At Fillmore East - History

History

Recorded at the Fillmore East concert hall, the storied rock venue in New York City, on Friday and Saturday March 12, 1971–March 13, 1971, the album showcased the band's mixture of blues, southern rock, and jazz. The cover of Blind Willie McTell's "Statesboro Blues" which opens the set showcases Duane Allman's slide guitar work in open E Tuning. "Whipping Post" became the standard for a long, epic jam that never lost interest (opening in 11/4 time, unusual territory for a rock band), while the ethereal-to-furious "In Memory of Elizabeth Reed", with its harmonized melody, Latin feel, and burning drive invited comparisons with John Coltrane (especially Duane's solo-ending pull-offs, a direct nod to the jazz saxophonist).

The album was produced by Tom Dowd, who condensed the running time of various songs, occasionally even merging two performances into one track. For example, the first seven minutes of "You Don't Love Me" is from the first show on March 12 and the rest (starting at Duane's solo without the band) is from the second show on March 13. At Fillmore East peaked at No. 13 on Billboard's Pop Albums chart.

The album was also specially remixed for four-channel quadraphonic sound. In the four-channel mix Duane Allman is heard in the left rear channel, Dickey Betts in the right rear channel, Jai Johanny Johanson in the front left channel, Butch Trucks in the right front channel, and Gregg Allman and Berry Oakley both centered in the front channels. The four-channel version uses some different edits and performances of the songs taken from the same concerts. Some of these alternate versions appeared in the 1989 compilation Dreams, although in that release the four-channel recordings have been reduced to two-channels. In 1998 the entire four-channel edition was reissued on CD as a 4.0 (not 5.1) surround sound DTS disc.

Two other songs recorded during the same set of shows, "Trouble No More" and the memorable "Mountain Jam", were later released on Eat a Peach, the latter spanning two sides of the double album, together with a cover of the Elmore James boogie classic "One Way Out" from a different performance at the same venue, on June 27, 1971. The deluxe edition of Eat a Peach includes this performance in its entirety on the second disc.

Those songs were later included in their entirety, along with uncut versions of some, re-edited versions of others, and some previously omitted tracks, on a new release of the Fillmore material entitled The Fillmore Concerts (1992). "Stormy Monday" gained back a harmonica solo; "Don't Keep Me Wonderin'" and "Drunken Hearted Boy" were included as well.

The year 2003 saw the release of a two-disc edition entitled At Fillmore East Deluxe Edition. It compiled all the released versions of the Fillmore material, some material from the collection Duane Allman: An Anthology and the Dreams box set, and remixed the material with a better "soundstage" than the 1992 release.

In 2003 the TV network VH1 named At Fillmore East the 59th greatest album of all time. That same year, it was also ranked No. 49 by Rolling Stone on their list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. It was one of 50 recordings chosen in 2004 by the Library of Congress to be added to the National Recording Registry. The song "Whipping Post" is part of the The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll list.