March 26, 1969

If you're a fan of the original line-up of the Allman Brothers Band, you may have heard the story of how the band started.

After several Sunday jam sessions in a park in Jacksonville, Duane set up a private jam session. As Butch Trucks recalls it, "We set up at Berry Oakley's house. Duane was there, so was Dicky and Jaimo and Berry and myself. We played three or four hours without stopping."

As recounted in Randy Poe's Duane Allman biography "Skydog", Duane kicked off the proceedings with a shuffle - a shuffle that lasted for hours. "We got into this jam and it went here and here and here", said Butch Trucks. "Dicky and Duane were really having a good time with each other."

Duane later recalled it this way: "We set up the equipment and whipped into a little jam. It lasted two-and-a-half hours. When we finally quit, nobody ever said a word, man. Everybody was speechless. Nobody'd ever done anything like that before - it really frightened the shit out of everybody. Right then I knew. I said, 'Man, here it is - here it is!"

Duane Allman then walked to the open doorway, stood in front of it, and said, "Anybody in this room not gonna play in my band, you're gonna have to fight your way outta here!" And then he added, "The only thing is, we need a singer - and my baby brother's the only one who can do it."

Gregg Allman recalls (as do the other surviving members who were there that day) that he arrived in town three days later, on March 26th. According to Gregg, "We all got together in the same room for the first time...and I was the last one to get there. And there were all these guys I didn't know looking at me. It was heavy."

Gregg stood and listened to the musicians tear through Muddy Waters "Trouble No More". According to Dickey Betts, "Gregg put his hands against the wall and said 'I can't play in this fucking band!'"

That set Duane off. Using the same tactics he always used with his brother, he "coerced" Gregg into reluctantly singing the song.

Gregg explained, "I never heard or sung the song before, but by God, I did it. I shut my eyes and sang, and at the end of that there was just a long silence. At that moment, we knew what we had."

Just as the other members of the band had realized three days earlier, Gregg knew he was now in perilously unexplored musical territory. He also realized that he had to write new songs that would fit within the context of the band. He already had "Dreams" and "It's Just Not My Cross To Bear". Within the next five days Gregg recalls he wrote "Whipping Post", "Black Hearted Woman" and a couple of others. "I got on a real roll there", said Gregg.