Gregg Allman, iconic Southern rocker from Florida's Allman Brothers Band...

Gregg Allman, iconic Southern rocker from Florida's Allman Brothers Band, dies at 69



The end can come quickly for those who live fast and live hard, who create worlds with their talent and sometimes come close to throwing them away.



Gregg Allman was such a figure, a hard-living singer and songwriter and the singer and organist of one of the great Florida music groups, the iconic Allman Brothers Band. He married often, he drank even more, he outlived his peers and, along the way, helped give birth to the genre of Southern rock.



After years of fluctuating health, including months of poor help resulting in many canceled gigs, Allman has died at age 69. No cause of death was immediately given; a statement from the band said he died "peacefully at his home" in Savannah, Ga. He is the second member of the Allman Brothers band to die in 2017; drummer Butch Trucks died in January.



Allman was a onetime Tampa Bay resident, living in Anna Maria Island for about six years.



"I was gone all the time," he told the Times in 2013. "I'd do a lot of fishing, I'd ride my motorcycles a lot. I have the usual fun that everybody else does."



FROM 2013: Gregg Allman talks music, memoir-turned-movie and more



But Florida coursed throughout Allman's veins. He is most closely associated with Daytona Beach, where he grew up; Jacksonville, the city where the Allmans got their start; and in recent years Live Oak, where he was a partner and frequent headliner in the massive jam-band festival known as Wanee.



He and late brother Duane led the Allman Brothers Band in its early years as they and fellow Jacksonvillians Lynyrd Skynyrd cultivated a rowdy, raucous, style of guitar driven rock -- although the Allmans wove in elements of jazz and high-octane country. This new Southern sound was influential to the likes of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and ZZ Top and an entire generation of jam-banders like Phish and Widespread Panic.



Early albums like Eat a Peach and At Fillmore East defined Southern rock as we know it, as did songs like Midnight Rider, Ramblin' Man and Whipping Post. Although for his part, Allman never liked that his music was defined purely by geography. The way he saw it, all rock was Southern rock.



"The way I see it, there are four original basic kings of original rock and roll — and don't confuse that with the crap you hear now," he said in 2013. "Jerry Lee Lewis from Ferriday, La. Little Richard Penniman from Macon, Ga. Elvis Aaron Presley from Tupelo, Miss. I believe that's as South as you can get. And of course there's one on the borderline, St. Louis, and that's Chuck Berry. That's just the way I see it, and it's just my opinion, but it's rock rock, you know? This s--- was born down in the South, because it stemmed off of the blues."



In the '70s, the lanky, long-haired Allman was one of rock and roll's premiere male pinups, and he played the part to perfection. He was married seven times, including, famously, to Cher, and literally spawned a generation of musicians all by himself -- sons Devon and Elijah both went into the family business, as did his estranged son Michael in Pasco County.



After years of squabbles, lineup changes and breaks from the road, the Allman Brothers Band reformed in 1989 and played consistently since, delivering their final shows at the Beacon Theatre in New York in 2014. Allman also continued to play solo as he had since the '70s, but his days as a long-touring headliner were numbered. He had been diagnosed with hepatitis C in 2007 and underwent a liver transplant in 2012.



Last fall, he was to headline the Clearwater Jazz Holiday, but had to cancel due to illness. In March, he announced he was canceling all of his gigs in 2017. In April, it was reported he'd entered hospice, though he assured fans he was resting at home in Savannah Ga., and that he was "looking fowrward to seeing everyone again."



How could he not be optimistic? Allman had come through so much turmoil and hardship and illness and impossible obstacles, time after time after time. He lived life hard. He pushed through it even harder. It always shone through in his music. His fans in Florida and beyond will never forget it.