Ranked consistently among the top ten greatest rock and roll guitarists of all time, American musician Duane Allman achieved massive popularity with The Allman Brothers Band in the late 1960s and played regularly as a key session guitarist with top rock and blues stars. He died in a motorcycle accident in Georgia, USA in 1971 aged 24. With the band, he was admitted to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and honoured for Lifetime Achievement by the Grammy Awards.
Born in Tennessee, he spent time in Florida as a child but summered with his grandmother in Nashville where he learned to play the guitar. With younger brother Gregg he performed with local groups and created bands called The Escorts and the Allman Joys, which toured southern states. Changing their name to Hour Glass, they moved to Los Angeles in 1967 where they released an eponymous album in 1967 and 'Power of Love' the following year, neither of which made headway but served to attract the attention of other performers. He returned to Florida and became much in demand as a session musician on recordings including Wilson Pickett's 1968 album 'Hey Jude' which led to a full-time job at the Muscles Shoals Sound Studio in Alabama performing with artists such as Delaney & Bonnie, Aretha Franklin, Otis Rush, Boz Scaggs and Percy Sledge. The Allman Brothers formed in Jacksonville, Florida in 1969 and released a self-titled album the same year followed by 'Idlewild South' (1970), 'Valhalla' (1970) and 'At Fillmore East' (1971). Duane Allman continued to play with other artists, most notably with Eric Clapton on the Derek and the Dominos album 'Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs' (1970) on which his slide guitar performance won huge plaudits. Allman died in a tragic motorcycle accident in 1971. He was just 24 years old.
