The only track on the album that looks back to the first album’s stone blues is the cover of the Willie Dixon/Muddy Waters Hoochie Coochie Man, though it’s Berry Oakley rather than Gregg who takes the vocal. Gregg, allegedly, doesn’t like to sing more than three in a row, and at this stage there weren’t too many Dickey Betts vocals, so it looks like Berry (or possibly Duane, who probably could but seems to have preferred not to) was about the only option. Despite any shortcomings in the vocal department (Berry’s handy enough but he ain’t Gregg) the thunderous churning bass riff that drives the track makes it, for mine, the album’s highlight. Red hot solos and stinging licks from Dickey, and then Duane take off from there in a setting where it probably doesn’t matter who takes the microphone, and one shouldn’t neglect the thunderous drumming from Jaimoe and Butch Trucks that propels everything forward and maintains the momentum.
After that battering, the polished but relatively low key Please Call Home , with its weary Gregg Allman vocal and Leave My Blues at Home, which is mostly groove without going overboard on substance (impressive solos, though) probably seem like a bit of a let down, but wind things up rather neatly and would both have been FM-friendly.
Or at least they would have been if Hughesy was doing the DJ bit...
At a touch over thirty minutes, Idlewild South might seem a bit on the skimpy side time-wise, which is, of course, why I’d point the potential listener towards the two for less than the price of one Beginnings (I paid $10.99 at iTunes) which has both of the band’s first two albums in their entirety. Really, at the price you can’t go wrong, though there are issues when you split the tracks into the individual albums (my iTunes has the two albums listed between The Rolling Stones’ Beggars Banquet and Teddy Thompson’s Bella).
The debut might have delivered a touch more power, but for production, songwriting and performance Idlewild South is definitely a superior package when you line it up beside The Allman Brothers Band, largely due to what Dickey Betts brings to the party as a second source of original material. As a result there’s a fair bit more sonic more variety, and while it mightn’t be 100% killer there’s a definite lack of filler.
The band were, at this point, still in the process of establishing themselves and exploring the possibilities, and the apex of their achievement is just around the corner with At Fillmore East.