Idlewild South
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Album Summary
Idlewild South — now there's a record that came out of the Georgia heat like a slow-burning fire that wouldn't quit. Released in September of 1970 on Capricorn Records, the label that visionary manager Phil Walden built from the ground up to give Southern music its own home, this was the Allman Brothers Band's second studio album and a giant leap forward from where they'd already started. At the boards was none other than Tom Dowd, the man whose ears had shaped some of the greatest soul and R&B recordings in the history of recorded music over at Atlantic Records. Dowd understood what this band was doing in a way that let them breathe, let them stretch out, and let that wild, untamed spirit of Macon, Georgia pour straight into the grooves. Recorded in 1970, Idlewild South captured a band that was finding its full voice — bluesy, spiritual, improvisational, and absolutely undeniable.
Reception
- The album reached number 77 on the Billboard 200 chart upon its initial release, a modest commercial entry that understated the groundswell of devotion the band was building across the American South.
- Critical response from music writers of the era recognized the band's remarkable instrumental virtuosity and the originality of their blended sound, even as mainstream radio kept its distance.
- As the Allman Brothers Band rose to superstardom in the early 1970s, Idlewild South earned deep retrospective appreciation, with its reputation growing steadily alongside the band's legendary status.
Significance
- Idlewild South cemented the blueprint for what Southern rock could be — a fearless marriage of blues grit, country soul, and rock power, held together by extended improvisational passages that treated every performance like a conversation between musical giants.
- The album put on full display the extraordinary dual lead guitar interplay between Duane Allman and Dickey Betts, a revolutionary approach to rock guitar that gave the band a sound unlike anything else walking the earth at that moment.
- At a time when Southern music was searching for its own identity on the national stage, Idlewild South stood as a proud and powerful declaration that something profound and lasting was rising up from below the Mason-Dixon line.
Tracklist
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A1 Revival —
4:04
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A2 Don't Keep Me Wonderin' —
3:40
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A3 Midnight Rider —
3:00
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A4 In Memory Of Elizabeth Reed —
6:54
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B1 Hoochie Coochie Man —
4:54
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B2 Please Call Home —
4:00
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B3 Leave My Blues At Home —
4:15
Artist Details
The Allman Brothers Band rose up out of Macon, Georgia in 1969 like a slow-burning fire that nobody could put out, built on the visionary genius of brothers Duane and Gregg Allman, who fused the raw soul of the blues with the free-spirited improvisation of jazz and rock to birth something the world would come to call Southern rock. Their landmark live album *At Fillmore East* from 1971 stands as one of the greatest recordings in all of American music, capturing that loose, sprawling, guitar-driven sound that could take a crowd on a twenty-minute journey and leave them breathless. Through tragedy, breakups, and rebirths, the Allman Brothers proved that their music was bigger than any single moment, leaving behind a legacy that cracked open the American South and showed the whole world the depth and beauty living inside it.
