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I thought I’d first with a little “Better Off Dead” by Bill Withers. I have a feeling this song was pretty popular back when it came out but today it’s one of of Bill Wither’s more obscure songs. I have some alcoholism in my family and this song hit me a little hard the first time I heard it because it’s first person. The ending is a little nasty and abrubt but it’s a good one.

Bill Withers

The next couple songs are off a collection of songs by the famous guitar prodigy Duane Allman. which are some of the songs off a compilation called Duane Allman An Anthology (Volume 1).  I have this collection on vinyl too so I’ve had it  for years but recent downloaded it and recently re-discovered it.   Duane Allman was of course was one of the original Allman Brothers before he was abruptly killed in a motorcycle accident just days before his 25th birthday.  But he was picked up as an early musical prodigy particularly before using the slide on the guitar was popularized (Duane Allman popularized it) in addition to being well known in the Nashville scene as an unbelieveable studio musician — click here to read all about him and the early Allmans that I think beats the Wikipedia entry if you ask me.   Some day I’ll post the first Allman Brothers album in its entirety, Beginnings, that I think is a masterpiece.  Shortly after this album came out he was soon playing with Eric Clapton (Duane Allman plays the slide guitar on Layla) and dozens of other recordings.  All of these are attributed to Duane Allman but in reality he played with other singers and outshined them to the point the songs are attributed to him.  My favorite of this group is “Road of Love” that is played with a black soul singer named Clarence Carter, who’s great.   This said after hearing this recording I found a bunch of great Clarence Carter recordings but none that I think are worthy of posting to the blog, as of now.

I could only imagine what it would be like to hear a recording like that for the first time when this album had just come out.  I’ve read some of the original articles profiling this new band called “the Allman Brothers” and they were sort of like the Justin Timberlake of the day, young and sexy and tons of hype and particularly in this case, some serious actual talent.   In 1973, just two years after this album came out, they would play to some 1.5 million people for the largest concert in history (at the time).

The other good song is the cover of “The Weight” (originally by The Band) by Aretha Franklin that I thought would have been a good song for Didi Benami from American Idol 2010 to cover for some reason.

Didi Benami