Aural Fixations - Derek Trucks closes fast on an Allman legend

When Allman Brothers Band founder Duane Allman died in a motorcycle accident in 1971, it was just assumed that nobody would ever again play electric slide guitar like he did.

Allman played slide in a standard guitar tuning instead of the more common way with all the strings tuned to one chord, and, unlike most slide guitarists, played with the bottleneck on his ring finger instead of his pinky. Instead of playing at a low volume, Allman played a Gibson Les Paul in arenas, harnessing the power and distortion of the instrument and using it to his advantage. He often ripped through squalls of slide playing with such grace that the slide guitar often sounded more like Sonny Boy Williamson playing a wailing harmonica.

Plenty of guitarists played electric slide before Allman, and in the years after his death, but nobody has ever managed to take what Allman did with the slide guitar and expand upon it.

Until, that is, a kid named Derek Trucks came along.

Born in Jacksonville, Fla., home to Southern rock bands such as Lynyrd Skynyrd and Blackfoot, in 1979, Trucks is the nephew of Allman Brothers Band founding drummer Butch Trucks. By the time he was 12, the six-string prodigy was jamming with the Allman Brothers Band. Derek Trucks released his debut album at the age of 18, a record that established the young guitarslinger as the heir apparent to slide great Duane Allman.

The Derek Trucks Band’s new disc, “Songlines,” showcases the fact that Trucks is already one of the greatest guitar stylists ever (he came in at No. 81 on Rolling Stone magazine’s 2003 list of the greatest rock guitarists of all time, by far the youngest player on the list) and his music encompasses jazz, blues and Southern rock, all with a smattering of Indian influences.

The album begins with a haunting, African drumbeat/slide guitar-based chant titled “Volunteered Slavery,” a tune that morphs into a slow blues groove called “I’ll Find My Way,” on which Trucks snakes in and around singer Mike Mattison’s gruff howl with clean, punctuated lines.

Blues purists will find plenty to like on “Songlines,” with tunes such as the funky “Crow Jane,” the acoustic bottleneck work on “Chevrolet” and the gospelinfluenced, organ-driven “I’d Rather Be Blind, Crippled and Crazy.”

Where Trucks shows pure innovation, however, is on Indian-influenced instrumental numbers such as “Sahib Teri Brandi/Maki Madni” and “Mahjoun,” as he busts out some Eastern-sounding scales, coaxing sitar riffs from his Gibson SG guitar.

Duane Allman was a mere 24 years old when he dumped his Harley in Macon, Ga., leaving a legacy as the best electric slide guitar player of all time.

Trucks, at 26, is nipping on the heels of that legacy, and just may be remembered as the best ever before he’s through.