“You Wanna Play in My Band, You’d Better Come to Pick”: Duane Allman and American Music

Abstract

American music is quintessentially Southern music and Duane Allman and the Allman Brothers Band, the band he founded in 1969, is found at that intersection.

"'You Wanna Play in My Band, You’d Better Come to Pick': Duane Allman and American Music" provides an understanding of why Duane Allman and the Allman Brothers Band were groundbreaking and important. In combining multiple genres of southern music (nearly all African American in origin)—blues, rhythm and blues/soul, gospel, rock 'n' roll, country and western, and jazz—into a cohesive sound, Duane Allman's band created a new form of American music.

This dissertation puts Duane Allman into context as a singular force in American music and the culture and music of the South. Allman's legacy is a story of the pursuit of musical excellence on his own terms. That he did so from the South, with an integrated band, following an uncompromising musical path, is what sets him apart from his contemporaries.