January 26, 2026 • 25 mins
Some stories end with applause.
This one ends with silence.
The Last Ride on Hillcrest Avenue is a cinematic Dead Air episode about freedom, restlessness, and the thin line between motion and loss. It begins in a small Southern town, where music drifts through open windows late at night and the road offers escape when stillness feels unbearable.
At its center is a sound that changed everything — not through volume or speed, but through restraint, patience, and feeling. A sound born from family loss, brotherhood, and a relentless need to keep moving.
This is not a story about fame.
It’s a story about what happens when music and motion collide…and how a single afternoon can leave an absence that echoes for decades.
Listen closely.
Some notes don’t resolve. They just disappear.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Written by Jonny Hartwell
Voiced by Jonny Hartwell
Music Credit: Reel World Audio.
A iHeart Radio Production
DISCLAIMER: This podcast contains discussions of sensitive topics...Listener discretion is strongly advised. While the stories you’ll hear are rooted in real events, not every detail is strictly historical—some moments are dramatized with creative license to bring the narrative to life. Please keep this in mind as you listen.
Jonny’s Dead Air Podcast
Written, hosted, and produced by Jonny Hartwell.
A production of iHeartRadio Pittsburgh.
Thanks for listening—and for keeping the light on.
This one ends with silence.
The Last Ride on Hillcrest Avenue is a cinematic Dead Air episode about freedom, restlessness, and the thin line between motion and loss. It begins in a small Southern town, where music drifts through open windows late at night and the road offers escape when stillness feels unbearable.
At its center is a sound that changed everything — not through volume or speed, but through restraint, patience, and feeling. A sound born from family loss, brotherhood, and a relentless need to keep moving.
This is not a story about fame.
It’s a story about what happens when music and motion collide…and how a single afternoon can leave an absence that echoes for decades.
Listen closely.
Some notes don’t resolve. They just disappear.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Written by Jonny Hartwell
Voiced by Jonny Hartwell
Music Credit: Reel World Audio.
A iHeart Radio Production
DISCLAIMER: This podcast contains discussions of sensitive topics...Listener discretion is strongly advised. While the stories you’ll hear are rooted in real events, not every detail is strictly historical—some moments are dramatized with creative license to bring the narrative to life. Please keep this in mind as you listen.
Jonny’s Dead Air Podcast
Written, hosted, and produced by Jonny Hartwell.
A production of iHeartRadio Pittsburgh.
Thanks for listening—and for keeping the light on.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
And welcome in. I'm Johnny Hartwell and this is Johnny's
Dead Air Podcast, a production of iHeartRadio. Time for another
story from music's dark side. There are some deaths that
feel sudden, a phone call, a headline, a sharp intake
of breath. Then there are deaths that feel unfinished, the
(00:23):
kind that don't arrive all at once. They linger, and
they leave something open that never really closes ever. Again,
this is not a story about fame. It's not a
story about success, and it's definitely not a story about
how someone should be remembered. This is a story about
a sound that appeared out of nowhere, changed everything, and
disappeared before the world fully understood what it was hearing.
(00:46):
You don't start this story in a stadium. You don't
start it under lights. You don't start it with applause
or screaming crowds. It starts in a small southern town
where the air never fully cools down, where windows stay
cracked open for comfort, but because stillness feels unbearable. Freedom
has different shapes. Sometimes it's six strings and a calloused hand.
(01:08):
Sometimes it's two wheels and an open road. Sometimes freedom
sounds more like a note held just long enough to
break your heart. Sometimes it feels like motion forward, fast, unstoppable,
the world narrowing to wind, pavement and instinct. The guitar
offers release, the road offers escape. He understands both, but
(01:29):
it's hard to understand when they both end at the
same time on a forgotten road in a small town
in Georgia. This is script number twenty five, The last
Ride on Hillcrest Avenue. Act one dreams before the road,
before the sound, before the speed, there was a house
(01:49):
that never quite settled. He was born somewhere else, but
he was raised here in central Georgia, where the ground
is red and unforgiving, and the summers don't care how
old you are. Macon wasn't glamorous. It didn't promise anything.
It tested you. His father was gone early, a US
Army serviceman stationed stateside after World War Two, and by
(02:11):
all accounts, a steady, responsible presence in the family, but
was shot and killed during a personal dispute with an acquaintance.
This was not an accident, It was not illness, and
it wasn't war. It was sudden, violent and final. What
remained was a mother doing everything she could to keep
the family upright. Suddenly, a widow with two small boys,
(02:33):
forced into survival mode. They moved. They moved a lot,
new addresses, new schools, new rooms that never felt like home.
Long enough to relax, instability became normal. Silence filled the gaps,
and in that silence, something else began to grow. Brotherhood.
The brothers were close, not in the sentimental way people
(02:55):
liked to imagine, but in the way shared uncertainty alliances.
