Background

Gregg Allman was born Gregory LeNoir Allman on December 8, 1947, in Nashville, Tennessee, United States to the family of Willis Turner Allman and Geraldine Alice Robbins, a couple who first met each other during the World War II in Raleigh. He had one elder brother Howard Duane Allman.

Allman's father, Willis Turner Allman, a former United States Army veteran, gave a hitchhiker a ride home and was shot and killed on December 26, 1949. Allman’s mother, Geraldine, moved with him and his brother to Nashville and raised them alone. While in Nashville, he was introduced to music by his grandmother’s mentally handicapped neighbor, Jimmy Banes.

Allman’s mother decided to study further and enrolled at a college to become a Certified Public Accountant. According to the rules at that time, she had to live on-campus. Thus, Allman and his brother had to be sent to Castle Heights Military Academy. Allman later realized that his mother had sacrificed so much in order to raise him and his brother single-handedly.

Education

Gregg Allman and his brother attended Castle Heights Military Academy in Lebanon, Tennessee. In 1963, the brothers returned to Florida and studied at Seabreeze High School graduating in 1965. The Allman brothers were less interested in school than they were in pursuing their own musical education, spending all their cash on records or sitting in with local rhythm and blues outfit The Houserockers.

Career

Gregg Allman worked as a paperboy during his teenage days to buy a Silverstone guitar after he was influenced by Jimmy Banes. He eventually bought one and started learning. He and his brother joined a Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) group named ‘Y Teens’ and began practicing together.

The Allman brothers met Floyd Miles, an American blues guitarist, and the three began jamming together. Their music was heavily influenced by the R&B and blues genres. The three young musicians were inspired by artists like McKinley Morganfield aka Muddy Waters.

The two Allman brothers eventually moved to Macon, Georgia, and formed a group with Dickey Betts, Berry Oakley, Jaimoe, and Butch Trucks. They would spend their time in Rose Hill Cemetery jamming together and using psychedelic drugs. The band thus formed eventually evolved into The Allman Brothers Band.

The band’s eponymous first album, released in 1969, didn’t receive a good response and this forced the musicians to tour and perform in concerts in the ensuing years. These performances earned them a healthy fan following.

Despite acquiring a loyal fan following, the band again failed to enjoy commercial success with their second album ‘Idlewild South.’ Their fortunes finally changed in 1971 when they decided to release a live album.

Their first live album ‘At Fillmore East’ was released in July 1971 and it was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America. It peaked at number thirteen on the Billboard 200.

On October 29, 1971, Duane Allman died in a motorbike accident in Macon. Gregg was shattered by his brother’s death and the other band members too took a lot of time to recover from the tragedy. All this while, their first live album was still gaining popularity.

Several months later, the band got together and released their third studio album which was also part live. The album, ‘Eat a Peach,’ was released in April 1972 under the label Capricorn. It was certified platinum by RIAA and peaked at number four on Billboard's albums chart.

Band member Berry Oakley could never recover from Duane’s death, and incidentally, he too was killed in a motor crash in 1972. The band recruited two people after Oakley’s death: Lamar Williams on bass and Chuck Leavell on piano.

The restructured band released their fourth album ‘Brothers and Sisters’ in August 1973. It topped the Billboard 200 albums chart was certified platinum by the RIAA. The album established ‘The Allman Brothers Band’ as one of the biggest rock bands of the 1970s.

Despite their rising popularity, the band members began fighting continuously among themselves. Gregg Allman’s decision to begin working on his solo album greatly contributed to the tensions within the band. Their next studio album, ‘Win, Lose or Draw,’ did not perform as well as their previous ones.

In the mid-1970s, Allman received much attention owing to his relationship with the singer Cher and their subsequent marriage. Their marriage brought them together on the stage too. The couple released a collaborative album named ‘Two the Hard Way.’ The album was a major failure. The couple went on a tour to promote the album but even that did not help popularize it.

The failure of their collaborative efforts and the ego clashes between the two musicians put their marriage under great stress. Their relationship deteriorated in the ensuing months and the couple divorced in 1978. After his divorce from Cher, Allman returned to Daytona Beach and started jamming with the blues band ‘the Nighthawks.’

Over the next decades, he struggled with heavy alcohol abuse. Despite this, he continued to release albums frequently. In the 1980s, he released ‘I'm No Angel’ (1987) and ‘Just Before the Bullets Fly’ (1988).

After maintaining a low profile in the 1990s and the 2000s, he returned to his previous glory with a bang in 2011 with his album ‘Low Country Blues.’ It reached No. 1 on the Top Blues Albums chart and was also nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Blues Album in 2011. It was the last album to be released during his lifetime.

