It’s interesting, to me at least, that an album that has gone on to provide much of the core concert repertoire of a band still going strong forty-plus years later should have peaked at #188 on the Billboard charts first time around. It is, I think, another of those records that didn’t sell a lot, at first, but everyone who bought it either went on to do something or placed a big tick beside a name to watch out for.
Maybe not quite everyone, but Black Hearted Woman had wormed its way into the set list of a Cairns-based heavy rock quartet called Barabbas by December 1970, and I suspect there was a desire to emulate the Allmans’ sound that had the outfit looking for someone who could replicate Gregg Allman’s Hammond B-3 licks and add a bit of light and shade to a very classy guitar, bass and drums trio.
And, quite seriously, it’s hard not to be impressed with an album that may or may not be the best debut album ever delivered by an American blues band, but definitely laid the groundwork for a whole genre of powerful, hard-edged blues-based Southern rock. The Allmans went on, thanks largely to the band’s legendary live performances and the live At Fillmore East album, to become huge, but it was success based on a core repertoire and much of that core repertoire comes from right here.
Working the genre in a concert environment you could possibly find a better way to start (Statesboro Blues?) than the opening one-two punch of Don't Want You No More > It's Not My Cross to Bear but they’d be relatively few and rather far between. The loose jazzy instrumental they acquired from the Spencer Davis Group’s 1968 post-Stevie Winwood album With Their New Face On, just in case you’re interested) works pretty well as a snappy limbering up exercise with Duane Allman and Dickey Betts’ guitars and Gregg Allman's organ surge along over Berry Oakley's bass and the drums duo of Butch Trucks and Jaimoe propel things into a shuddering climax and Duane and Dickey play the harmonised guitar line that runs down into It's Not My Cross to Bear.
That instrumental intro hints that, hey, we’re not looking at a straight blues band here, but Not My Cross points out rather succinctly that here’s an outfit that can damn well play the blues straight if straight is what you’re looking for with clear, ringing guitar licks, a mighty fine vocal and a wrenching Duane Allman solo.