Lowland Brothers Shape up

Released a year after Eat a Peach, Brothers and Sisters shows off a leaner brand of musicianship, which, coupled with a pair of serious crowd-pleasers, "Ramblin' Man" and "Jessica," helped drive it to the top of the charts for a month and a half and to platinum record sales. This was the first album to feature the group's new lineup, with Chuck Leavell on keyboards and Lamar Williams on bass, as well as Dickey Betts' emergence as a singer alongside Gregg Allman. The tracks appear on the album in the order in which they were recorded, and the first three, up through "Ramblin' Man," feature Berry Oakley – their sound is rock-hard and crisp.

Released a year after Eat a Peach, Brothers and Sisters shows off a leaner brand of musicianship, which, coupled with a pair of serious crowd-pleasers, "Ramblin' Man" and "Jessica," helped drive it to the top of the charts for a month and a half and to platinum record sales. This was the first album to feature the group's new lineup, with Chuck Leavell on keyboards and Lamar Williams on bass, as well as Dickey Betts' emergence as a singer alongside Gregg Allman. The tracks appear on the album in the order in which they were recorded, and the first three, up through "Ramblin' Man," feature Berry Oakley – their sound is rock-hard and crisp.

Live at Ludlow Garage 1970 features 91 minutes of the Allman Brothers Band in concert at a Cincinnati venue that they loved, nearly a year before their legendary Fillmore shows. The acoustics are good, though a little shaky – the tape was made at seven-and-a-half IPS, the bare minimum professional standard, which leaves more hiss than one might like and a bit less clarity than a fully professional live album might show. On the other hand, the group's sound imparts its own punch and clarity, and it was done in stereo, and if not for the existence of the Fillmore tapes, and the fact that the albums they yielded sold a kajillion copies, this show might well have been released in the 1970s. It isn't as intense as the Fillmore shows, but it does capture the group as a little-known working band with but a single album out and building a reputation – and with Dickey Betts yet to emerge as either a singer or composer and their sound still being worked out ("Statesboro Blues" gets a startlingly subdued performance, anticipating the acoustic version of "In Memory of Elizabeth Reed" from the '90s recording An Evening with the Allman Brothers Band: 2nd Set).

The Allman Brothers shared the bill with the Grateful Dead on several notable occasions. This release recalls the Brothers in support of the Dead and Love in February 1970 at the fabulous Fillmore East. No specific dates for the performances are noted, so it is presumed this release is a composite from recordings made at some point during the two sets per night that the Allman's performed on February 11th through the 14th. There is no mistaking the unbridled fervor of the original line-up of the band. Rising to the challenge of exploratory psychedelia – while remaining ever faithful to their Southern blues roots – blues standards such as "(I'm Gonna Move to The) Outskirts of Town" and "Hoochie Coochie Man" are strengthened and extended beyond their typical assertions. No longer are they relegated to the inadequately rendered thrashings of garage rock. Betts and the Allman's understand the dynamics of blues. It is out of this respect for the art form that the band is able to pull off such authentic psychedelia-tinged Delta sounds.

The Doobies team up with the Memphis Horns for an even more Southern-flavored album than usual, although also a more uneven one. By this time, Tom Johnston, Patrick Simmons, and company had pretty well inherited the mantle and the core (and then some) of the audience left behind by Creedence Clearwater Revival and John Fogerty, with Johnston songs like "Pursuit on 53rd Street," "Down in the Track," and "Road Angel" recalling pieces like "Travelin' Band," while Simmons' "Black Water" (their first number one hit) evoked the softer side of the "swamp rock" popularized by CCR. Actually, in some respects, given the range of instruments employed here, including an autoharp (courtesy of Arlo Guthrie) and viola, the songs on the original LP's first side suffer somewhat from a sameness that makes What Were Once Vices Are Now Habits a little less interesting than the albums that preceded it.

There have been plenty of single-disc Doobie Brothers collections released over the years. There have been two-part vinyl Best of the Doobies, there have been budget-line collections, and there have been OK overviews as well as excellent generous discs with all the big hits. There's even been a comprehensive four-disc box, but what there hasn't been is a double-disc set – something that falls between the conciseness of 2001's terrific Greatest Hits (the first CD to contain all the big hits on one CD) and 1999's four-disc Long Train Runnin' 1970-2000. That's what 2007's The Very Best of the Doobie Brothers is, a double-disc helping of the Doobies' biggest songs from "Listen to the Music" to "The Doctor."