SONG OF THE DAY

“Whipping Post” by The Allman Brothers Band (The Allman Brothers Band [self-titled album], Atco/ Capricorn Records, 1969). Written by Gregg Allman.

INTERESTING FACTS (a la wikipedia)

– Written by Gregg Allman, the five-minute studio version first appeared on their 1969 debut album The Allman Brothers Band. [included in video form below]

– But the song’s full power only manifested itself in concert, when it was the basis for much longer and more intense performances. This was captured in a classic take on the Allman Brothers’ equally classic 1971 double live album At Fillmore East, where a 25-minute epic rendition takes up the entire final side. It was this recording that garnered “Whipping Post” spots on both the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll list and Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Songs of All Time list. [included in video form below]

– Gregg Allman was 21 years old when the song was first recorded.

– Its writing dates back to late March 1969, when The Allman Brothers Band was first formed. Gregg had failed to make a name for himself as a musician during a late-1960s stint in Los Angeles, and was on the verge of quitting music altogether when his brother Duane Allman called and said his new band needed a vocalist. Gregg showed the band 22 songs he had written, but only “Dreams” and “It’s Not My Cross to Bear” were deemed usable. Gregg, the group’s only songwriter at the time, was commissioned to create additional songs that would fit into the context of the new band, and in the next five days he wrote several, including “Whipping Post”.

- He later said: “It came so fast. I didn’t even have a chance to get the paper out. That’s the way the good songs come—they just hit you like a ton of bricks.”

– The result was called by Rolling Stone an “enduring anthem … rife with tormented blues-ballad imagery”.

– Musically, the composition was immediately noticeable for its use of 11/4 time signature in the introduction (it is also sometimes referred to as being in 11/8 time). As Gregg Allman later said:

“I didn’t know the intro was in 11/4 time. I just saw it as three sets of three, and then two to jump on the next three sets with: it was like 1,2,3—1,2,3—1,2,3—1,2. I didn’t count it as 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11. It was one beat short, but it didn’t feel one short, because to get back to the triad, you had two steps to go up. You’d really hit those two hard, to accent them, so that would separate the threes. … [Duane] said, ‘That’s good man, I didn’t know that you understood 11/4.’ Of course I said something intelligent like, ‘What’s 11/4?’ Duane just said, ‘Okay, dumbass, I’ll try to draw it up on paper for you.'”

– The original “Whipping Post” was recorded at Atlantic Recording Studios in New York City. Adrian Barber was the producer, and the band spent the entire full-day session getting the song’s performance to their liking.

– The album was released on November 4, 1969, but sold poorly, barely eking onto the bottom rungs of the U.S. albums chart.

– None of this fully anticipates the At Fillmore East performance.

– In the live performance, Duane Allman began to introduce the tune – “Berry starts her off” – then a fan yells out “Whipping Post!” Duane responds, “You guessed it,” and Berry Oakley indeed starts it off with the powerful, rumbling 11/4 time bass guitar opening, which Rolling Stone would say gave the song its “haunting momentum” and which would become one of the most familiar bass patterns in all of rock.

– The vocal parts are spread throughout the 23 minutes, separated by lengthy instrumental segments. The verses, choruses, and solos are in 6/4, while the stinging interludes immediately after the vocal parts revert to 11/4 time.

– Despite its length, the live “Whipping Post” received considerable progressive rock radio airplay during the early 1970s, especially late at night or on weekends.

– Such airplay led to “Whipping Post” becoming one of the band’s more familiar and popular songs, and would help give At Fillmore East its reputation as having, as The Rolling Stone Record Guide wrote in 1979, “no wasted notes, no pointless jams, no half-realized vocals—everything counts”, and of being, as Rolling Stone wrote in 2002, “the finest live rock performance ever committed to vinyl.”

– VH1 would say that “Whipping Post” was “what the band would become famous for, an endless climb of heightening drama staked out by the twin-guitar exorcisms of Duane and Dickey Betts and the cool, measured, almost jazz-like response of the rhythm section.”

– The song also acquired a quasi-legendary role in early 1970s rock concerts, when audience members at other artists’ concerts would semi-jokingly yell out “Whipping Post!” as a request between numbers, echoing the fan captured on At Fillmore East. Jackson Browne took note of this occurring during his concerts of the time. Another such instance from 1974 in Helsinki affected rock guitarist and composer Frank Zappa, as described below.

– Gregg Allman himself performs “Whipping Post” with his outside-the-Allmans Gregg Allman and Friends group’s concerts, but in a style that he describes as “its funky, real rhythm n’ blues-like” and in which he plays guitar rather than organ. Allman re-recorded the song for his 1997 album Searching for Simplicity, giving the song a jazzier groove, but rendering it in straight 4/4 time instead of the complex triple time of the original composition.

– Frank Zappa’s 1974 Helsinki audience “Whipping Post!” moment had at the time caused Zappa to play a southern rock version of his song “Montana”, subtitled “Whipping Floss”. (This incident was eventually captured on his You Can’t Do That on Stage Anymore, Vol. 2 live album, released in 1988.)

– In 1981, Zappa’s band learned “Whipping Post” and added it to their repertoire, since the band’s new singer and keyboard player Bobby Martin knew the song. He also did the lead vocals on it.

– Zappa recorded a studio version of the song for the 1984 album Them or Us; a live recording of the song featuring Frank’s son Dweezil Zappa on lead guitar was released in 1986 on the Does Humor Belong in Music? album and associated video.

VIDEO OF THE DAY

Album cut:

Live from Fillmore East ’71, Part 1 of 3 (this is a 25 minute jam):

Live from Fillmore East ’71, Part 2 of 3:

Live from Fillmore East ’71, Part 3 of 3:

Frank Zappa: