Jo Jane sent Duane a Yeats poem that reminded her of him:
THE SONG OF WANDERING AENGUS
I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.
When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire a-flame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And some one called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.
Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.
He replied from Jacksonville on March 20, 1969:
Dear Jo Jane,
I got your letter a little late because I’m down in Jacksonville and I had to get all my mail shipped here and that’s always a drag because my replies are always late.
That poem was sure nice; I get high every time I read it. Old Aengus must’ve been a guitar picker for sure. I wish I shared his optimism.
I’m down here getting a new band together, as usual. This one is stronger than anything I’ve had so far, and I’ve got some high hopes for it. I have two lead guitarists (me and another guy), two drummers (one is black, he worked with Otis Redding right up till when he got killed), bass, and Gregg playing organ and singing. Sounds good, huh?
I quit my staff position in Muscle Shoals because all these people up there kept telling me how rich I was gonna be in a few years from just kissing the boss’s ass and playing EXACTLY WHAT THE BOSS WANTS. I told the motherfuckers that I was the boss in that department and would they excuse me but I heard the highway calling me. Probably a stupid move. PROBABLY A STUPID THING TO WRITE Poem: I love and miss you everyday more than I could ever say
Hotcha, D
I’ll write more later.
Freed up from the confines of FAME, Duane began focusing on building his gigging band. He didn’t entirely close the door to session work, but he was through living in Alabama now that he had Phil Walden behind him.
He considered almost every talented musician he came across as a potential bandmate. Listening to demos, or seeing a gigging band live, he would say to Jaimoe, “What about that guy?” and Jaimoe would answer, “Duane, that guy isn’t fit to carry your case.”
Duane would be surprised. Jaimoe saw that Duane didn’t entirely realize how remarkable he was. Berry’s talent was equally undeniable; his approach was both powerful and melodic, and emotionally expressive, qualities rare to find in a single bass guitar player. He, Duane, and Jaimoe quickly recognized that they had chemistry, and Berry’s interest was more than piqued.
Playing with Jaimoe and Berry in a power trio modeled after Cream and the Jimi Hendrix Experience seemed like the way to go, although Duane was not sold on being the front man. He knew he had passion and guts as a singer, but he didn’t possess the stability or control he needed vocally. Phil Walden tried to put Duane at ease, pointing out that singing wasn’t the focus of either popular trio he was inspired by; it was more important to showcase his guitar playing and build a vibe.
As far as Duane was concerned, he had found his new band. Jaimoe and Berry were the ones, and he was ready to move forward.
But Berry had already met his match in Jacksonville—a guitar player named Dickey Betts.
Dickey had crossed paths with Duane and Gregg many times in the clubs Duane referred to as “the Garbage Circuit of the South.” Dickey was quiet, well spoken, and totally passionate and knowledgeable about music. He loved everything from Django Reinhardt’s wild and free gypsy jazz to the Grateful Dead’s psychedelic, folksy sound. He was versed in bluegrass and country swing as well as the blues. He had an incredible ear and his touch could go from a gentle melody to pure aggressive fire in an instant. Dickey was raised in central Florida and started playing music as a kid with his family in a road show called the World of Wonder. His father played mandolin. As a teenager, he developed a real wild streak, and got into riding motorcycles wearing a vest with “Eat Shit” emblazoned on the back. His first band, with his childhood friend Joe Dan Petty, was called the Jokers and they worked the clubs. He and Berry met and started jamming, and formed a band of their own called the Blue Messengers. The owner of a Jacksonville nightclub called the Scene took a shine to them and hired them to be his house band. He had poured money into the place, installing an elaborate dance floor and swirling lights, and he wanted them to be his house band, with one change: He thought Berry looked like Jesus Christ, and wanted them to rename the band the Second Coming, which they did.
