STAMFORD, Connecticut - Last summer Gregg Allman was in the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida, recovering from a liver transplant. Mr. Allman, the lead vocalist and keyboard player for the Allman Brothers Band, had spent three years waiting for a donor match, after being diagnosed with Hepatitis C in 2007. The operation was a success, but it was hardly easy.
“I didn’t think about the pain afterwards,” Mr. Allman said. “But while I was healing up, I knew I had this record in the can, and that was something to really look forward to. When things got real bad, real painful, I would just think of this record, and it was kind of a life-support system.”
Mr. Allman, 63, is now in good spirits and in better physical shape. He has just released “Low Country Blues,” the music that helped him recover and his first solo album in 14 years.
The architects of what came to be known as Southern rock, the Allman group remains one of the most popular bands on the touring circuit. It has released 11 gold and 5 platinum albums since Mr. Allman and his guitar virtuoso brother, Duane, founded the group in 1969. When Duane Allman died in a motorcycle accident in 1971, the Allmans, who mixed a tough blues foundation with daring, jazz-based improvisation, may have been the biggest band in America. But the brisk sales for recent shows prove that their fans remain passionate and devoted.
After the 2002 death of Tom Dowd, the Allman Brothers’ longtime producer, Mr. Allman was wary of working with anyone else. “After he passed away, I didn’t want to meet any new producers because it felt like going backwards,” he said.
As a tour wound down two years ago, Mr. Allman’s manager asked him to stop in Memphis, where he was introduced to T Bone Burnett, the producer behind Robert Plant and Alison Krauss’s album “Raising Sand,” Elton John and Leon Russell’s recent “Union” and the “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” soundtrack.
“We grew up at the same time, in the same gumbo of blues and Southern R&B,” Mr. Burnett said . Mr. Allman agreed to record an album for him, without the rest of his band. When he arrived, the pianist Mac Rebennack, better known as Dr. John, was there to add his encyclopedic blues knowledge and New Orleans voodoo. Mr. Rebennack who will join the Allman Brothers in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame when he is inducted in March also shares a history of drug problems with the singer.
Mr. Allman recalled one party in the 1970s, during his turbulent marriage to Cher. “I got really wasted, and Mac helped me out, kept me from really embarrassing myself,” he said.
The two recorded 15 songs in two weeks , settling almost immediately into a distinctive acoustic sound. Where the blues as played by the Allman Brothers is sprawling and expansive, t his music is intimate , carefully arranged but never stiff.
Mr. Allman’s rich, throaty voice jumps comfortably from the haunting country blues of Sleepy John Estes and Skip James to the spikier urban edge of songs by Magic Sam and Otis Rush. “Just Another Rider,” written by Mr. Allman and the Allman Brothers’ guitarist Warren Haynes, fits easily into the mix.
“It’s taking the blues to a further place,” Mr. Allman said. “ Everything just fell right in its own pattern. It was really amazing.”
By ALAN LIGHT