One was louder, curious, always reaching outward. The other listened, watched, absorbed. Oh,
they argued, they laughed, they fought like brothers do. But
there was always an understanding underneath it all. Whatever happened
out there, they were in this together. Music entered their lives,
(03:19):
not as a dream, but as a lifeline. A radio,
a record player, voices pouring out of a small speaker
late at night, blues and gospel and soul, sounds heavy
with feelings, sounds that didn't pretend everything was fine. Those
voices felt honest. The first spark the guitar didn't arrive
as a grand moment, no ceremony, no to lightning bolt.
(03:40):
It showed up the way most important things do, quietly,
almost accidentally. He was drawn to it immediately, not because
it looked cool, not because it promised attention, but because
it answered something. He didn't want to play fast. He
didn't want to impress anyone. He just wanted it to speak.
He practiced obsessively, not for hours, for days, repeating the
(04:06):
same phrases until his fingers ached and his mother begged, please,
please stop. He didn't. He learned where pressure mattered, where
restraint mattered, where silence mattered. He learned that sometimes the
most powerful thing you can do is wait. By his teens,
it's clear that this isn't a phase. Music isn't a hobby.
(04:29):
It's how he makes sense of the world. While other
kids talk about leaving town, he listens harder, learns deeper.
He studies the blues, not just how it sounds, but
what it means, the weight behind it, the patience inside it.
He learns that pain doesn't need to shout to be heard,
and without knowing it yet, he begins to shape a
(04:50):
voice that will one day change how people listen, not
just to guitars, but to each other. Nothing about his
childhood promises what comes next, No guarantees, no prophecy, no
destiny carved in stone, just a boy, a brother, a guitar,
and a feeling growing stronger every day that staying still
(05:11):
is not an option, That movement is coming, and that
road is awaiting act too. Ain't wasting time no more.
He doesn't leave makeing chasing stardom. He leaves because the
town has taught him everything it can. There's a restlessness
in him now, not reckless, not loud, just persistent, a
(05:32):
sense that the sound he's chasing won't survive if it
stays in one place too long. The road carries him West, Alabama,
Muscle Shoals. The building doesn't look important, low and plain,
almost forgettable, but inside the air is thick with something electric,
not volume, not ego, but possibility. The place Muscle Shoals
(05:54):
sound studio. Songs are built here, like houses, brick by brick,
take by take, no shor cuts, no pretending. When he
walks in, he isn't introduced as anything special. He doesn't
need to be. He plugs in the first take, He
listens first. Always, he doesn't watch the producer, doesn't watch
the clock. He watches the singer breathe. Then gently he answers,
(06:20):
not with speed, not with flash, with space, His guitar
doesn't compete with the vocal. It walks beside it. The
calls start coming fast, not because he's famous, but because
songs leave the studio better when he's there. He plays
on Wilson Pickett's version of Hey Jude, That opening guitar
line sharp and aching, slicing straight through the track. Oh
(06:43):
that's him. He plays with Aretha Franklin, with Percy Sledge
and King Curtis and Boss Gags. Different voices, different stories,
same result, but something isn't sitting right. Sessions are safe, controlled, predictable,
and he's never been comfortable with predictable. He wants risk.
He wants music that can fall apart if he don't
(07:05):
respect it, Songs that stretch until they either collapse or
turn into something new. He wants musicians who listen as
hard as they play. The road bends back towards Georgia,
towards Make and towards his brother, towards something unfinished. He
doesn't know what it's called yet, He just knows, and
(07:25):
he knows with a certainty that surprises him that the
next sound he makes won't belong to anyone else. That
sounds and his name With Act three, tied to the
whipping post. Next act three, tied to the whipping post.
(07:48):
It's time to name names. Duyne Allman at the end
of nineteen seventy he comes back to making changed, not louder,
not more confident, clearer. He knows what he doesn't want
now three minute songs, tidy endings, music that behaves. What
he wants is a band that listens harder than it plays,
(08:10):
and the first call he makes is an easy one.
His brother Greg Greg Allman has been fighting his own battles, grief, addiction,
the weight of expectation, but when the idea is laid out,
it lands immediately. This isn't about chasing charts. It's about
building something honest enough to survive improvisation. The players the
(08:31):
rest of the band assembles the way the best ones
always do, not through auditions, but through recognition. Dicky Betts
springs melody, bright lyrical, searching the perfect counorway to Duwayne's
depth and restraint. Mary Oakley plays bass like it's a
second League guitar, roaming fearless and melodic, and then comes
(08:53):
the decision that makes everyone pause. Two drummers, Butch Trucks
and Jamo redundancy, a conversation, one anchors, one dances together.
They create a pulse like no other. This isn't a
band trying to be louder. The band is trying to
be wider. The name. They need a name, nothing clever,
(09:16):
nothing ironic, something that acknowledges blood and commitment. The Allman
Brothers band. It isn't flashy, but it's true. Early nights.
They rehearse constantly, long nights, cheap rooms and no set lists.
Songs stretch past their original shapes, whipping posts, dreams in
memory of Elizabeth Read They argue, they reset, They chase
(09:40):
moments instead of perfection. Sometimes it falls apart, sometimes rarely
it opens. When it does, no one speaks afterward. They
don't want to disturb it. The road learns their name.
