{"id":699869,"date":"2026-06-12T14:36:12","date_gmt":"2026-06-12T14:36:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/699869\/"},"modified":"2026-06-12T14:36:12","modified_gmt":"2026-06-12T14:36:12","slug":"jaimoe-on-being-the-last-surviving-member-of-the-allman-brothers-band","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/699869\/","title":{"rendered":"Jaimoe on Being the Last Surviving Member of the Allman Brothers Band"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tJaimoe<\/a> doesn\u2019t have to look too far for a reminder of the past and the friends and bandmates he\u2019s lost. On any given day, all he has to do is glance down at his right calf.<\/p>\n

\n\tOn this particular day, Jaimoe is chilling in a recording studio near his home in Bloomfield, Connecticut, where he\u2019s lived for more than 35 years. Although he\u2019s stout and his scalp is dotted with white hair, he still exudes the formidable intensity of his early days as the co-drummer and percussionist with the Allman Brothers Band<\/a>. Gripping a pair of drumsticks, dressed casually in a T-shirt and leisure slacks, he\u2019s recalling the bond he had with Duane Allman, the band\u2019s walrus\u2013\u2019stached guitarist and guiding light. Like the times they\u2019d visit pawn shops together and unearth guitars and old drum kits. Then Jaimoe pauses, flashes a quick, playful grin, and rolls his right pant leg up to his knee.<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd there is it: the last of the original Allmans band tattoos.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe story \u2014 which was documented in a 1971 Rolling Stone cover story \u2014 goes like this. The Allmans were in San Francisco, having just played a typically ferocious set at Winterland, when they decided to formalize their bond with the help of Lyle Tuttle, a famed local tattoo artist. In honor of the psychedelic shrooms they\u2019d consume together, they chose a mushroom and had one of each tattooed on their lower right legs. On Jaimoe\u2019s calf, it\u2019s a small, somewhat smudged mushroom that\u2019s darkened in, unlike the more colorful ones the other band members received. \u201cThis is the only one like that,\u201d he says. \u201cThe ones that were colored, they don\u2019t look anything like this.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn his time with the Allmans, which was most if not all of the band\u2019s existence, Jaimoe stood out in multiple ways. A jazz devotee before he joined up with the group, Jaimoe instilled the improvisatory looseness of that genre into the band\u2019s blues foundation. \u201cIn some ways he\u2019s one of the most defining members,\u201d says guitarist Warren Haynes, who joined the Allmans in 1989 and stayed pretty much through their final shows. \u201cAll six of those original guys had distinctive personalities and brought a lot to the table. But what Jaimoe brought was so unique. The Allman Brothers would not have been the same without him. That [jazz] dimension would have been missing. It played such a big role in the sound of the music.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n

\n\tJaimoe made himself known physically as well. A rare Black musician in the world of Southern rock of the Seventies, he had a muscular physique derived from the days, he says, \u201cwhen I was from eight to junior year in high school and wanted to be Mr. America.\u201d Combined with his garb, which could include berets and glasses, Jaimoe was simply one of the coolest-looking guys in music. \u201cHe was this Black guy playing drums, looking very Black Power with his sunglasses and Army jacket,\u201d says Bert Holman, who saw the original lineup of the band and would eventually become their manager. \u201cHe was always this enigma.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBut these days, Jaimoe stands apart in another, more poignant way. With the deaths of Gregg Allman<\/a>, guitarist Dickey Betts<\/a>, and band co-drummer Butch Trucks<\/a> all in the past decade, Jaimoe is now the last surviving member of the first and classic Allmans lineup from 1969. That realization hits Jaimoe periodically, as it does as he stares at his tattoo and recalls how Duane sat on a stool and got the first one. That was only fitting, since he was the founder of the band, but Jaimoe was the first band member Duane recruited.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI was the first one and I knew I would be the last,\u201d he says after a moment of silence. \u201cSome things you just know.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tJaimoe with the Allman Brothers Band\u2019s 1977 lineup.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMichael Ochs Archives\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

\n\tJaimoe will turn 82 next month, and he admits that the last decade or so have been rough. Now pulling up both his pant legs, he reveals a scar on each knee from surgery, then points to his right shoulder. \u201cThis is titanium!\u201d he says. \u201cThey call me the bionic drummer.\u201d He walks with the help of a gold-plated cane given to him by later ABB recruit Derek Trucks, Butch\u2019s nephew, and his left sclera, which has long been a lazy eye, is more pronounced.<\/p>\n

