Allman, Vaughan shine again in new CDs

They were guitar gods of the highest order, and Duane Allman and Stevie Ray Vaughan each revitalized American music in his own way before dying far too young. Two new releases - the seven-CD

Skydog: The Duane Allman Retrospective

and the two-CD, 30th-anniversary reissue of Vaughan's

Texas Flood

- remind us of their enduring brilliance and power.

Duane Allman is best-known as the founder of the Allman Brothers Band, the group that pretty much invented and then transcended Southern rock with its adventurous amalgam of rock, blues, country, jazz, and soul. Skydog (Rounder ****) contains 21 Allmans numbers among its 129 tracks, including classics such as "Whipping Post," "Midnight Rider," and the live "In Memory of Elizabeth Reed" and "One Way Out."

As Scott Schinder points out in the liner notes, however, "Even if he'd never founded the Allman Brothers Band, Duane Allman would be a crucial figure in American popular music." That reputation rests on the prolific studio work he did for dozens of artists famous and obscure.

Disc 1 begins in 1965 by chronicling Duane and Gregg Allman's early bands. They started out in a garage-rock vein while trying to find their own voice. By Disc 2 (1968-69), Duane Allman had learned the slide guitar and was an in-demand picker at Fame Recording Studio in Muscle Shoals, Ala. Here Skydog begins to play like a fabulous jukebox of soul, blues, country, and rock-and-roll.

Hear Allman push Wilson Pickett to even more wicked intensity on the coda of "Hey Jude," deepen the pathos of Lulu's "Mr. Bojangles," and define the versions of "The Weight" by Aretha Franklin and King Curtis with his slide. So it goes with numbers by Otis Rush, Boz Scaggs, Delaney & Bonnie & Friends, and John Hammond (son of the storied producer and talent finder of the same name, who would go on to sign Vaughan), as well as lesser-known artists from Laura Lee and Spencer Wiggins to Ella Brown and Sam Samudio - a.k.a. Sam the Sham.

("Skydog," by the way, was Allman's nickname. "Go, Skydog!" Ronnie Hawkins exhorts on "Matchbox," triggering another crisp and electrifying solo.)

Allman's best-known work outside the Allman Brothers was with Derek and the Dominos. Imagine the monumental "Layla" (included here) without its 12-note guitar hook. Allman created that.

The Nashville-born, Florida-raised Allman puts his stamp on all this music without ever hogging the spotlight. In this context, you can hear how his desire to serve the song also informs his work with the Allman Brothers. For all his virtuosity, Allman (unlike Vaughan at times) also knew the virtue of restraint. Even when the Allmans were stretching songs past 15 minutes in concert, Skydog kept things grounded and accessible, ensuring that the music oozed soul.

He was an incandescent talent who made others better and seemed happiest in a collaborative role - only three tracks of the 129 feature Allman as front man. That's why it's fitting that Skydog ends with his brief and sweet instrumental "Little Martha." It's Allman's song, but even here he takes a collaborative role, with his dobro playing beautifully off Dickey Betts' acoustic guitar. The song was recorded in October 1971. By the end of the month, Allman was dead at 24, killed in a motorcycle crash.

Texas Flood (Epic/Legacy ***1/2), Stevie Ray Vaughan's debut, arrived 12 years after Allman's death, in 1983. It still sounds startlingly fresh, as the Texas tornado blows new life into blues-rock.

Backed by his formidable rhythm section, Double Trouble, Vaughan bores through relentlessly driving riff-rockers ("Love Struck Baby," "Pride and Joy"), digs into straight-up blues (the title song), flashes his dazzling chops (the instrumentals "Testify" and Rude Mood"), conjures noir mood pieces ("Dirty Pool" and the bonus "Tin Pan Alley"), and closes with a tender tribute to his wife ("Lenny").

The bonus disc presents an October 1983 performance at the old Ripley's Music Hall here in Philadelphia. Vaughan relies on numbers from Texas Flood, but also delivers three Hendrix compositions. That underscores the immense ambition and promise that, through some bumpy times personally and musically, he would live up to before his August 1990 death in a helicopter crash at 35.