My Life With the Allman Brothers
Uncle Jimmy was the best friend in the world to our publisher Don and his sister when they were growing up in St. Louis. He was also friends with the Allman Brothers.
A high-school-age Midwestern hippie discovers the world’s greatest rock and blues band in a local bar. They like him back.
Then she took off all her clothes.
One night in February, 1967, I drove down to the St. Louis entertainment district, Gaslight Square, which was sort of a mini Bourbon Street. At the local Whisky a Go-Go, Billy Peek was playing his rock ‘n’ roll. So I watched from the street for a minute, until I heard a wild sound coming from Pepe’s a’ Go-Go, the club next door. Through Pepe’s picture window I could see, and clearly hear, a four-piece band tearing through Bob Dylan’s “From a Buick 6” with a ferocity unlike anything I’d ever heard before. The sign in the window said the Allman Joys. I showed my fake ID and found an empty table. The blond singer, seated at a Vox organ, sang forcefully in a voice that sounded half-Black and half-Southern-white. His hair was to his shoulders, and his blond sideburns reached his jawbone — the longest sideburns I’d yet seen. He was dressed to the nines in mod clothing: a ruffled shirt, vest, bell bottoms, and black “Beatle” boots. His almost feminine good looks completed the picture of …