\t\tRelated Content<\/p>\n

\n\tLast summer, he was hospitalized for dehydration \u2014 the result, he says, of drinking a bit too much wine and beer. \u201cNot knowing I was depleting shit in my body,\u201d he says with one of his occasional boisterous chuckles. He then spent weeks in a rehabilitation clinic, which wasn\u2019t all bad. \u201cThey took me to this room with a big-ass chair like an electric chair and put you on it and bathed you,\u201d he says. \u201cThat was pretty cool.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tLeaning forward, he points to his lower back, where three screws were inserted during another procedure. \u201cWhen we did that operation, the doctor said it usually takes about four hours and it took six,\u201d he says. \u201cHe said, \u2018Man, you\u2019re really tough.\u2019 I said, \u2018Doctor, I\u2019ve been sitting on my ass doing this since I was 16 years old. I ought to be fuckin\u2019 tough.\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tJohnie Lee Johnson, as he was known at birth, did indeed begin pounding the skins as a teenager in Mississippi, including in the marching band of his all-Black school. Athletics appealed to him, but music more so, and he eventually worked his way into playing behind soul and R&B acts like Otis Redding, Joe Tex, Patti Labelle and the Bluebelles, and Clarence Carter.<\/p>\n

\n\tThat circuit also led to his nickname, when saxophonist Rudolph \u201cJuicy\u201d Carter looked at the drummer one day and said \u201cJaimoe.\u201d \u201cI said, \u2018Who the fuck is Jaimoe?\u2019\u201d he recalls. \u201c\u2018That\u2019s you, motherfucker. You\u2019re Jaimoe.\u2019\u201d Jaimoe isn\u2019t entirely sure what inspired Carter to pick that name; maybe he was saluting Bahamian singer Jamo Thomas. But the name stuck, becoming his legal moniker many years later. During a later ABB tour, Haynes watched, amusedly, as Jaimoe checked into a hotel and watched as the clerk was trying to grasp if \u201cJaimoe\u201d was his first, last, or combined name.<\/p>\n

\n\tDisillusioned with life on the so-called chitlin circuit, especially the low pay and overall treatment of musicians, Jaimoe accidentally fell into a new life when his friend, singer and songwriter Jackie Avery Jr., began raving about an otherworldly young guitarist named Duane Allman who was recording in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. \u201cI was on my way to New York to become a starving musician playing jazz,\u201d Jaimoe says. \u201cIt sounds funny and shit, but that\u2019s what was happening. I was tired of being in rhythm and blues bands.\u201d Jaimoe admits his knowledge of the blues that Allman loved was limited: \u201cI didn\u2019t know a goddamn thing about the blues. And I didn\u2019t want to know anything about it. I wanted to know more about Miles.\u201d But once he and Allman began wailing together on drums and guitar, Jaimoe sensed a new frontier ahead. \u201cDuane was interested in doing this,\u201d he says, raising his right hand in a sweeping motion.<\/p>\n