Achievements

• 

  Gregg Allman’s biggest achievement with the band was their fourth studio album ‘Brothers and Sisters’ which was a major hit. Allman wrote the lyrics of the popular singles ‘Ramblin' Man’ and ‘Jessica.’ The album peaked at the Top 200 Pop Albums list for five weeks and sold over seven million copies worldwide. While he had a very successful career with ‘The Allman Brothers Band,’ he also enjoyed much success as a solo artist. His seventh studio album ‘Low Country Blues’ reached No. 1 on the Top Blues Albums chart and No. 5 on the Billboard 200. It was also given a four-star rating by ‘AllMusic.’
  
  Allman won several awards and accolades as a member of The Allman Brothers Band. Some of them include a Grammy Award for Best Rock Instrumental Performance, the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, and a Billboard Touring Award. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995, and into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame in 2006. In 2016, Allman was awarded an honorary doctorate from Mercer University in Macon, presented by former President Jimmy Carter.

Works

More photos

• book

  • My Cross to Bear 2012

• music

  • The Allman Brothers Band 1969
  • Idlewild South 1970
  • Eat A Peach 1972
  • Brothers And Sisters 1973
  • Win, Lose Or Draw 1975
  • Enlightened Rogues 1979
  • Reach For The Sky 1980
  • Brothers Of The Road 1981
  • Seven Turns 1990
  • Shades of Two Worlds 1991
  • Where It All Begins 1994
  • Hittin' the Note 2003
  • Laid Back 1973
  • Playin' Up A Storm 1977
  • I'm No Angel 1987
  • Just Before The Bullets Fly 1988
  • Searching For Simplicity 1997
  • Low Country Blues 2011
  • Southern Blood 2017
  • Two the Hard Way 1977

Religion

Allman was opposed to organized religion for many years though he said he always believed in God. After health problems in the last years of his life, he came to his own form of Christianity and began to wear a cross.

Politics

The Allman Brothers Band promoted a sense of southern pride that was tolerant and racially integrated without peons to the Confederacy or even delving in specifically to politics. In the late 1970s, Allman was something of a grassroots political activist, helping put a little-known Jimmy Carter into the White House with an endless run of fundraising concerts. When Macon's Mercer University bestowed an honorary doctorate upon Allman in May 2016, it was Carter who presented it.

Views

The Allman Brothers Band were performing a benefit concert at New York's famed Beacon Theatre on July 27, 2011, that they dubbed "Tune In to Hep C Presents the Allman Brothers Band." Unlike other charity concerts, this event is personal for Gregg Allman, who was diagnosed with Hepatitis C in 2007 and had to undergo a liver transplant in 2010 because of the disease's ravaging effects on his body.

Quotations: "I play every show like it's my last. Fortunately that's never turned out to be the case."

"There's only one cook in the kitchen, only one chef. I let the soloists do their thing - you've gotta let a man do a solo the way he wants - but as far as picking the tunes and working on the arrangements, I take full responsibility for it."

"I said, other people can write songs, let's see if I can. So the first 400 or 500 wound up on the floor somewhere. Then I wrote one called Melissa."

"I got tired of playing other people's songs."

"The Beatles had just come out, and everybody had a band. It was incredible competition out there."

"Clapton asked my brother to play on his record. I thought that was the most wonderful thing in the world."

"I didn't think we would ever make enough money to pay rent by playing music."

Personality

Allman's success brought along with it numerous other issues. Unable to handle their rising fame and the growing pressure from their fans to deliver another hit, the band members developed a heavy drinking habit that was exacerbated by drug abuse. In 1975, Allman, then 27, was downing a quart of vodka a day, hooked on heroin and already on his third marriage. In a 2015 interview with Dan Rather, Allman detailed his many failed attempts at rehab and how the stage could numb just about any kind of pain. His determination to rebuild The Allman Brothers Band dovetailed with his first long stretch of sobriety, finally accomplished at age 47.

Physical Characteristics: Years of drug addiction and alcohol abuse took a toll on Allman’s health. He suffered from various problems, including hepatitis C and atrial fibrillation. He also suffered from liver cancer. On May 27, 2017, Gregg Allman died of complications caused by his liver cancer at his residence in Richmond Hill, Georgia.

Interests

• Music & Bands

  Jackie Wilson, Otis Redding, B.B. King, Patti LaBelle, John D. Loudermilk

Connections

Allman was married a total of seven times during his lifetime.

Before he Allman married first time he had a wedlock son Michael Sean Allman from a go-go dancer Mary Lynn Sutton whom he met at Daytona Beach, Florida. Michael Sean Allman is a musician and a frontman of the Michael Allman Band himself.

Gregg Allman was married first to Shelley Kay Winters in 1971, and then to Janice Blair in 1973. As can be inferred, the union to Winters, also known as Shelley Jefts, was short-lived, as they separated within a year of being married. They had one child together, Devon Allman, in 1972, who followed in his father’s footsteps and become the lead singer of the rock group Honeytribe. Devon occasionally performed with The Allman Brothers Band as well. Allman’s marriage to Janice Blair, whom he had started dating the year before, was also brief. Still, she played a big part in the creation of Allman’s debut solo album Laid Back (1973), as she appeared on the sleeve artwork riding a horse and inspired the song “Queen of Hearts.” They divorced in 1974. Blair, also known as Janice Mulkey, is the sister of Ron Blair, the bassist for Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers.