At first, their gigs at the Scene were sparsely attended. Jacksonville seemed an unlikely home for a long-haired psychedelic rock band. They nicknamed their town Jackass Flats for a reason, for the conservative guys working the naval base and the shipyard and the rednecks living in the backwoods. Berry was confident that there were young people like them hiding out; they just didn’t have a meeting place. He suggested that they play Willowbranch Park for free, saying all the freaks would come out of the woodwork, and sure enough they did. They began to play shows each weekend, and within a couple of months, thousands of kids came to sprawl out on blankets and dance in circles, passing joints openly in the park, and the Scene was packed all week, too.
Jaimoe and Duane traveled back to Jacksonville for longer stretches of time between Duane’s remaining sessions at FAME, and Berry welcomed them into his home and to jam. Jamming with the Second Coming was a gas, turning on all the local kids, riffing on songs like “Hey Joe” and “Hoochie Coochie Man.”
Dickey was a mysterious dude, open and charming at times, then deep within himself and impossible to read at others. He wasn’t as forthcoming as Berry, and it was clear it would take time for Duane to get to know him. Dickey could not help but be a little wary of Duane, this strutting, arrogant guitarist who had appeared in town out of nowhere, clearly hoping to poach his bass player. Dickey could see right away that the band was dialed in. He was trying to be patient, feeling out the situation.
For all the caution, their playing took off from the start. They had chemistry. Dickey’s strengths and style were different than Duane’s. Dickey had a kind of fight in him that set off Duane’s fluidity in a remarkable way. Dickey’s tone and attack drew from a country root, while Duane was digging deeply into the blues. The conversation between their sounds was dynamic and fascinating and the music that unfolded during their Jacksonville jams began to shift the direction Duane thought his band would take.
Duane realized he had been preparing for this band forever. He had gathered ideas about what he wanted it to feel and sound like all along the road. Carlos Santana was coming closest to what Duane could envision. The band could expand into extended, exploratory jams onstage, and tap into different influences. He started to imagine a band that could really open up a song and strive together like the jazz cats did. Jaimoe played John Coltrane and Miles Davis records at their crib all the time, and anything less than that level of ambition and innovation started to seem like a waste of time. Duane also wanted two drummers. If James Brown could do it, so could he. Instead of switching between them like Brown did, Duane could almost hear the interplay in his head, if the drummers riffed with each other the way the guitars did.
His band would be together, man. Duane took Donna to see Procol Harum. When Gary Brooker, the piano player, bent his head over the keys, and the band started in a perfect synchronized moment, Duane leaned in and said with excitement, “That’s just how my band will be—that tight!”
Duane and Gregg met a great drummer named Butch Trucks in 1965 when his folk trio, the Bitter Ind, came to Daytona Beach looking for a gig at the club where the Allman Joys were booked. Duane made a few calls for them and turned them on to a club owner in Jacksonville who Duane knew would love what the Bitter Ind were doing. The Bitter Ind got the gig. By 1968, Butch had moved on to a Byrds-inspired band called the 31st of February, and Duane and Gregg were briefly tempted to join them when Hour Glass ended. They even cut a few songs together. The brothers joined Butch in a studio down in Hialeah, Florida, and recorded “Melissa,” a pretty song Duane particularly liked that Gregg had written just after high school. Butch thought it was sounding great, but soon after, Gregg slipped away, back to L.A. when it was just coming together. Gregg sold the publishing rights to two of his songs, “God Rest His Soul,” about the death of Martin Luther King, Jr., and “Melissa,” to pay for his plane ticket.
Butch had trained as a percussionist at Florida State University. He played drums with amazing power and his timing was perfection. Jaimoe had an uncanny intuitive flow like no one Duane had ever heard. He was truly a jazz drummer at heart, with a unique approach. What common ground could Jaimoe and Butch possibly have? They were from different worlds, literally and musically. But Duane had a strong sense that they would complement each other.
Now that they were all in Jacksonville, Duane headed to Butch Trucks’s house with Jaimoe by his side. Butch opened the door to Duane standing on his porch with a muscle-bound black man wearing a necklace made out of bear claws and a dark pair of shades, as intimidating a person as Butch had ever seen. Butch was raised in a conservative, Southern Baptist family and carried all the racist fears that came with this upbringing.
