December 8: Rock and blues singer Gregg Allman of The Allman Brothers is 66-years-old today.

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Born in Nashville, Tennessee, and raised in Daytona Beach, Florida, keyboardist, guitarist and songwriter Gregory Lenoir Allman along with brother Duane was an original  member of The Allman Brothers Band.

He was inducted with the band into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995. In 1996, he also received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Georgia Music Hall of Fame in 2006.

Gregg (sometimes referred to as Greg) took an interest in the guitar before Duane did. But when Duane became the superior guitarist, Gregg focused more on vocals and keyboards.

In the mid- to late-1960s, the Allmans played in a series of bands including The Escorts and Allman Joys, mostly playing around the Southeastern United States. Toward the end of the decade, The Allman Joys relocated to Los Angeles, California, and were signed to Liberty Records, which renamed them The Hour Glass. The band recorded two psychedelic blues albums at the label's insistence, but against the best judgment of the band members .

After its second album, The Hour Glass dissolved, and Duane Allman returned to the South, playing sessions at FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. In a short time, he assembled the group that would become The Allman Brothers Band - Duane and Dickey Betts on guitars, Berry Oakley on bass guitar, and Butch Trucks and Jai Johanny "Jaimoe" Johanson on drums.

Liberty Records still believed that Gregg Allman had potential as a solo act, and insisted Gregg stay in California to record for them. He quickly grew miserable with this arrangement, and when Duane called from Jacksonville, Florida in March 1969 to say that he had assembled a band that needed a singer- and a keyboardist-  Gregg fled California and joined the Allman Brothers, where he wanted to be all along.

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Allman's biggest hit single came in 1987 with "I'm No Angel," from the album of the same name.

The album went on to be certified Gold for 500,000 copies sold and led to a renewed interest in Allman and to a reformation of the Allman Brothers Band less than three years later.

 

After the death of Duane Allman in 1971 from a motorcycle accident, Gregg Allman embarked on a solo career. He released his first album, Laid Back, in 1973. It included a couple of reworked Allman Brothers songs, including "Midnight Rider" that made it to #19 on the Billboard singles chart, as well as "Queen of Hearts," which the Allman Brother Band never recorded.

Allman's solo career has continued intermittently throughout the subsequent decades, sometimes touring when the Allman Brothers Band is off the road. Generally, these solo efforts - first with the Gregg Allman Band, and later with Gregg Allman & Friends - cast Allman more as soul singer than a Southern rocker. The bands often include a horn section.

Rolling Stone magazine placed him in 70th place in their listing of the "100 Greatest Singers of All Time."

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For more about Gregg, visit his Website at -

http://www.greggallman.com/

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