Word spreads fast, not through radio, through mouths. If you
see them live, oh you won't believe what happens. They
(10:02):
don't play a song the same way. Twice. They sign
a deal. They record the first album's hint at the Truth,
but they don't capture it. That's fine. They're not chasing permanence.
They're chasing now. The night everything changes. March nineteen seventy
one New York City, the Fillmore East. The room is
(10:25):
legendary and about to become immortal. They play like they
don't know they're being documented. No edits no safety net,
just risk. When it's over, no one rushes the stage.
People stand still, stunned. What's captured on tape becomes at
Fillmore East. It isn't a live album. It's a threshold.
(10:46):
Before this and after, Suddenly the band is everywhere. Tours
stack off, expectations climb, and the man at the center
of the sound, the one who never wanted the spotlight,
feels the weight of it pressing down. He still needs motion,
still needs air, still needs the road. Because when the
music stops, the restlessness doesn't act for the Midnight Rider
(11:15):
next act. For the Midnight Rider, success doesn't arrive gently.
It comes fast, loud, unrelenting. After at Fillmore East, everything accelerates.
The band is suddenly everywhere, interviews, radio long drives between
(11:35):
cities that blur together. Hotel rooms start to feel interchangeable,
stages feel familiar too quickly. Applause becomes expected, and expectation
is heavy. For Duane Allmond's stillness is the hardest part.
When the show ends and the noise drops away, something
restless takes its place, a low hum, a pressure behind
(11:57):
the ribs. Music gives him freedom, but only while it's happening.
When the last note fades, he needs another way to move.
Motorcycles become more than transportation. Their control, throttle balance, immediate consequence,
no negotiation, no committee. The road answers honestly. He rides
(12:18):
when he can, between rehearsals, between sessions, between obligations that
stack faster than they resolve. Friends notice, bandmates, joke about
it until it stops feeling like a joke. Someone says
he rides too fast. Someone else says he should slow down.
He smiles and shrugs. Speed doesn't feel dangerous to him.
(12:38):
It feels quiet. The band is tight, but tired. Six personalities,
six different directions. They argue about tempos, about arrangements, and
how long a song should stretch before it becomes indulgent.
He doesn't argue much. He listens, but listening doesn't mean
absorbing without cost. If there's an impatience in him now
(13:02):
subtle but growing, not with the music, with everything else, schedules, expectations, waiting.
Motorcycles give the illusion of mastery. Lean correctly the curve opens.
Trust the machine and it responds. For someone who learned
early that life can remove people without warning. Control matters
(13:25):
out on the road. Nothing is abstract. Every decision is immediate,
Every mistake has weight. That clarity feels honest, it feels earned.
He rides through making the way locals do, familiar streets,
relaxed posture, memory, guiding motion. The road feels forgiving. They
(13:45):
always do right before they don't. Fame keeps coming, the
music keeps growing, The need to move to outrun stillness
grows with it. The road doesn't know his name. It
doesn't care about albums or applause. It only knows speed
and timing. And timing is about to matter more than
(14:08):
anyone realizes. At five, the last ride on Hillcrest Avenue.
Next at five, the last ride on Hillcrest Avenue. Late
afternoon settles over, making Georgia the way it always does, quietly,
(14:31):
without ceremony. The sun is low but stubborn, washing the
town in tired gold. Not beautiful, not ugly, just honest.
The brick buildings downtown hold the day's heat in those bones.
Storefront windows reflect traffic passing by Chevrolets and Fords. And
long hoods, long chrome, smiles, all moving at the speed
(14:53):
of habit. Nothing feels historic. That's how it always happens.
He leaves from dotown, make and after handling band business.
Nothing dramatic, a conversation, a handshake, plans made in the
casual language of later. He doesn't tell anyone where he's going.
He doesn't have to. This is home. The motorcycle waits
(15:16):
at the curb, a Harley Davison Sportster, dark pained, dulled
by miles chrome, catching the light in quick, nervous flashes.
He wears jeans, boots, scuffed and soft with age, a
long sleeved shirt darkened at the collar by sweat. No helmet.
He never liked how it felt. He swings his leg
(15:36):
over the bike with the same ease. He lifts a
guitar strap over his shoulder, practiced unconscious. The engine turns
over a low, throaty sound, alive. Four fifty two pm.
He pulls away from the curb. A pale blue Oldsmobile
rolls pass. In the opposite lane, a tan Chevrolet Impalla
(15:59):
idols at all light, driver's arm hanging out of the window,
radio murmuring something forgettable. Oak and pecan trees line the
street that leaves, just beginning to dull at the edges.
Spanish moss hangs limp unmoving like it's listening. The bike
settles into a rhythm. He exhales, he isn't thinking about death.
