Gregg Allman Dead Allman Brothers Frontman Dies at 69 Billboard

Gregg Allman Dead Allman Brothers Frontman Dies at 69  Billboard



Gregg Allman, the soulful singer-songwriter and rock n' blues pioneer who founded The Allman Brothers Band with his late brother, Duane, and composed such classics as "Midnight Rider," "Melissa" and the epic concert jam "Whipping Post," has died at age 69, Billboard has learned. He was diagnosed with hepatitis C in 1999 and underwent a liver transplant in 2010.



He "passed away peacefully at his home in Savannah, Georgia," according to a statement on Gregg Allman's official website, noting that the family planned to release a statement soon. "Gregg struggled with many health issues over the past several years. During that time, Gregg considered being on the road playing music with his brothers and solo band for his beloved fans, essential medicine for his soul. Playing music lifted him up and kept him going during the toughest of times."



Gregg’s longtime manager and close friend Michael Lehman said, “I have lost a dear friend and the world has lost a brilliant pioneer in music. He was a kind and gentle soul with the best laugh I ever heard. His love for his family and bandmates was passionate as was the love he had for his extraordinary fans. Gregg was an incredible partner and an even better friend. We will all miss him.”



With his long blond hair, cool facade and songs that chronicled restless, wounded lives, Allman came to personify the sexy, hard-living rock outlaw in a life marked by musical triumph and calamitous loss.



Billboard will have more information about the specifics behind Allman's death as the story develops.



Gregg Allman

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Allman fronted his band for 45 years, first alongside Duane and then as its sole namesake, after his older brother -- regarded as one of the most influential guitarists in rock history -- was killed in a motorcycle accident in November 1971, just as their trailblazing Southern rock tracks were taking hold on the charts.



Soldiering on through grief and then the eerily similar death of bassist Berry Oakley just one year and 10 days after Duane died, Allman and the band became as well known for their stoic survival as they were for their freewheeling concerts.



The Allman Brothers Band first reached the Billboard 200 albums chart with its self-titled debut in 1970. Over the next 34 years, the group charted 24 more albums, including four top 10 sets. It topped the list once, with Brothers and Sisters, which reached No. 1 for five weeks in 1973.



The group also landed 10 Billboard Hot 100 hits between 1971-1981. It earned its best showing with “Ramblin Man,” which reached No. 2 in October 1973, and reached the top 40 two more times with “Crazy Love” (No. 29, 1979) and “Straight From the Heart” (No. 39, 1981). The band also logged a No. 1 on the Mainstream Rock Songs chart in 1990 with “Good Clean Fun.” In total, since Nielsen Music began tracking point-of-sale music purchases in 1991, Allman Brothers Band have sold 9.3 million albums in the U.S.



As a soloist, Allman notched seven charting albums on the Billboard 200, including one top 10 set: the No. 5-peaking Low Country Blues in 2001. On the Hot 100, he claimed a pair of entries with “Midnight Rider” (No. 19 in 1974) and “I’m No Angel” (No. 49 in 1987). The latter also topped the Mainstream Rock Songs chart that same year.



After years of tragedy, dramatic breakups and tense reconciliations, a reconstituted Allman Brothers Band engineered a renaissance starting in the mid-'90s that put their fiery brew of old-time blues, jazz and country rock squarely at the forefront of music's thriving jam scene.



The Allmans' annual rite of spring -- a three-week run of shows typically held every March at the historic Beacon Theatre on New York's Upper West Side -- remade the band into a formidable commercial force in recent decades, long after many in the music industry had written them off.



A gentle and at times fierce balladeer, Allman would spend the majority of these shows behind his Hammond organ, taking center stage only briefly, usually with his acoustic guitar for "Melissa," which would start quietly and then blossom into a freeform jam.



With 238 concerts at the Beacon from 1989-2014, the Allmans had become such an important tenant that when the theater's new owner, The Madison Square Garden Co., announced plans for a renovation in 2006, Allman was consulted. His plain-spoken advice to executives: "Just don't screw it up."



Gregory LeNoir Allman was born in Nashville on Dec. 8, 1947, slightly more than a year after Duane. Tragedy struck early for the brothers when their father, Willis Turner Allman, an Army captain who had just returned home, was shot and killed in 1949 while helping a hitchhiker.