The most famed of Allman’s six marriages, he was wed to Cher in 1975. The union was as famed as it was troubled, however, spanning over a decade and serving as the basis for tabloid fodder in the media. Having previously been married to Sonny Bono, Cher was reportedly shocked by Allman’s heroin and liquor problems, and they eventually got so that she was unable to handle them. According to the 1986 biography Cher, author J. Randy Taraborrelli wrote that Allman was “so high” he didn’t even understand that she was telling him their marriage was over. They had a son Elijah Blue Allman, lead singer of Deadsy band.

Allman’s fourth marriage was to Julie Bindas. As was reported by People magazine in 1980, “In his continuing battle with alcohol and life, rocker Gregg Allman, 32, has found a new shoulder to lean on: that of his bride of two months, Julie Bindas.” Bindas was significantly younger than her spouse, at 20 years old, and the two had reportedly met at Daytona Beach in 1979, mere months after Allman’s split from Cher. Bindas has previously worked as a cocktail waitress in New Jersey.

Allman’s union to Bindas resulted in his getting sober, as he signed himself into the Palm Beach Institute, a rehabilitation center that allowed family members to live as “co-patients.” Bindas was by his side every step of the way. In a humorous interview, People asked Bindas about what the perks of the newly sobered Allman are, which she replied, “He holds doors open for me and lights my cigarettes, I love being pampered.” The couple had one daughter, Delilah Island Allman, and divorced in 1984.

Allman married Danielle Galliano in 1989, after falling back into his alcoholism and moving to Los Angeles. According to Allman, he said that his main reason for marrying Galliano was because he felt that if he waited much longer, he would be too “old and ugly” to get married to anyone. This decidedly unromantic union was affirmed by the fact that Allman overdosed on the night of their wedding, which started things off, as he put it, “with a bang.” Despite this hectic beginning, Allman and Galliano were married for a total of six years. They were divorced in 1994, and had no children together. That being said, Allman did father a child during their marriage with radio journalist Shelby Blackburn. Layla Brooklyn Allman, the singer’s youngest, was born in 1993.

Allman’s sixth marriage was to Stacey Fountain in 2001. It was actually a motorcycle accident, one involving Stacey’s father Jeff Fountain, that helped bring the couple together, as her father experienced a similar ordeal to that of Allman’s brother Duane, who died in a motorcycle accident in 1971. “We were on tour at the time,” Allman told the Athens Banner-Herald, “I took the call, so I’m the one who had to tell Stacey.” Allman subsequently performed a benefit concert at Bonita Lakes to help pay for Jeff Fountain’s medical bills. He survived the accident, but the same couldn’t be said for the marriage, as Allman divorced Stacey in 2004.

Allman’s seventh and final marriage began in 2012, when at the age of 64, he got engaged to 24-year-old woman named Shannon. They married in 2017. In an interview with Piers Morgan on CNN, Allman said that “this time I’m really in love.” Morgan asked how Shannon felt about becoming wife number seven, to which the singer replied “That’s not what she’s becoming. She’s becoming wife number one. I don’t have a wife, I haven’t had one for years.” Shannon would remain Allman’s wife until his passing.

Father:

Willis Turner Allman

Mother:

Geraldine Alice Robbins

Brother:

Duane Allman

Mistress:

Mary Lynn Sutton

Son:

Michael Sean Allman

Growing up, Michael Allman never really knew his biological father. His original surname - Hendrick - came from the man his mother married to legitimize his birth. After that brief union ended, his mother married Daniel Green, the man Allman originally believed was his father. When Allman was 6 years old, Green died in a Learjet crash. As he was mourning Green's crash, his mother told him about his birth father, Gregg Allman, Gregg didn't openly admit he is the father until 1985, 13 years after the crash and when Michael Allman was 19 years old.

ex-wife:

Shelley Kay Winters

Son:

Devon Allman

ex-wife:

Janice Blair

ex-wife:

Cherilyn Sarkisian

Son:

Elijah Blue Allman

ex-wife:

Julie Bindas

Daughter:

Delilah Island Allman

ex-wife:

Danielle Galliano

Mistress:

Shelby Blackburn

Daughter:

Layla Brooklyn Allman

ex-wife:

Stacey Fountain

Wife:

Shannon Williams

Bandmate:

Dickey Betts

Bandmate:

Warren Haynes

Bandmate:

Derek Trucks

Bandmate:

Berry Oakley

Bandmate:

Oteil Burbridge

Bandmate:

Butch Trucks

Bandmate:

Jai Johanny Johanson (Jaimoe)

Bandmate:

Marc Quiñones

Acquaintance:

Robert Plant

Acquaintance:

John Mayer

References

• Gregg Allman’s Official Website
• One Way Out: The Inside History of the Allman Brothers Band
  2014
• Skydog: The Duane Allman Story
  2008