“Hey, Butch, this is my new drummer, Jai Johanny,” Duane said. “Jai, this is my old drummer, Butch Trucks.” Duane walked through the front door.
Duane liked testing people, liked to watch them cope with being thrown into deep water. Jaimoe was completely silent and sat on the sofa without a word. It was a long afternoon. They could find very little to talk about, but when they finally sat down to play, that didn’t matter at all.
All of the inspiration Duane had carried for years came to fruition in Butch and Linda Trucks’s living room in Jacksonville, Florida, on March 23, 1969. Duane returned with Dickey and Berry, along with the Second Coming’s keyboard player, Reese Wynans. Once they set up and began playing, everything quickly began to gel.
This is the moment everything that followed flowed from: an afternoon in a living room, furniture pushed to the walls. They tuned their guitars, chords snaking around their boots on the floor, and sipped from cans of beer. They began to jam on a simple twelve-bar blues shuffle. Within the first few turns, it was clear they were communicating. Their eyes locked and they smiled and nodded. They were together in a new sonic space, and it was sprawling. It was as if they had wandered into a field of tall grass together and were lost in dense waves of green until Duane and Dickey together cut it down, revealing a clear view of blue sky for miles ahead. Berry stepped confidently into the breach, fearless and funky, with the power of the drummers at their backs like a gathering wind, and suddenly everything was possible. Even if they wound up in a tight spot, a moment hot with tension, they could turn a tight corner together and the song would open up again. Melodies would build and grow, then pass away. It was a journey.
The minute sensitivity of every note danced across their faces. Dickey’s blackbird-wing hair swung over his face, his eyebrows arched over his closed eyes. With his shoulders grooving, hips shaking, Duane’s mouth formed a silent O, his head shaking no, and then yes. Duane would wander off course and hit a note that at first sounded out of place, then bend it, pull it, and stretch it until he could use the tension in it and suddenly somehow it was right, more right than perfect would have been, because you could feel the wheels shaking beneath him, the danger and fragility, and it was exciting to know he was taking you out on a limb with him. Duane’s tone was incredible, round and warm, full and rich. He turned up his amp until it was fairly straining, a careening brightness he could tease and ride hard.
They didn’t have to talk about it. They played a reeling, endless jam that touched on the lives they had all lived separately and it took off like a rocket. Together they had all of the ingredients needed for greatness, and they were hungry for it. Their experiences were pressed into the service of their songs, every hard time useful now as grist for the mill and transformed into something beautiful, full of pride and longing.
The men played without speaking or wondering how they had gotten to this new place. Nothing had ever felt like this before. Not to any of them. Duane told them that if they wanted out of this band, they would have to fight their way through him to get out the door.
“This is it, man!” Duane was over the moon. He had found what he was looking for. They all felt it.
Lying in bed, Donna knew something felt off. Her body was heavy and her mind kept drifting, settling on Duane, then flying off into vague worry. As she wondered what it was, she rested her hand on her flat belly. She decided she needed to take a pregnancy test.
Her sister Joanie came with her to the doctor’s office. Donna panicked and tore up her first form when she realized she had filled in her true name and address. Joanie stuffed the pieces in her purse. She knew her sister was pregnant; she could just tell. The air around Donna seemed still and charged, and her face looked serious and beautiful. She was different somehow.
Joanie was right. At eighteen years old, Donna was pregnant.
Donna lay in a warm bath and looked down at her long legs. She covered her breasts with her palms. Somehow she wasn’t afraid. Her body finally felt like it really belonged to her, and it magically knew how to make a baby. Her life was opening up before her and although she couldn’t see what it was becoming, she could feel it expanding. She would finally have space to maneuver and to grow. Telling Duane was the only worry. She had no idea how he would react.
