Gregg Allman Band – A Quiet Storm

Rip It Up, Issue 5, 1 October 1977, Page 11

Gregg Allman Band - A Quiet Storm

Alastair Dougal

The Gregg Allman Band Playin’ Up A Storm

Capricorn In all the furore a few years back over Southern rock and the Allman Brothers Band, Gregg Allman always got forgotten. In a band that became known for lengthy guitar work-outs, he was the guy who held down the droning organ chords. He was the singer certainly, but nobody seemed to attach much importance to that, and he was more often mocked for the drawling southern inflection of his vocals.

Well, Gregg Alman’s just weighed in with his second solo album and I'm prepared to stick my neck out and call it the best Allman Brother's associated project since Brothers and Sisters. Gregg's first solo album, Laid Back, was a patchy affair part of it was very fine, but at least half of it was marred by ponderous orchestral arrangements. Playing Up A Storm continues tinues the use of strings and horns but, under the expert direction of ace West

Coast producers Lenny Waronker and Russ Titelman, the arrangements play a more subsidiary and more successful role.

Indeed, for a band that contains three guitarists, the most surprising aspect of the album is the tasteful and discriminating way they're used. On the whole the album is dominated by piano. Gregg being no threat to Chick Corea for digital dexterity at the keyboards, he’s hired a piano player by the name of Neil Larsen to handle the tricky bits. He comes out of the same school of blues orientated piano players as exAllmans' ChuckLeavell, and is equally as tasteful and effective.

If forced to classify the album, I’d say it was a blues album for the ’7o’s. It isn’t an elpee full of 12 bars but from the opener, a re-working of th e Brother and Sisters’ track "Come and Go Blues ”, through to the revived Ray Charles' song Brightest Smile in Town”, the blues shine through. The title, Playin' Up A Storm , is deceptive for energetic it isn’t, and it may well be too laid back for some. But Allman shows a sure sense of his roots and also of how to achieve his ends, and that’s better than a thousand and one half-pie country-blues-rock fusion bands.