But this album is different. The two of them take a giant leap. This still isn't the Allman Brother Band with its impressive long soloing, but it's a really solid album for 1968.
Hour Glass basically was Duane and Gregg Allman, with some other musicians who have since faded into obscurity. The band put out two albums, "Hour Glass" in 1967 and "Power of Love" in early 1968. The first album was kind of a disaster, because the record company manipulated the band, trying to push them into a poppy Motown sound. All but one of the songs on that album were covers, and nearly all of them didn't suit them and were badly produced.
But "Power of Love" is a very different story. The band was given much more creative freedom. Most importantly, seven of the 12 songs on the album were written by Gregg Allman. I've included the best eight songs from the album here, plus one bonus track, and six of those nine songs are written by him. In my opinion, Gregg Allman was an excellent songwriter, but not very prolific. So this is a bounty of little-known original songs by him.
I think this Hour Glass album is often disregarded, because most of the people who would want to hear it are Allman Brothers Band fans, and this still isn't the full Allman Brothers Band sound yet. Even though it's getting closer, it's still made up of short, poppy songs, with little room for Duane Allman to show off his guitar skills.
That said, I think the album is greatly improved by removing the weaker songs and replacing them with some other Hour Glass tracks. Apparently, the band was very different in concert, sounding much more like what the Allman Brothers Band would become, with longer, bluesy performances. Unfortunately, I don't think any recordings of their concerts have survived. But these extra songs are more in that vein, especially a medley of B. B. King songs ("Sweet Little Angel - It's My Own Fault - How Blue Can You Get").
This isn't the end of what Gregg and Duane did before starting the Allman Brothers Band in mid-1969. It turns out there's another album worth of good music from them from later 1968 and early 1969. That'll be the subject of my next post from them.
By the way, another pillar of the Allman Brother Band sound was guitarist Dickey Betts. But unlike the Allmans, he has almost no recorded legacy from his time before he met the Allmans and joined their band. There's only one single, released in 1968. I don't think it's very good, since it consists of covers of songs by Cream and Jefferson Airplane that don't differ much from the originals. I've added them as bonus tracks in case you're curious, but they don't fit the rest of the album here. The Allmans and Betts wouldn't even meet for the first time until 1969.
Another by the way: as I got ready to post this album, I realized that I'd mistakenly put the song "Norwegian Wood" on the 1965 to 1967 collection. I thought that was on the 1967 Hour Glass album, but it's actually on the 1968 one. So I've removed that from the zip file for that other album, and put the song here instead. By the way, that's Duane playing the sitar all over that song.
One final note, which is an interesting trivia tidbit: the original brief liner notes to the "Power of Love" album were written by none other than Neil Young! Furthermore, the notes were "witnessed and approved" by Stephen Stills. Both Young and Stills were in Buffalo Springfield at the time, they shared some concert bills with Hour Glass, and were very impressed. Young even watched an Hour Glass recording session.
01 Power of Love (Hour Glass)
02 Changing of the Guard (Hour Glass)
03 To Things Before (Hour Glass)
04 I Can Stand Alone (Hour Glass)
05 Down in Texas (Hour Glass)
06 I Still Want Your Love (Hour Glass)
07 Going Nowhere (Hour Glass)
08 Norwegian Wood [This Bird Has Flown] [Instrumental] (Hour Glass)
09 Bad Dream (Hour Glass)
10 Sweet Little Angel - It's My Own Fault - How Blue Can You Get (Hour Glass)
11 Been Gone Too Long (Hour Glass)
12 Ain't No Good to Cry (Hour Glass)
She Has Funny Cars (Dickey Betts & the Second Coming)
https://www.upload.ee/files/15123633/TAllmanBB_1968_HrGlassPowrofLove_atse.zip.html
For the album cover, I just used the cover of the "Power of Love" without any changes.
I must have seen The Hourglass a dozen times in the time they spent in St Louis, Mo. They were an outstanding band, and Duane and Gregg were not the only members with major talent.
ReplyDelete(And the band WAS hot. Neither of the Hourglass albums did them justice.)
Johnny Sandlin went on to produce The Allman Brothers, Widespread Panic, Wet Willie, among others.
Pete Carr went on to be a well known session musician and guitarist with the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, as well as an engineer and producer.
Paul Hornsby produced Charlie Daniels and Wet Willie, among others, and played with Elvin Bishop.
Please make no mistake. The Hourglass was a solid, seasoned band with a terrific sound and the "other musicians who faded into obscurity" were integral members.
Wow, lucky you! What a shame that no live recordings of the band exist, apparently.
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