I've been working my way through the seven parts of Martin Scorsese Presents The Blues: A Musical Journey series. I've just watched Marc Levin's Godfathers and Sons I am suprised that it does not link to what Americans call 'Southern Rock' --especially the Allman Brothers Band

I've just been listening to At Fillmore East.This kind of music---a hybridity of blues, country, jazz, and even classical influences, and their powerful, extended on-stage jamming---has definitely died; probably around the late 1970s. This rock & roll with a distinctly Southern twang is a reaching back to the South--before ruralness seeped out of the south, and it went all stars and stripes Republican with Reagan.

True, the Allman's latter work became a kind of watered down roots music from the South--fitting music for the strip mall culture of suburban Atlanta---and the Allman Brothers became a has-been group trading on past glories---arena rock's big oldies act. If Southern Rock went country, the roots of the Allman Brothers Band roots are in the blues---one fruit of the blues. Southern rock has too often relied solely on superficial signs. Lynyrd Skynyrd's use of Confederate visual codes and miracle tones evokes not the true Southern past, but merely plays a self-referential game within the genre.

The early work of the Allman Brothers Band could be seen as one of the sons, as much as, if not more so than the Rolling Stones, who were still doing covers on 12 X 5. But nary a mention. Strange.