Rounder

This long overdue, box-set bonanza focuses the spotlight on Duane Allman’s career, including session stints with the Escorts, the Allman Joys and Hour Glass, his seminal work with The Allman Brothers Band, and his most inspired one-off project of all, a collaboration with Eric Clapton on Derek & the Dominos’ only studio release, Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs. Almost every-thing on this celebratory seven-disc set is essential listening, but highlights include Aretha Franklin’s reading of “The Weight” – which captures Allman in fine slide session mode – and the soul burn of his work on Otis Rush’s “Me.” His solo piece, “Happily Married Man” – with its sly lyrical take on wedded bliss – offers a rush of blues energy, which would find its loftiest expression on ABB’s At Fillmore East tracks, including “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed.” On the latter song he performs in glorious tandem with Dickey Betts. Elsewhere, he displays the same sense of unique beauty on the gorgeous “Sing My Way Home” with Delaney & Bonnie and Friends, and the transcendent speed and depth and power of “Why Does Love Got to Be So Sad?” with Clapton, again, on the Layla project. These discs not only contain virtually all of Allman’s essential cuts, but also a brilliant overview of just how expressive he was as a groundbreaking artist. Allman has been given his due by this stellar retrospective, and one is left wondering how much more the musician could have created if not for that fateful 1971 motorcycle crash.