(16:25):
He's thinking about music, Perhaps about how some nights the
band locks in so tightly it feels like one mind
speaking through six bodies, About how other nights it slips
just enough to remind you nothing is guaranteed. He hums
something underneath his breath, not a melody, a shape. Four
(16:47):
fifty five pm. He turns onto Hillcrest Avenue, a long,
gentle slope, residential familiar, single story houses sit back from
the road, chain link fences, empty porches. Someone is watering along.
A child's bicycle lies on its side in a driveway.
Ordinary life continues ahead. A flatbed truck moves slower than
(17:11):
the traffic should, fainted red paint, rust creeping along the seams,
equipment strapped to its back, heavier than it looks. He
closes the distance, not aggressively, comfortably four fifty six pm.
Witnesses will say later that he didn't look reckless. They
say he looked relax the bike holds steady beneath him.
(17:33):
The road feels forgiving. The truck slows more than expected.
There's a moment here, not panic, not fear, just instinct,
that quick human calculation we make a thousand times a
day without consequence. He leans left four fifty seven PM.
The front wheel clips the crane arm mounted on the
back of the truck, a metal extension that juts further
than the eye expects. The sound is sharp, final, metal,
(17:56):
biting metal. The bike snaps sideways. He is thrown forward,
not heroically, not cleanly. Physics don't care who you are.
His chest hits the pavement first, then his head. The
sound is not loud. It's dull, wet, and human. The
motorcycle keeps going without him, sparks, screaming against the asphalt,
a machine suddenly unburdened by its purpose. His body skids,
(18:19):
then stops wrong still. After a blue oldsmobile breaks hard
tires shriek, someone screams, the kind of sound that escapes
before thought can stop it. Blood spreads beneath his head,
dark against the gray road, slow and patient. His eyes
are open, but they don't see. His breathing is shallow, irregular,
(18:44):
A terrible imitation of life. Someone kneels, someone says his name,
It doesn't matter. The ambulance arrives fast, sirens tearing through
the neighborhood like an apology that comes too late. Paramedics
work quickly, urgently, carefully, too carefully. They lift him. His
body does not help them. At the hospital, fluorescent lights bleeds.
(19:06):
The room of all personality machines hum indifferently. Doctors fight
because that's what doctors do. But some injuries don't negotiate.
Massive internal trauma, severe brain injury. The body has already decided.
At seven twenty pm, the room goes quiet. Dwayne Ullman
(19:30):
is pronounced dead. He's only twenty four years old, the
part that hurts the most. Outside Macon doesn't react. Cars
keep moving, dogs bark, dinners get cooked. Hillcrest Avenue looks
exactly the way it did an hour earlier. That's the cruelty.
(19:52):
The world doesn't pause for brilliance. It doesn't slow down
for unfinished sentences. Somewhere a guitar sits untouched, strings cooling,
waiting for hands that will never come back for them.
Somewhere a road holds the memory of a single moment.
It can never give back, and nothing, not the music,
(20:12):
not the love, not the legend, can rewind those final seconds.
Act six in Memory of Elizabeth. Read next Act six
in Memory of Elizabeth Read the epilogue of Duayne Allman.
(20:36):
The shock wears off before the pain does. That's the
cruelest part. The phone calls slow, the crowds thin, the
noise fades. What's left is the quiet, the kind that
settles into rooms and refuses to leave Macon after Macon
doesn't know what to do with the loss. The town
(20:56):
carries on because that's what towns do. But something in
the air feels thinner now, like a note that never
quite resolves. Hillcrest Avenue looks ordinary again. That's unsettling. Cars
pass over the same stretch of road, children ride bikes
past it. Live steps carefully around the place where it happened,
(21:16):
pretending not to stare, but everyone knows. They gather at
Rose Hill Cemetery, where the ground rolls gently, as if
even the land is trying to soften the blow. The
casket is closed. It has to be. Musicians stand shoulders
shoulder with people who never owned a record but felt
(21:37):
the music anyway. Leather jackets and black dresses and red eyes.
Someone grips a guitar case so tightly their knuckles turn white.
When the casket is lowered, the sound of dirt hitting
wood lands heavier than any applause ever did. His mother
folds inward. His brother doesn't speak, and no one expects
(21:59):
him to. This is a band without the center. Rehearsal
rooms feel haunted. Amplifiers hum even when they're off. Someone
instinctively waits for a cue that never comes. The Almond
Brothers band almost stops. They consider it because how do
you continue when the sound you are built around is gone?
(22:22):
They sit in silence, passing cigarettes. They forget to smoke,
staring at instruments that suddenly feel heavier. Every song sounds unfinished,
Every ending feels wrong. Then there's a second blow. A
year later, the wound is reopened. Another motorcycle, another road,
(22:42):
and another body. Barry Oakley is gone, same town, same
cruel geometry. Now it feels biblical. People stop calling it
bad luck, and they're calling it fate. But the music
refuse is to die. And yet against all logic, the
(23:03):
music survives. It doesn't harden into nostalgia, it doesn't freeze
in time. It breathes at fillmore. East grows in stature,
not because it's perfect, but because it's alive and loose
and dangerous and listening. Every sly guitar that cries instead
of shouts carries his fingerprint. Every solo that pauses instead
(23:27):
of racing borrows his restraint. It becomes a measure, not
a ghost, a standard, and a question that never leaves.
