Skydog: The Duane Allman Retrospective
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| Skydog: The Duane Allman Retrospective | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
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| Compilation album by | ||||
| Released | March 2013 | |||
| Recorded | 1965 – 1971 | |||
| Genre | Rock, blues, R&B, soul | |||
| Label | Rounder | |||
| Duane Allman chronology | ||||
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Skydog: The Duane Allman Retrospective is an album by guitarist Duane Allman. Comprising seven CDs and packaged as a box set, it is a compilation of songs by various artists recorded during Allman's brief but prolific career. It includes tracks recorded from 1965 to 1971 – with his early groups, as a session musician, and as a member of the Allman Brothers Band. It was released in 2013.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8]
The compilation was produced by Bill Levenson and Galadrielle Allman. Levenson won a Grammy Award for Best Historical Album in 1989 for producing the Eric Clapton box set Crossroads. Galadrielle Allman is the daughter of Duane Allman and author of the memoir Please Be with Me.[1][9]
Of the 129 tracks on the album, nine were previously unreleased.[2]
In 2016 the box set was released on vinyl, on 14 LPs, in a limited edition of 1,000 copies.[9]
On AllMusic, Stephen Thomas Erlewine said, "Much of the greatness in Skydog lies in its thoroughness, how it treats Allman's work outside of the Allman Brothers Band not as a digression but rather a focus.... This is an epic narrative illustrating how soul, blues, country, psychedelia, jazz, and garage rock melded into modern rock & roll and, in turn, this is a biography of a musician who was instrumental in that evolution, a guitarist whose name is well-known but whose work is still not thoroughly appreciated. Skydog rights that wrong in glorious fashion."[1]
In Blues Blast Magazine James Walker wrote, "Dying in a motorcycle accident at the age of 24, Duane had an effective studio career of 3 – 5 years. In that short time, he left a body of work with irreplaceable contributions to studio recordings by Eric Clapton, Wilson Pickett, Aretha Franklin, Boz Scaggs, Clarence Carter, King Curtis, Delaney & Bonnie, John Hammond Jr., and many more, including, of course, the Allman Brothers Band."[2]
In the Seattle Post-Intelligencer Glen Boyd said, "Today, Duane Allman is of course best remembered as [a member of] the Allman Brothers Band – the trailblazing, Georgia based blues-rock outfit who – with apologies to Lynyrd Skynyrd – more or less invented the Southern rock genre. But what is slightly less known about Duane Allman, is the mind-boggling number of great records he played on outside of his much better known band."[3]
In American Songwriter Hal Horowitz wrote, "[Skydog] meticulously and in chronological order follows the elder (by a year) Allman brother's musical path from his early psychedelic / Brit invasion roots in the mid-'60s through his stellar work at Muscle Shoals backing soul legends such as Wilson Pickett, Arthur Conley and Clarence Carter, his collaboration as Eric Clapton's sideman in Derek and the Dominos and of course his years leading the Allman Brothers Band. The book of copious historical liner notes, rare photos and detailed track notation reflects the deluxe nature of the project..."[4]
In All About Jazz C. Michael Bailey said, "Sprawling best describes the range of this retrospective, but it always comes back to the central issue, the paramount talent of a 24-year old guitarist who changed the way music was played in so many ways. Allman may be considered the pioneer of the electric slide guitar. What Son House, Robert Johnson and Elmore James began, Duane Allman perfected and Lowell George, Sonny Landreth and Derek Trucks expanded."[5]