One of the band's more notable fans was Jimmy Carter; who managed to get the band to play at some campaign events during Carter's successful campaign for President in 1976.
When Dickey Betts brought in "Ramblin' Man" the others recognized it as a great song but were reluctant to record it because it didn't really sound like anything they'd recorded in the past (it was much more Country Music-influenced than most of their previous music). They recorded it and put it on Brothers and Sisters but were leaning toward releasing "Wasted Words" as the lead-off single until early positive radio reaction to "Ramblin' Man" led to a change of plans. It worked, since it became their biggest hit and Signature Song.
Their final Top 40 hit, "Straight from the Heart" from 1981's disowned Brothers of the Road, is extremely generic Soft Rock that one biographer has called a "Doobie Brothers imitation" ("Gregg Allman & The News" is also a good way to describe it).
Breakthrough Hit: After their first two albums did OK, but not great, saleswise (Idlewild South just barely made the Top 40), At Fillmore East really made their reputation, reaching #13 on the Billboard album chart and eventually going Platinum.
California Doubling: The cover photo of At Fillmore East is meant to evoke the band hanging out in a New York alley, waiting to move their equipment onto the Fillmore stage, but it was actually taken in downtown Macon, Georgia a few months after the concerts.
The band did not like the live album Wipe the Windows, Check the Oil, Dollar Gas, which was compiled in a rush by Capricorn Records and released shortly after their initial breakup. It's one of their only albums to never receive an official US reissue on disc.
The band felt that the three albums from their 1979-81 reformation (Enlightened Rogues, Reach for the Sky, Brothers of the Road) were "embarrassing" and felt that meddling from Arista Records hampered their quality. Jaimoe wisely dropped out before Brothers of the Road (their only album without him). They never played tracks from these albums again on their subsequent reunion tours.
Colbert Bump: A lot of younger people know about the band thanks to "Jessica" being the Top Gear theme tune.
Died During Production: Duane died after they recorded three songs for Eat a Peach ("Blue Sky", "Stand Back", "Little Martha"), leaving it a mystery how the rest of the album might have turned out had he lived (they ended up fleshing out the album with some live cuts and some post-Duane studio material). Similarly, Berry Oakley died after they recorded the first two songs of Brothers and Sisters ("Wasted Words", "Ramblin' Man").
He Also Did: Warren Haynes co-wrote the Garth Brooks hit "Two of a Kind (Workin' on a Full House)".
Hitless Hit Album: Eat a Peach and Win, Lose or Draw both made Top 5 on the album charts, while the highest any single from either album could manage on the pop charts was #67. Things were different on rock radio, where a number of songs from Eat a Peach became popular favorites. But played fairly straight with Win, Lose or Draw, which sold well at first as the long-anticipated follow-up to Brother and Sisters, but was largely forgotten after that.
Their first two live albums (At Fillmore East; Wipe The Windows, Check The Oil, Dollar Gas) were both double LPs. At Fillmore East was also a double CD when it got reissued.
Eat a Peach was a double LP, with "Mountain Jam" split in two and placed on sides two and four. The CD reissue was a single disc with a reunified "Mountain Jam" as track #4 (a mixed blessing, since it was nice to have the complete song, but it robbed the album of its original finish of the Big Rock Ending of "Mountain Jam", followed by Duane introducing the band and saying "thank you").
Old Shame: (Verging on Canon Discontinuity) Basically everything after Brothers and Sisters until the band stabilized with the Trucks/Haynes guitar team and Hittin' the Note in the early 2000s was this for different band members, due to recurring substance abuse problems, legal issues and bitter infighting.
Outlived Its Creator: The band was started by Duane Allman in March 1969. The band eventually outlived him by 43 years when he was killed in October 1971. Same with original bassist Berry Oakley, who was also killed in November 1972.
Similarly Named Works: Hank Williams previously did a song called "Ramblin' Man", and Dickey Betts specifically used that song's title and concept as a jumping-off point for his own song. Interestingly, at one point he considered giving the song away to Hank Williams Jr.
Throw It In!: The cover for At Fillmore East is the result of this: most of the photos in the shoot were of the band looking bored and not doing a good job hiding their camera shyness (see also their picture on the main page). Then, by sheer chance, Duane recognized a dealer friend of his, ran up to him, bought some contraband, and ran back, hiding it in his lap. The rest of the band laughed at this, and photographer Jim Marshall snapped the image.
Troubled Production: The final album of the first phase of their career, Win, Lose or Draw, was, as many such bitter ends are, plagued by this trope.
Before the sessions began, Gregg Allman and Dickey Betts had already made plans to record solo albums for release afterwards. This led to mistrust from the other members, particularly after Allman missed the first day of sessions. When he did show up, the rest of the band spent little time recording or writing and instead confronted him at length about his future commitment to the band, confrontations Betts and others later admitted were aggravated by everyone's heavy drug use at the time. Over the rest of the sessions things deteriorated further, with Allman and Betts increasingly skipping sessions, unless it was their songs being recorded.
This annoyed the other members to the point that they, too, began skipping sessions. Eventually the sessions, as they often do in these situations, deteriorated to the point where a band who had recorded some of its best work by playing together live in the studio instead recorded their parts individually, with no one else present, and letting the producers put it together. At some points the producers even had to play parts on their own.
The final album was poorly received; it is considered their worst. It still managed to make the Top 10 and go gold, but that was far less well than the Allmans had been used to doing, and after its release the band broke up for another 14 years.
What Could Have Been: Duane had originally been signed to Atlantic Records as a solo artist, and the label wanted him to front a Jimi Hendrix Experience-style trio with multi-instrumentalist Paul Hornsby and drummer Johnny Sandlin, but the initial sessions didn't work out (for one thing, Duane wasn't comfortable as a lead vocalist). Instead, Duane called in his brother Gregg and various other musicians he'd gotten to know playing the Southern club circuit and formed the Allman Brothers Band. Sandlin stuck around to help them, ultimately becoming their Record Producer (Hornsby also became a prolific producer on the Southern Rock scene).