History always asks the wrong question, not how did he die?
We know that the real question, the one that keeps
people awake, is quieter. What did we lose that never
(23:49):
had a chance to exist? What song stayed trapped in
those hands? What wisdom only comes with age, never had
a time to arrive. He wasn't finished. That's the wound.
Some artists leave catalogs. Others leave absence, a shape so
(24:11):
large you keep noticing it decades later. He didn't burn out,
he didn't fade away. He vanished mid sentence. And every
time you hear a long note hang in the air,
refusing to rush, refusing to resolve, you're hearing the echo
of a life that moved too fast for the world
to keep. Hill Crest Avenue still slopes gently downhill, The
(24:37):
trees still cast their shadows, but something essential left that
road in nineteen seventy one and it never came back.
Thank you so much for listening to script number twenty five,
The Last Ride on Hillcrest Avenue. This has been Johnny's
(24:57):
Dead Air podcast. I'm Johnny Hartwell, thank you so much
for listening.
And welcome in. I'm Johnny Hartwell and this is Johnny's
Dead Air Podcast, a production of iHeartRadio. Time for another
story from music's dark side. There are some deaths that
feel sudden, a phone call, a headline, a sharp intake
of breath. Then there are deaths that feel unfinished, the
(00:23):
kind that don't arrive all at once. They linger, and
they leave something open that never really closes ever. Again,
this is not a story about fame. It's not a
story about success, and it's definitely not a story about
how someone should be remembered. This is a story about
a sound that appeared out of nowhere, changed everything, and
disappeared before the world fully understood what it was hearing.
(00:46):
You don't start this story in a stadium. You don't
start it under lights. You don't start it with applause
or screaming crowds. It starts in a small southern town
where the air never fully cools down, where windows stay
cracked open for comfort, but because stillness feels unbearable. Freedom
has different shapes. Sometimes it's six strings and a calloused hand.
(01:08):
Sometimes it's two wheels and an open road. Sometimes freedom
sounds more like a note held just long enough to
break your heart. Sometimes it feels like motion forward, fast, unstoppable,
the world narrowing to wind, pavement and instinct. The guitar
offers release, the road offers escape. He understands both, but
(01:29):
it's hard to understand when they both end at the
same time on a forgotten road in a small town
in Georgia. This is script number twenty five, The last
Ride on Hillcrest Avenue. Act one dreams before the road,
before the sound, before the speed, there was a house
(01:49):
that never quite settled. He was born somewhere else, but
he was raised here in central Georgia, where the ground
is red and unforgiving, and the summers don't care how
old you are. Macon wasn't glamorous. It didn't promise anything.
It tested you. His father was gone early, a US
Army serviceman stationed stateside after World War Two, and by
(02:11):
all accounts, a steady, responsible presence in the family, but
was shot and killed during a personal dispute with an acquaintance.
This was not an accident, It was not illness, and
it wasn't war. It was sudden, violent and final. What
remained was a mother doing everything she could to keep
the family upright. Suddenly, a widow with two small boys,
(02:33):
forced into survival mode. They moved. They moved a lot,
new addresses, new schools, new rooms that never felt like home.
Long enough to relax, instability became normal. Silence filled the gaps,
and in that silence, something else began to grow. Brotherhood.
The brothers were close, not in the sentimental way people
(02:55):
liked to imagine, but in the way shared uncertainty alliances.
One was louder, curious, always reaching outward. The other listened, watched, absorbed. Oh,
they argued, they laughed, they fought like brothers do. But
there was always an understanding underneath it all. Whatever happened
out there, they were in this together. Music entered their lives,
(03:19):
not as a dream, but as a lifeline. A radio,
a record player, voices pouring out of a small speaker
late at night, blues and gospel and soul, sounds heavy
with feelings, sounds that didn't pretend everything was fine. Those
voices felt honest. The first spark the guitar didn't arrive
as a grand moment, no ceremony, no to lightning bolt.
(03:40):
It showed up the way most important things do, quietly,
almost accidentally. He was drawn to it immediately, not because
it looked cool, not because it promised attention, but because
it answered something. He didn't want to play fast. He
didn't want to impress anyone. He just wanted it to speak.
He practiced obsessively, not for hours, for days, repeating the
(04:06):
same phrases until his fingers ached and his mother begged, please,
please stop. He didn't. He learned where pressure mattered, where
restraint mattered, where silence mattered. He learned that sometimes the
most powerful thing you can do is wait. By his teens,
it's clear that this isn't a phase. Music isn't a hobby.
(04:29):
It's how he makes sense of the world. While other
kids talk about leaving town, he listens harder, learns deeper.
He studies the blues, not just how it sounds, but
what it means, the weight behind it, the patience inside it.
