For a band whose genius shone brightest on a concert stage, it makes sense that when Idlewild South was released, it only generated a so-so response. The explosive, rough magic that burned so feverishly in a live setting was almost impossible to capture as a still life. The Allman Brothers Band were their best as a willful, fluid, ever-changing beast that reinvented itself from show to show and song to song—capable of great flights of fury and fancy, as ornery acolytes of John Coltrane as they were when they stole the thunder and pain from blues masters like Muddy Waters and Willie Dixon. The idea of constraining those unruly Southerners in a studio seemed an anathema. So they avoided it as long as they could, remaining on the road for 300 days in 1970. It took a producing behemoth like Tom Dowd to turn that live mastery into something more contained and mannered, recording them in fits and starts over five months in three different studios, when they probably should have unleashed their formidable powers with a live album. As a result, Idlewild South is the album before the album that turned the Allman Brothers into supernovas (1971’s At Fillmore East). But it did show what they were capable of, from the sultry balladry of Gregg Allman’s “Please Call Home” to the gospel charge of “Revival,” to the stately lament of “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed.” But it was “Midnight Rider,” a number Gregg Allman penned with band roadie Kim Payne, that elevates this record—a song that spoke loudly to an outsider generation that survived the ‘60s as much as it does today. The album was remastered and re-released for the 45th anniversary purportedly in an expanded form—there were very few outtakes from the sessions, given that it was recorded on the fly, on brief breaks between tour stops. To make up for that, there are nine tracks included from the very excellent Live at Ludlow Garage album, recorded in 1970, which contain some candid stage-speak from Duane Allman, as well as a rare vocal from the elder Allman on “Dimples.”