Her most recent letter from him was postmarked Miami, Florida, so sitting in her friend Maureen’s living room, she dialed the operator and asked for help calling recording studios in Miami. The operator placed four or five calls and Donna left messages for Duane at each studio, and it worked. By the end of the day, Duane called her back.
“Come to Macon as soon as you can,” he said. “Everything is going to be all right. I love you.”
He sounded really happy; he made it feel easy. She was so grateful.
With her mother’s help, Donna packed the suitcases she had been given as a graduation present. They folded her nightgowns and underthings, her new navy blue crepe dress, and a hot-pink mini with fancy white stitching all over it. The dresses would in no way adapt to her growing belly, and Donna assumed they were her mother’s way of saying she wanted Donna to keep dressing like a proper young lady.
Donna fit in a neat stack of parenting books, including Dr. Spock’s Baby and Child Care and A. S. Neill’s Summerhill. She took little else. Tommie was surprisingly accepting and promised she would come to Georgia when the baby was born. Her father, on the other hand, stopped speaking to Donna for several weeks when she told him she was pregnant and going to live with Duane. As she was leaving for the last time, they met at the front door. He was moved to tears.
He quietly said, “Goodbye, Buttons!” He had never called her Buttons before, and there were tears in his eyes. Donna had seen her daddy cry only once before, when his father died.
Donna walked down a flight of rolling stairs onto the tarmac at the tiny airport in Macon, balancing her little cosmetics case against her hip. She wore her new prim minidress and her blond hair brushed silky straight. Duane was there to meet her.
As she walked shyly beside him through the parking lot to his car, the weak latch on her case sprang open and her books tumbled out at their feet. A smiling pink-skinned infant on one cover, a doctor in a white coat and a woman with a huge belly on the others, scattered facedown and pages flapping. It was mortifying to her. They hadn’t even had the chance to ease into the idea, and there it was.
Duane took her to a small apartment on College Street that Phil Walden had rented for the band, a real hippie crash pad in the same building where Twiggs had an apartment.
The only furniture was mattresses on the floors and a Coke machine filled with bottles of beer. Duane offered Donna no comfort on her first night there. A kind word and his arms around her would have gone so far, just to curl up together and dream of their future, but he stayed up late, talking to Twiggs and Jaimoe in the main room of the apartment, and left her alone in the one bedroom. As she unpacked her nightgown, she could hear Twiggs and Duane talking through the door. She heard a rumbled, garbled question from Twiggs, and then Duane’s answer:
“How do you ever know if they’re the one?”
He made her wait most of the night before he climbed into bed smelling of beer and pulled her body into his. The way he felt against her almost made her forget what she had heard him say.
Their first weeks together were spent in constant motion. Just a few days after her arrival, Duane told her he had to go to Jacksonville to take care of some business. Duane and Donna drove the Dogsled down to Jacksonville to Berry and Linda’s house. On the drive, Duane told her the Oakleys were expecting a baby of their own, any day. It was comforting to know Linda was already a couple of steps ahead of her on the path. Duane and Berry thought it was so cool they were going to be fathers together. Everything they were going through felt connected, new, and hopeful: the band, the families, the budding spring.
Donna looked at Duane’s profile in the dark car as he leaned forward to light two cigarettes at once on the glowing coil of the lighter. He handed one of them to Donna with a wink. Sly and the Family Stone came on the radio and he sang along in a sweet and funny falsetto, “I … I … I am everyday people.…” Donna didn’t know if she had ever felt freer.
They pulled up in front of a gray house where the Oakleys and Dickey Betts lived. It was late, but all the windows were blazing with light and you could hear music and voices from the street.
“Are you ready to meet everybody?” Duane asked. Donna nodded and ran her fingers through her hair.