\n\tJaimoe still remembers how he and Allman clicked on multiple levels: \u201cWe\u2019d be in the park and he\u2019d find four-leaf clovers. All the time! I had a different relationship with Duane.\u201d The two became the starting point for what would become the Allman Brothers Band, which soon added Betts, Butch Trucks, bassist Berry Oakley, and Duane\u2019s kid brother, the bluesy vocalist Gregg. \u201cPeople talk about these \u2018family bands\u2019 and all that stuff, but the Allman Brothers really was like a family,\u201d he says. \u201cWhen we stayed in a hotel, our road manager Twiggs would get us rooms where each room had an adjoining door. All the doors were left open so you could go straight down through all the rooms and see everything going on. Anything that was happening, you knew about.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the new documentary Gregg Allman<\/a>: The Music of My Soul, Jaimoe reflects on his chemistry with the singer. \u201cEverything that Gregory was, was fine with me,\u201d he says in the film, which premieres June 17 as a special one-night-only event <\/a>in theaters. \u201cBecause we did what we did together\u2026most of it just being human beings, and unrestricted Black and white brothers.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tJaimoe (who was called Jai Johanny Johanson in their early album credits) introduced the band to his John Coltrane records, which fueled their long, snaky jams. But the band came close to imploding when Duane was killed in a motorcycle accident in 1971, right after the band\u2019s At Fillmore East album cemented their rock-star status. Jaimoe remembers hearing the news of Duane\u2019s death while he was at a friend\u2019s apartment. In the first of many moments during a conversation, he pauses and mulls for several minutes, and one can feel the weight of history on him, as if he\u2019s still digesting it. \u201cSomeone called me and said he didn\u2019t make it,\u201d he finally says, somberly. \u201cI don\u2019t know, man. Life is strange things.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Allmans carried on, with the post-Duane Brothers and Sisters album propelling them to genuine superstar stature. But the tragedies and setbacks that would haunt the band for decades more (Oakley died in a motorcycle accident of his own in 1972) also came to include Jaimoe. Starting with an injury incurred when he was tossing around a football with members of Percy Sledge\u2019s band, he began having recurring back pain that affected his relationships with his bandmates. \u201cI was impatient and got irritated easily,\u201d he said at the time.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Allmans broke up in 1976 after Gregg testified against the band\u2019s road manager, Scooter Herring, who\u2019d been arrested on drug charges. The rest of the group was incensed at Allman, with even the normally low-key Jaimoe issuing a rare public statement, saying, \u201cI can no longer work with or for Gregg Allman, but I still pray for God to help him and all of us.\u201d With Allmans keyboardist Chuck Leavell and bassist Lamar Williams, a school friend who had replaced Oakley, Jaimoe joined Sea Level, a largely instrumental jam band that made several albums.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn 1978, Jaimoe reunited with the Allman Brothers Band again when they reformed, but a few years later, he was fired in a dispute over the band\u2019s business affairs. Jaimoe stayed in Macon, Georgia, where he taught drums and played with a friend in a local band. When the Allmans reunited yet again in 1989 for a tour to promote a box set, Jaimoe was back behind the drumkit. \u201cI may be a drummer, but I\u2019m not a fool,\u201d he says. \u201cI knew that for where I needed to be and where I needed to go and get the things I wanted, that was the best exposure for me right there. More money and better exposure. It made sense to me to be back in the band.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cHe felt vindicated,\u201d says Holman, who says that part of the stipulation for Jaimoe rejoining the band was that he would drop a lawsuit against them.<\/p>\n

\n\tFor the next roughly 25 years, Jaimoe, along with Butch Trucks, held down the beat for the Allmans as they entered a new era. There were creative peaks, especially once Haynes and Derek Trucks injected new energy into the band, but also plenty of ongoing upheaval, culminating in Betts\u2019 firing in 2000. \u201cIt had worn itself out,\u201d Jaimoe told RS <\/a>in 2017 about the situation with Betts. \u201cHe said, \u2018I need to get myself straight,\u2019 and that\u2019s what he would do. Sometimes Gregory and Butch would say, \u2018We\u2019ll get somebody to play until you get back.\u2019 This time he didn\u2019t go get himself straightened out.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cJaimoe was always in the middle,\u201d says Holman. \u201cThe power base for a long time was Butch and Dickey on one side and Gregg on the other. Jaimoe would frequently go along with the majority unless he felt strongly about it and he\u2019d speak up. Jaimoe understood the concept that what is most important is best for the band. And he said to Dickey, \u2018I\u2019m gonna go with the majority.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tJaimoe declines to name a favorite lineup of the band, preferring another perspective. \u201cDo you cook?\u201d he asks instead. \u201cYou start cooking something or your wife starts cooking something and your daughter comes along and puts something in it, crumbs or water or something. And it changes it. Whenever you mix anything with other things, it\u2019s a different chemical reaction.\u201d Says Haynes of the way Jaimoe handled the turmoil, \u201cThere was always shit going on, but he would always have some beautifully philosophical way of looking at it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWith Allman\u2019s health in question, the Allman Brothers played their final show in 2014. During their last show, Haynes remembers looking at Jaimoe, who smiled and seemed proud of their legacy. \u201cNobody really changed over the last 45 years or some shit,\u201d Jaimoe told RS a few years later. \u201cWe just got better at what we did, or we fucked up. It was always the same.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tDerek Trucks, Butch Trucks, Jaimoe, and Gregg Allman at New York\u2019s Beacon Theater in 2014.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tTaylor Hill\/FilmMagic<\/p>\n

