"You may as well say 'rock rock'," Allman noted. True, perhaps, but there's no denying that at the turn of the '70s a new type of rock and roll emerged � one rooted in a smoldering blend of blues, jazz, country and R&B, and often served up by way of extended improvisations. Indisputably, the first group to bring all those elements together, and infuse them with earthy southern traditions, was the Allman Brothers Band.

Ironically, had it not been for the tragic death of soul legend Otis Redding, in 1967, the Allmans might never have come together. In the wake of Redding's passing, his manager, Phil Walden, turned his attention away from R&B and toward rock and roll � albeit rock with a distinctly southern vibe. With an advance of $70,000 from Atlantic Records, Walden set up the Atlantic subsidiary, Capricorn Records, and set out on a talent search.

One of the first musicians to catch his attention was Duane Allman, at the time a little-known guitarist doing session work at Muscle Shoals Studios. Upon hearing Allman's guitar work on Wilson Pickett's version of "Hey Jude," Walden become determined to sign him and build a band around him. After some personnel shuffling, the Allman Brothers Band was formed in 1969.

"Duane did some early recordings that didn't result in the formation of the Allman Brothers Band," Walden recalled, in 1998. "Later we used some of those cuts on the Duane Allman Anthology album. Things went forward, but even after the band came together we still didn't have a singer. Gregg was on the West coast and he didn't join the band for several weeks, or maybe even for a couple of months. 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 40 minutes of it would be instrumental. For a lot of people the vocals were afterthoughts, to break up all that music. I thought they sounded spectacular."

Settling into a lineup of Duane, Gregg, Dickey Betts, Berry Oakley, Butch Trucks and Jaimoe Johanson, the Allmans first performed mostly in northern Florida and South Georgia. Their first show outside the south occurred in Boston, where they opened for the Velvet Underground. The northern music press was baffled not only by the band's newfangled music, but also by their shabby wardrobe.

"Most of the press didn't understand what the band was trying to do, musically," Walden pointed out. "Most of those press guys, at the time, were into bands like The Who or other English groups. The comments I heard that night were things like, 'You know, you ought to dress up those guys a bit.' I remember Duane made one of his classic remarks, which was, 'If you want to go to a fashion show, I suggest you go to the garment district. But if you want to hear rock and roll music, you shouldn't be too concerned about what we're wearing.'"