Berry’s sister, Candace Oakley, opened the door. She was one of the most beautiful and hip girls Donna had ever seen. Candy was not much more than five feet tall, with bronzed skin, bright blond hair down to her waist, and smart blue eyes that flashed over you so quick, you couldn’t even imagine what she was thinking. Berry’s wife, Linda, walked up behind her, almost six feet tall with long, wavy light brown hair, dreamy blue eyes, and full lips curved into an easy smile. Her hands perched proudly on her big round belly. They both had a refined hippie girl style that Donna couldn’t imagine pulling off: They wore strings of colorful beads around their necks, open silk blouses, tight cutoff jeans aged to pale perfection, and handmade sandals. The little blue crepe shift dress Donna’s mother bought her suddenly felt like a costume straight out of a Gidget movie. She felt like a square. They led the way into a small living room with people sitting on every available surface: draped together in armchairs, cross-legged on the floor, separating stems and seeds out of a pile of marijuana on an open record album cover. The room was smoky and smelled like spices.
Linda thought Donna looked like a fashion model, standing just behind Duane with her chin resting on his shoulder, looking around with dark, calm eyes. She was so thin and tall, ladylike, looking just like Joni Mitchell on the cover of her first album, with long blond bangs and delicate wrists. Donna noticed another very pretty girl with dark brown hair down her back and an incredible tan. She stood up as soon as she saw Duane. When Donna asked who she was, Linda smirked and said, “Oh, you mean the Polynesian Princess?”
Donna watched Duane walk after the dark-haired beauty, down a dark hallway and into a bedroom, and a chill ran through her. When he pulled the door closed behind them, Donna’s first instinct was to bolt. She wanted to run as fast as she could under the rustling palm trees, out into the night. Looking at the closed door that separated her from Duane, she suddenly knew her new life could disappear before it had even started. Duane could easily follow any girl through any door at any time and never come back. It would be that simple. She wanted to be alone, so she could shake the sinking feeling in her belly, but there was nowhere to run to. When he opened the door and returned to her side, she couldn’t bring herself to look him in the eye. If she was going to be part of this world of his, she was going to have to be cool.
She was shocked out of her reverie by a deafening crack that could only be a gun. Berry loped into the room laughing. “Damn! Dickey just shot his gun off the porch!”
The police were at the door within minutes, just long enough for someone to toss the baggie of pot out the back window into the bushes while everybody tried to fan the smoke out the back door. Donna was terrified. Two uniformed officers passed through the house quickly, asked a bunch of questions, and left without hassling anyone too badly. Dickey was polite and calm with them, and then lit a joint the moment the door closed behind them.
Berry, Duane, and Dickey took turns singing, but they clearly needed a stronger vocalist. Duane knew what he needed to do. He had been telling Jaimoe about his brother’s voice for months; it would fit perfectly on top of the music they were playing.
Gregg’s time in Los Angeles had been hard on him. Liberty was no more tuned in to his real potential than they had been with Hour Glass. They made a few mediocre singles and nothing much came of them. He was humiliated by the choices the label made for him, like the Tammy Wynette song “D-I-V-O-R-C-E.” He was feeling pretty low. He was so depressed he even contemplated putting a gun to his head.
He had made a number of friends and solid connections with other musicians, including the guys in a band called Poco, and he was considering joining their band when Duane called. It was the first time they had spoken in eight months, and it was all business. “Baybro, I’m putting a band together with two drummers, two guitarists, and a bass player, and I need you to get your ass down here, round it up, and send it somewhere.” Gregg thought it sounded like a train wreck, but it was the highest compliment to hear Duane say he needed him to be his singer. Gregg left for the airport that night.
When Gregg arrived at the gray house, it was packed with people he either didn’t know or knew only dimly. He followed the sound of his brother’s voice out onto a screened porch. He set eyes on a little beauty who took his breath away. Good God! Hair past her waist as blond as sunshine and a tight little body! She laid a smile on him that made his knees go weak. Duane stepped between Gregg and the girl and gave him a big squeeze. “Baybro, that is Berry’s baby sister Candy. You best behave!”