\n\tAsk anyone who knows Jaimoe, and you\u2019ll hear the same description: Much of the time, he doesn\u2019t say too much, but one should listen closely when he does. That trait becomes painfully clear when talk turns to the musical Brothers he\u2019s lost in the last decade. He says he was able to talk to the man he frequently refers to as \u201cGregory\u201d a few times before Allman\u2019s death from liver cancer in 2017. \u201cGregory called me and said, \u2018Hey, bro, when you coming down?\u2019\u201d he says, which itself indicated an urgency. \u201cHe never made too many phone calls.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tPicking up his sticks, Jaimoe starts drumming on the couch, then stops and decides he doesn\u2019t want to reveal anything too personal about their last exchanges. \u201cIt was sensitive,\u201d he says. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t want to talk about it.\u201d After a pause, he adds, \u201cHe was married seven times? Or eight? I remember asking him, \u2018Why you want to get married?\u2019 And he said because he didn\u2019t like being alone.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tJaimoe recalls seeing Betts sitting in the row behind him at Gregg\u2019s funeral, and he says the two made up enough to have a conversation before the fiery guitarist came out of retirement to play a few shows before his own death in 2024. It sounds as if he and Betts found common ground after so many years. \u201cI don\u2019t know how many concerts he did, but I guess he figured out he couldn\u2019t do them or how easy it wouldn\u2019t be,\u201d Jaimoe says. \u201cThe thing about talking to somebody is you find out everybody is basically on the same page.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe death of Butch Trucks, who died by suicide in 2017, brings on a much more melancholy reaction. \u201cI knew there was something [happening] because he kept calling me,\u201d Jaimoe says quietly. He pauses, starts thwacking his drums on the couch where he\u2019s sitting, stops, then resumes again. \u201cTwo or three times in four or five hours or something. What does he want? Butchie always wanted something.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWas he taking Xanax?\u201d he wonders. \u201cThat\u2019s a calmer downer or something?\u201d Once again, he pounds out a beat on the furniture and stops. Speaking generally of those who died by their own hands, he eventually says, \u201cIt makes no sense. So, I don\u2019t know. Why the fuck did they do that?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cButch was a shock,\u201d Holman says. \u201cI think Jaimoe is still struggling with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the years after the Allman Brothers Band played their farewells, Jaimoe kept busy with his own bands, often in Connecticut, where he moved with his new wife Catherine. (They have three daughters, the youngest 16.) He\u2019s sat in with Friends of the Brothers, one of the leading ABB tribute bands. Lately, he\u2019s been working on a memoir, co-written with author and Allmans historian Alan Paul, to be published next year. He\u2019s also considering more gigs with Jaimoe\u2019s Jasssz Band, his longtime side project, where he gets to not only play jazz but also other styles of American music.<\/p>\n

\n\tAs the last of the original Allmans, especially after Gregg\u2019s death, Jaimoe also felt a sense of unfinished business. It was Jaimoe who reached out to the members of the last, post-Betts incarnation to reunite for a tribute show at Madison Square Garden in early 2020. \u201cHe called all of us and said, \u2018We need to play, we need to do a show,\u2019\u201d Haynes says. \u201cHe\u2019s a man of few words sometimes, so we all listened and everyone had the same reaction, that it needed to happen.\u201d As Jaimoe simply says, \u201cI missed playing.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n\tThe timing for what was called the Brothers show in March 2020 ended up being tricky: It took place two days before the pandemic lockdown. Yet no one seemed to be happier about the show, where the musicians dug into the Allmans repertoire to a roaring crowd, than Jaimoe. Afterwards, he immediately asked Holman about doing another. \u201cI said, \u2018Right now, Jaimoe, the whole world is caving in,\u2019\u201d the manager says. The Brothers did end up doing a few more such shows a couple of years later at the same venue. Jaimoe says another Brothers tribute is in discussion, once all the requisite arrangements with the various Allman family factions are worked out.<\/p>\n

\n\tIf that doesn\u2019t happen, there are always the records to remind him of the heights that Jaimoe reached with the Allmans, which can still ameliorate the sadness. \u201cEvery now and then I\u2019m somewhere, in a store or in a car on the radio, and I hear a tune we recorded,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd I go, \u2018What the fuck is that? Where did that come from?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jaimoe doesn\u2019t have to look too far for a reminder of the past and the friends and bandmates…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":699870,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[225834,88,96939,302803,216],"class_list":["post-699869","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-allman-brothers-band","tag-entertainment","tag-gregg-allman","tag-jaimoe","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/699869","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=699869"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/699869\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/699870"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=699869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=699869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=699869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}