What Was Duane Allman's Net Worth?
Duane Allman was an American guitarist, musician, and singer who had a net worth of $300 thousand at the time of his death in 1971. Duane Allman, well known for his extended guitar solos and the electric bottleneck sound he made come from his Gibson Les Paul, was the founder and leader of the Allman Brothers Band, which he played in alongside his younger brother, Gregg Allman. Influenced by the American jazz musician Miles Dewey Davis III, Duane was highly skilled in improvisation and was inducted posthumously into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1995.
Early Years
Howard Duane Allman was born on November 20, 1946, in Nashville, Tennessee. He was the oldest son of Willis Allman and Geraldine Robbins. When Duane was three years old, his father, who was a second lieutenant on active duty with the United States Army, was murdered. After her husband's death, Geraldine enrolled Duane and his brother, Gregg, into the Castle Heights Military Academy in Lebanon, Tennessee, so that she would be free to go and obtain job training in order to support them all. In 1957, she and her sons relocated to Daytona Beach, Florida, where Duane attended the public Seabreeze High School.
The Love of Guitar
Duane became interested in playing the guitar after his brother purchased one. When he was 14, his mother later bought him his own Gibson Les Paul Junior, a solid-body electric guitar. While visiting their grandmother in Nashville, Tennessee, Duane and Gregg attended a rhythm and blues concert at which American blues guitarist, singer, and songwriter B.B. King performed. The event inspired Allman to become as skilled as possible in the art of guitar playing.
The Early Work
In 1961, Duane and Gregg began playing music publicly. Allman dropped out of school to pursue his dream of becoming a full-time musician and eventually formed the band The Escorts, which served as the opening act for the American rock band the Beach Boys in 1965. The band soon broke up, and Duane formed The Allman Joys with Gregg. They became the house band at The Briar Patch in Nashville. In 1965, they toured the Southeast states before disbanding.
In 1966, music producer Tony Moon hired Duane to play guitar on The Vogues' first album. The following year, Duane formed the soul band Hour Glass with Gregg, and they relocated to Los Angeles, where they recorded two albums under the Liberty Records label.
Unhappy with how they were being publicized as pop musicians rather than the blues musicians they were, Duane and Gregg moved back to Florida in 1968, where they played on demo tracks for the American rock band The 31st of February. That same year, American record producer Roe "Rick" Hall, owner of FAME studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, listened to an Hour Glass album and was so impressed with Duane's guitar playing that he signed him to a $10,000 contract. Soon after, Duane played on the album "Hey Jude," the ninth studio album by soul singer Wilson Pickett. When Jerry Waxler, music producer at Atlantic Records, heard Allman's guitar playing on Pickett's album, he bought him out of his contract with FAME. Duane then played on recordings by such artists as Aretha Franklin, Boz Scaggs, and Otis Rush.
The Allman Brothers Band
In 1969, Duane formed the six-member Allman Brothers Band with Gregg in Jacksonville, Florida, and they recorded their first album, "The Allman Brothers Band," that year. They would soon become one of the most popular musical groups of the 1970s. A 1971 article in "Rolling Stone" magazine called them "the best damn rock and roll band this country has produced in the past five years."
The Allman Brothers Band released their second album "Idlewild South" in 1970. In 1971, they released "At Fillmore East" three months before Duane's death.
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Death
On October 29, 1971, Duane was out riding his Harley-Davidson Sportster motorcycle while the Allman Brothers Band was taking a break from recording and touring. He was traveling at a high rate of speed when a flatbed truck suddenly stopped at an intersection, forcing him to try to swerve around it. It isn't certain what Duane collided with, but he was thrown from the motorcycle, which landed on top of him, and then skidded 90 feet down the road with his body pinned beneath it. Although he was alive when he reached the hospital, his organs were crushed, and he died a few hours later from massive internal injuries.
Duane's funeral was held on November 1st at Snow's Memorial Chapel in Macon, Georgia. Jerry Wexler gave the eulogy. The Allman Brothers Band continued to record and tour without its renowned guitar player.
Personal Life
Duane welcomed a daughter, Galadrielle, with Donna Roosman in 1969. In 2014, Galadrielle released a book about her parents and the culture of the '60s called "Please Be with Me: A Song for My Father." Galadrielle grew up thinking that she was Duane's only child, but while researching her book, she discovered that he had a daughter with Patti Chandlee as a teenager and that the baby had been given up for adoption.
Legacy
In 2003, Allman was ranked #2 on "Rolling Stone" magazine's list of the 100 greatest guitarists of all time, coming in just below Jimi Hendrix. In 2011, he was ranked #9, and in 2023, he was ranked #10. In 1995, 21 years after his death, Duane was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