Back at Butch’s house, Gregg sat and watched his brother tear into “Statesboro Blues,” the same tune he had started with back in Los Angeles. During their time apart, Duane’s slide playing had taken an astounding leap forward. If Gregg hadn’t heard it for himself, he wouldn’t have believed it was possible. When the band all kicked in, the playing was so powerful, Gregg felt the hair on his arms stand up. Then he started to feel like the odd man out.
In anticipation of Gregg’s arrival, they dusted off an old country blues tune that Muddy Waters had electrified first, common ground for them to stand on together, a song called “Trouble No More.” Duane handed Gregg the lyrics he had written out by hand.
“Bro, I don’t know. I need some time to get comfortable here, you know? You guys already have it together and all.”
“Oh no you don’t, man. You are not going to embarrass me in front of these people. I have been telling them for days how you are the only one who can sing for us. Now get your shit together and sing.” Duane’s eyes burned through him. There was no way out, so Gregg sang. He poured his anger and stress into the song, and it fueled him. He dug into the deepest, most guttural and bluesy side of his voice and unleashed everything he had. The smile that spread across Duane’s face flashed all the way across the room. Duane was so thrilled when he was done; he grabbed Gregg’s face in both hands and kissed him on the lips.
Gregg’s power and soulfulness were beyond anyone’s expectations. He sounded amazing. All fear was gone. All that was left to do was pull together six or seven songs and get in front of a crowd. Gregg told them he’d been writing steadily in L.A. He had twenty-nine songs in his notebook, and a few might be just right.
They also had to decide what to call themselves. The first band name they lit on was Beelzebub, but the potential for calling down bad juju was discussed and the name was scrapped. The Allman Brothers Band seemed like a natural choice to everyone, except for the brothers themselves. Duane and Gregg didn’t want the band to feel like they were not six equal partners, but everyone else thought it was a great name, and it meant something: All men are brothers, and that was what they were all about, spreading the brotherhood.
Duane explained to Donna that she would stay upstairs from Linda and Berry, with his friend Ellen Hopkins, whom everybody called Hop, for a few days while the guys practiced and traveled to a few gigs around Florida. Ellen was a young graphic artist who worked at a local television station, another one who seemed to have a proprietary eye on Duane. Ellen watched him walk through her house with something like hunger. Donna could feel that she was not entirely welcome. She didn’t know what the story was there, but she could feel something.
When the band returned to Jacksonville after a week away, Duane and Dickey took Donna to Sarasota for a quick visit. Dickey’s wife, Dale, had family there. Duane told Donna, “You are really going to like Dale. I like Dale. She’s a solid chick.”
Donna didn’t care for the word chick, but she wanted to be solid, too. That sounded just right.
Florida was a world away from Missouri, the air and light gentle and lulling. She and Dale spent most of their time in the swimming pool talking and soaking up the sunshine. Time with Duane was very scarce. After a few days, he said it was time to continue on to Daytona to see his mother. Donna’s head was spinning; in less than a month they had visited four new towns and met most of the people who would fill her new life.
They stayed with Jerry for several days, and Gregg came and joined them. Jerry was clearly thrilled to be with her sons, but Duane seemed nervous. He had planned to tell his mother about the baby coming, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He pulled Gregg aside and asked him to tell her, but he didn’t do it.
Jerry was very welcoming to Donna, talking over her shoulder at the stove, asking Donna if she liked to cook, too. She even insisted that Donna sleep beside her in her queen-sized bed, saying it would be more comfortable than the living room. Jerry got a little tipsy at dinner and while they were falling asleep told Donna she loved her. It was incredibly sweet.
Out in the garage the next morning, Duane got down on one knee and slipped a beaded Indian ring out of his pocket.
“Donna, will you marry me?” She smiled and said, “Well, I don’t know.… How do you feel about babies?”
“I feel good about ’em,” he answered, kissing her belly. He slipped the toy ring on her hand. He stood up and wrapped his arm around her, whispering, “I love you,” into her hair. She was so relieved she thought she might cry. They didn’t say a word to Jerry about the engagement or the pregnancy.