He learns that pain doesn't need to shout to be heard,
and without knowing it yet, he begins to shape a
(04:50):
voice that will one day change how people listen, not
just to guitars, but to each other. Nothing about his
childhood promises what comes next, No guarantees, no prophecy, no
destiny carved in stone, just a boy, a brother, a guitar,
and a feeling growing stronger every day that staying still
(05:11):
is not an option, That movement is coming, and that
road is awaiting act too. Ain't wasting time no more.
He doesn't leave makeing chasing stardom. He leaves because the
town has taught him everything it can. There's a restlessness
in him now, not reckless, not loud, just persistent, a
(05:32):
sense that the sound he's chasing won't survive if it
stays in one place too long. The road carries him West, Alabama,
Muscle Shoals. The building doesn't look important, low and plain,
almost forgettable, but inside the air is thick with something electric,
not volume, not ego, but possibility. The place Muscle Shoals
(05:54):
sound studio. Songs are built here, like houses, brick by brick,
take by take, no shor cuts, no pretending. When he
walks in, he isn't introduced as anything special. He doesn't
need to be. He plugs in the first take, He
listens first. Always, he doesn't watch the producer, doesn't watch
the clock. He watches the singer breathe. Then gently he answers,
(06:20):
not with speed, not with flash, with space, His guitar
doesn't compete with the vocal. It walks beside it. The
calls start coming fast, not because he's famous, but because
songs leave the studio better when he's there. He plays
on Wilson Pickett's version of Hey Jude, That opening guitar
line sharp and aching, slicing straight through the track. Oh
(06:43):
that's him. He plays with Aretha Franklin, with Percy Sledge
and King Curtis and Boss Gags. Different voices, different stories,
same result, but something isn't sitting right. Sessions are safe, controlled, predictable,
and he's never been comfortable with predictable. He wants risk.
He wants music that can fall apart if he don't
(07:05):
respect it, Songs that stretch until they either collapse or
turn into something new. He wants musicians who listen as
hard as they play. The road bends back towards Georgia,
towards Make and towards his brother, towards something unfinished. He
doesn't know what it's called yet, He just knows, and
(07:25):
he knows with a certainty that surprises him that the
next sound he makes won't belong to anyone else. That
sounds and his name With Act three, tied to the
whipping post. Next act three, tied to the whipping post.
(07:48):
It's time to name names. Duyne Allman at the end
of nineteen seventy he comes back to making changed, not louder,
not more confident, clearer. He knows what he doesn't want
now three minute songs, tidy endings, music that behaves. What
he wants is a band that listens harder than it plays,
(08:10):
and the first call he makes is an easy one.
His brother Greg Greg Allman has been fighting his own battles, grief, addiction,
the weight of expectation, but when the idea is laid out,
it lands immediately. This isn't about chasing charts. It's about
building something honest enough to survive improvisation. The players the
(08:31):
rest of the band assembles the way the best ones
always do, not through auditions, but through recognition. Dicky Betts
springs melody, bright lyrical, searching the perfect counorway to Duwayne's
depth and restraint. Mary Oakley plays bass like it's a
second League guitar, roaming fearless and melodic, and then comes
(08:53):
the decision that makes everyone pause. Two drummers, Butch Trucks
and Jamo redundancy, a conversation, one anchors, one dances together.
They create a pulse like no other. This isn't a
band trying to be louder. The band is trying to
be wider. The name. They need a name, nothing clever,
(09:16):
nothing ironic, something that acknowledges blood and commitment. The Allman
Brothers band. It isn't flashy, but it's true. Early nights.
They rehearse constantly, long nights, cheap rooms and no set lists.
Songs stretch past their original shapes, whipping posts, dreams in
memory of Elizabeth Read They argue, they reset, They chase
(09:40):
moments instead of perfection. Sometimes it falls apart, sometimes rarely
it opens. When it does, no one speaks afterward. They
don't want to disturb it. The road learns their name.
Word spreads fast, not through radio, through mouths. If you
see them live, oh you won't believe what happens. They
(10:02):
don't play a song the same way. Twice. They sign
a deal. They record the first album's hint at the Truth,
but they don't capture it. That's fine. They're not chasing permanence.
They're chasing now. The night everything changes. March nineteen seventy
one New York City, the Fillmore East. The room is
(10:25):
legendary and about to become immortal. They play like they
don't know they're being documented. No edits no safety net,
just risk. When it's over, no one rushes the stage.
People stand still, stunned. What's captured on tape becomes at
Fillmore East. It isn't a live album. It's a threshold.
(10:46):
Before this and after, Suddenly the band is everywhere. Tours
stack off, expectations climb, and the man at the center
of the sound, the one who never wanted the spotlight,
feels the weight of it pressing down. He still needs motion,
still needs air, still needs the road. Because when the
music stops, the restlessness doesn't act for the Midnight Rider
(11:15):
next act. For the Midnight Rider, success doesn't arrive gently.
It comes fast, loud, unrelenting. After at Fillmore East, everything accelerates.
