll hear the Allmans not only as they start their own band, but on their own.

Together or separately, the Brothers Allman are nothing less than a musical force of nature. Most bands take years to get to the level of instrumental wizardry the Allmans so freely toss off in the full-throated mini-jam of “Don't Want You No More,” if, indeed, they get there at all; at the time, the Allman Brothers had been together less than six months. Duane Allman and Eric Clapton — arguably rock’s two greatest living guitarists at the time — riff off each other against the backdrop of a heart-shredding lyric to send Derek & The Dominos’ “Layla” into a rock-god immortality that even 40 years of continuous airplay can’t begin to negate. And Gregg Allman’s gloss on Jackson Browne’s “These Days” pulls the song from its singer-songwriter-y roots and turns it loose in the ruins of an abandoned antebellum mansion overgrown with vines and regret.

In Deep Cuts, we’ll take you live to a decade-spanning Allman mini-concert that never was.

In our Deep Cuts, we’ll take you through four decades of live discs to demonstrate how — just like the South itself — the Allmans seem always ready to rise again. By the time of Live At Jazz Fest 2007, only three original members remained, but when they crank up the scorched-jam blues of “Gilded Splinters,” the years drop away, and guitarists Derek Trucks and Warren Haynes just about make you forget all about those other two guitarists. Jumping backwards 37 years, the Allmans lay a slab of Southern swampiness on top of Chicago bluesman Willie Dixon’s — and to a great degree, even though he didn’t write it, Muddy Waters’ — “Hoochie Coochie Man.” But we have to close the set out with a track from the expanded edition of 1971’s At Fillmore East, one of the greatest live rock albums of all time, as bluesman Elvin Bishop takes the mic to front a song he wrote, “Drunken Hearted Boy.”

How could a band this great have luck so bad? After all, their place in history would’ve been secured due to their more or less singlehandedly inventing Southern rock. Or by the fluid brilliance of their twin-guitar attack, led by brother Duane and Dickey Betts. Or by any one of a number of songs (think: “Whipping Post,” “Ramblin’ Man,” “Jessica,” to name but a few) that remain pillars of the classic-rock canon. But then Duane had to take an early detour to rock ’n’ roll heaven, followed by the band’s bassist, Berry Oakley, a year later (each in motorcycle accidents three blocks apart from each other). Through lineup changes, feuds, lawsuits, and the occasional breakup, the Allman Brothers have been making music that matters since the days of the 8-track tape . . . but unlike the cartridge of yore, they sound every bit as good today as they did back then.