A portion of the Allman Brothers Band's final concert with leader and guiding force Duane Allman is set for release on October 18th. The album — which was recorded only 12 days before Allman's deadly motorcycle crash — is titled, The Final Note, and features seven songs from the Allmans’ October 17th, 1971 concert in Owings Mill, Maryland. Jambase.com reported the tape was discovered by a young radio journalist at the time, named Sam Idas, who was at the show that night to interview the band. Duane Allman died on October 24th, 1971 at the age of 24.
Idas said in a statement, “My only intention was to record the interview. This was a brand-new cassette recorder with an internal microphone, and I had one 60-minute cassette tape. I was sitting there with the recorder in my lap, and I remember thinking 'Why don’t I try this out? I can record the concert!' It was a totally spontaneous decision. I’d been to many concerts, but this was the only time I had the thought — and the motivation — to record the show.”
Galadrielle Allman (pronounced GOLLA-dree-ELL), the daughter of Duane Allman, has published the biography Please Be With Me: A Song For My Father. She also helped compile the recent seven-disc set, Skydog: The Duane Allman Retrospective, and told us that although only two at the time of her father's death — he's still been around to help guide her along the way: “I've been sort of parented by the music. Y'know, the lessons of the music, and the spirit of it, and the passion of it, has been a hugely instructive thing in my life. So, in that way, it is him for me. I was talking about Warren Haynes about it last night, that, y'know, the leaps between '69 and '70 there's a leap between (laughs) '70 and '71 there's a huge leap. It's like what would '72 have brought him? Y'know, he was really deeply engaged in constantly learning.”