The band is suddenly everywhere, interviews, radio long drives between
(11:35):
cities that blur together. Hotel rooms start to feel interchangeable,
stages feel familiar too quickly. Applause becomes expected, and expectation
is heavy. For Duane Allmond's stillness is the hardest part.
When the show ends and the noise drops away, something
restless takes its place, a low hum, a pressure behind
(11:57):
the ribs. Music gives him freedom, but only while it's happening.
When the last note fades, he needs another way to move.
Motorcycles become more than transportation. Their control, throttle balance, immediate consequence,
no negotiation, no committee. The road answers honestly. He rides
(12:18):
when he can, between rehearsals, between sessions, between obligations that
stack faster than they resolve. Friends notice, bandmates, joke about
it until it stops feeling like a joke. Someone says
he rides too fast. Someone else says he should slow down.
He smiles and shrugs. Speed doesn't feel dangerous to him.
(12:38):
It feels quiet. The band is tight, but tired. Six personalities,
six different directions. They argue about tempos, about arrangements, and
how long a song should stretch before it becomes indulgent.
He doesn't argue much. He listens, but listening doesn't mean
absorbing without cost. If there's an impatience in him now
(13:02):
subtle but growing, not with the music, with everything else, schedules, expectations, waiting.
Motorcycles give the illusion of mastery. Lean correctly the curve opens.
Trust the machine and it responds. For someone who learned
early that life can remove people without warning. Control matters
(13:25):
out on the road. Nothing is abstract. Every decision is immediate,
Every mistake has weight. That clarity feels honest, it feels earned.
He rides through making the way locals do, familiar streets,
relaxed posture, memory, guiding motion. The road feels forgiving. They
(13:45):
always do right before they don't. Fame keeps coming, the
music keeps growing, The need to move to outrun stillness
grows with it. The road doesn't know his name. It
doesn't care about albums or applause. It only knows speed
and timing. And timing is about to matter more than
(14:08):
anyone realizes. At five, the last ride on Hillcrest Avenue.
Next at five, the last ride on Hillcrest Avenue. Late
afternoon settles over, making Georgia the way it always does, quietly,
(14:31):
without ceremony. The sun is low but stubborn, washing the
town in tired gold. Not beautiful, not ugly, just honest.
The brick buildings downtown hold the day's heat in those bones.
Storefront windows reflect traffic passing by Chevrolets and Fords. And
long hoods, long chrome, smiles, all moving at the speed
(14:53):
of habit. Nothing feels historic. That's how it always happens.
He leaves from dotown, make and after handling band business.
Nothing dramatic, a conversation, a handshake, plans made in the
casual language of later. He doesn't tell anyone where he's going.
He doesn't have to. This is home. The motorcycle waits
(15:16):
at the curb, a Harley Davison Sportster, dark pained, dulled
by miles chrome, catching the light in quick, nervous flashes.
He wears jeans, boots, scuffed and soft with age, a
long sleeved shirt darkened at the collar by sweat. No helmet.
He never liked how it felt. He swings his leg
(15:36):
over the bike with the same ease. He lifts a
guitar strap over his shoulder, practiced unconscious. The engine turns
over a low, throaty sound, alive. Four fifty two pm.
He pulls away from the curb. A pale blue Oldsmobile
rolls pass. In the opposite lane, a tan Chevrolet Impalla
(15:59):
idols at all light, driver's arm hanging out of the window,
radio murmuring something forgettable. Oak and pecan trees line the
street that leaves, just beginning to dull at the edges.
Spanish moss hangs limp unmoving like it's listening. The bike
settles into a rhythm. He exhales, he isn't thinking about death.
(16:25):
He's thinking about music, Perhaps about how some nights the
band locks in so tightly it feels like one mind
speaking through six bodies, About how other nights it slips
just enough to remind you nothing is guaranteed. He hums
something underneath his breath, not a melody, a shape. Four
(16:47):
fifty five pm. He turns onto Hillcrest Avenue, a long,
gentle slope, residential familiar, single story houses sit back from
the road, chain link fences, empty porches. Someone is watering along.
A child's bicycle lies on its side in a driveway.
Ordinary life continues ahead. A flatbed truck moves slower than
(17:11):
the traffic should, fainted red paint, rust creeping along the seams,
equipment strapped to its back, heavier than it looks. He
closes the distance, not aggressively, comfortably four fifty six pm.
Witnesses will say later that he didn't look reckless. They
say he looked relax the bike holds steady beneath him.
(17:33):
The road feels forgiving. The truck slows more than expected.
There's a moment here, not panic, not fear, just instinct,
that quick human calculation we make a thousand times a
day without consequence. He leans left four fifty seven PM.
The front wheel clips the crane arm mounted on the
back of the truck, a metal extension that juts further
than the eye expects. The sound is sharp, final, metal,
(17:56):
biting metal. The bike snaps sideways. He is thrown forward,
not heroically, not cleanly. Physics don't care who you are.
