After 1971's "Allman Bros at Fillmore East" and 1972's "Eat a Peach," what else could happen with the Allman Brothers? Simple. The tightest studio arrangements of the Allman Bros. Each song on 1973's "Brother and Sisters" album are a gem.

"Wasted Words" is an understated classic. "Ramblin' Man" earned valued radio play and still does today. "Come and Go Blues" has the elegance of well arranged classic AB. "Jelly Jelly" is by far the best traditional blues tune on the album, with well-executed lead guitar work. "Southbound" comes in a close second with very good rhythm guitar. "Jessica" is the outstanding recognizable song from the movie "Field of Dreams" as Kevin Costner and James Earl Jones travel to Minnesota. If you like dobro guitar, the last song "Pony Boy" will get your feet a-tappin'.

All 7 songs earn a place on this album, each in its own right. If you like guitar jams that are organized, "Ramblin' Man" and "Jessica" will satisfy your hunger. Many wished that the Allman Bros remained true to jam band status like the previous "AB at Fillmore East" and "Eat a Peach," but I believe is was just a part of their evolution to become a tighter band, with less improvisation, and with better writing capabilities. Live, they were unparalleled. These early efforts became the hallmarks of their career which has more or less survived to this day.

Sadly, the AB band has lost too many of their original players to death or attrition, and they are still a good band, just not to their former abilities. There will never be another Duane Allman who could play lead and slide like he could. Maybe there will, but it will be a long wait for the same style that he played.

This is an old road to travel on, to be sure, but it doesn't hurt to sing praise one more time, in case there are newcomers or young folk happening by . . .
Duane Allman stands as a mighty god in the annals of rock and ranks in the pantheon of the legendary dead young, but people be clear about this, Dickey Betts stands on the mountain, too, and no throwing him out for good for being a pain in the freakin' butt is going to change that. His business here, with Chuck Leavell, to these ears, marks the peak of the Allman Brothers story. Yes to the 'Fillmore' and yes to 'Eat a Peach,' but this one here dispenses with the experimentation and mostly hit, sometimes miss jam passages and opens the revival tent to all. It is an American masterpiece. Mr. Betts delivers joyously one of the most distinctive tones in the history of electric guitar, spinning waves and patterns of lovely melody around the chuggin' Allmans like ribbons of gold. So, too, Mr. Leavell, as beautiful and soulful a piano player as you'd ever want to hear. We don't leave out Greg Allman because there is a, mournful workingman's dead earnestness about his music here, a true woeful blues and lord knows these were troubled times for the family. Nevertheless, look outside the context and just at the album itself. It has lost its cache somewhat over the years, but anyone who has ever professed to love or even know American music, in all its diversity and glory, needs to know "Brothers and Sisters." That good. I haven't checked, but I hope Amazon agreed with its little blue 'e.' . . . Essential.

Few bands could have gone through the challenges this band has and still come out swinging (Def Leppard is one that comes to mind). It makes one wonder just how much better they could have been had both Duane Allman and Berry Oakley made it to middle age instead of dying so tragically so early on and in such similar circumstances too.

Still, Dickey Betts pulls off the guitar parts very admirably by himself and composed both the strong tracks from this album, the great "Ramblin' Man" (probably the best pentatonic scale guitar solo ever)and "Jessica" the latter named after his daughter. For those of you who have played in bands and jammed a lot, you'll know what I mean about this being a great jam band as they were capable of tracks that ran into 20 mins to even 30 minutes on "Mountain Jam" from their "Eat a Peach" album just before this. However, just jamming and letting each member of the band play his stuff (a lot like old time jazz musicians do) is what this band is good at and it shows in tracks like "Southbound" and "Pony Boy".

This album is a pretty good one and overall the sound quality is very good considering the copy I have is not the remastered one. I see that the remastered version is the same price and so I guess you might as well go get that version of this cd if you can.

A very good example of the post-Duane version of the band. If you consider that Duane Allman together with Eric Clapton were probably the greatest blues guitarists of their time when Duane died (just hear their work together on Derek and the Dominoes' "Layla")the loss is truly great and one cannot but wonder at what might have been.

Alas, we'll never know but get this and "Eat a Peach" if you want to get the best of the Allman Brothers' work. If you are a guitarist and want to learn what great blues and slide work sounds like, get these two as well as the "Live at Fillmore East" albums as essential listening material.