His chest hits the pavement first, then his head. The
sound is not loud. It's dull, wet, and human. The
motorcycle keeps going without him, sparks, screaming against the asphalt,
a machine suddenly unburdened by its purpose. His body skids,
(18:19):
then stops wrong still. After a blue oldsmobile breaks hard
tires shriek, someone screams, the kind of sound that escapes
before thought can stop it. Blood spreads beneath his head,
dark against the gray road, slow and patient. His eyes
are open, but they don't see. His breathing is shallow, irregular,
(18:44):
A terrible imitation of life. Someone kneels, someone says his name,
It doesn't matter. The ambulance arrives fast, sirens tearing through
the neighborhood like an apology that comes too late. Paramedics
work quickly, urgently, carefully, too carefully. They lift him. His
body does not help them. At the hospital, fluorescent lights bleeds.
(19:06):
The room of all personality machines hum indifferently. Doctors fight
because that's what doctors do. But some injuries don't negotiate.
Massive internal trauma, severe brain injury. The body has already decided.
At seven twenty pm, the room goes quiet. Dwayne Ullman
(19:30):
is pronounced dead. He's only twenty four years old, the
part that hurts the most. Outside Macon doesn't react. Cars
keep moving, dogs bark, dinners get cooked. Hillcrest Avenue looks
exactly the way it did an hour earlier. That's the cruelty.
(19:52):
The world doesn't pause for brilliance. It doesn't slow down
for unfinished sentences. Somewhere a guitar sits untouched, strings cooling,
waiting for hands that will never come back for them.
Somewhere a road holds the memory of a single moment.
It can never give back, and nothing, not the music,
(20:12):
not the love, not the legend, can rewind those final seconds.
Act six in Memory of Elizabeth. Read next Act six
in Memory of Elizabeth Read the epilogue of Duayne Allman.
(20:36):
The shock wears off before the pain does. That's the
cruelest part. The phone calls slow, the crowds thin, the
noise fades. What's left is the quiet, the kind that
settles into rooms and refuses to leave Macon after Macon
doesn't know what to do with the loss. The town
(20:56):
carries on because that's what towns do. But something in
the air feels thinner now, like a note that never
quite resolves. Hillcrest Avenue looks ordinary again. That's unsettling. Cars
pass over the same stretch of road, children ride bikes
past it. Live steps carefully around the place where it happened,
(21:16):
pretending not to stare, but everyone knows. They gather at
Rose Hill Cemetery, where the ground rolls gently, as if
even the land is trying to soften the blow. The
casket is closed. It has to be. Musicians stand shoulders
shoulder with people who never owned a record but felt
(21:37):
the music anyway. Leather jackets and black dresses and red eyes.
Someone grips a guitar case so tightly their knuckles turn white.
When the casket is lowered, the sound of dirt hitting
wood lands heavier than any applause ever did. His mother
folds inward. His brother doesn't speak, and no one expects
(21:59):
him to. This is a band without the center. Rehearsal
rooms feel haunted. Amplifiers hum even when they're off. Someone
instinctively waits for a cue that never comes. The Almond
Brothers band almost stops. They consider it because how do
you continue when the sound you are built around is gone?
(22:22):
They sit in silence, passing cigarettes. They forget to smoke,
staring at instruments that suddenly feel heavier. Every song sounds unfinished,
Every ending feels wrong. Then there's a second blow. A
year later, the wound is reopened. Another motorcycle, another road,
(22:42):
and another body. Barry Oakley is gone, same town, same
cruel geometry. Now it feels biblical. People stop calling it
bad luck, and they're calling it fate. But the music
refuse is to die. And yet against all logic, the
(23:03):
music survives. It doesn't harden into nostalgia, it doesn't freeze
in time. It breathes at fillmore. East grows in stature,
not because it's perfect, but because it's alive and loose
and dangerous and listening. Every sly guitar that cries instead
of shouts carries his fingerprint. Every solo that pauses instead
(23:27):
of racing borrows his restraint. It becomes a measure, not
a ghost, a standard, and a question that never leaves.
History always asks the wrong question, not how did he die?
We know that the real question, the one that keeps
people awake, is quieter. What did we lose that never
(23:49):
had a chance to exist? What song stayed trapped in
those hands? What wisdom only comes with age, never had
a time to arrive. He wasn't finished. That's the wound.
Some artists leave catalogs. Others leave absence, a shape so
(24:11):
large you keep noticing it decades later. He didn't burn out,
he didn't fade away. He vanished mid sentence. And every
time you hear a long note hang in the air,
refusing to rush, refusing to resolve, you're hearing the echo
of a life that moved too fast for the world
to keep. Hill Crest Avenue still slopes gently downhill, The
(24:37):
trees still cast their shadows, but something essential left that
road in nineteen seventy one and it never came back.
Thank you so much for listening to script number twenty five,
The Last Ride on Hillcrest Avenue. This has been Johnny's
(24:57):
Dead Air podcast. I'm Johnny Hartwell, thank you so much
for listening.
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