Young Duane Allman: The Jim Shepley Interview

Duane’s Best Friend and Guitar Teacher Reminisces

While working on Guitar Player’s October 1981 Duane Allman cover story, I asked his brother Gregg about their childhoods in Daytona Beach, Florida, and how Duane got started on guitar.  Gregg revealed, “The only lessons Duane had was us sitting around the house – trial and error. And then he had a friend named Jim Shepley, who was a couple of years older and had started a couple of years before. He’s the one that turned us on to all the Jimmy Reed records. He had a bunch of those hot licks down, and I thought, ‘Man, this guy is something else!’ And so Duane sat with him all the time. Even before Duane quit school, they would skip classes and shoot pool and play guitars. He learned a whole lot from Shepley, and that was probably his best friend back then.” (Here’s a podcast of this complete interview: Gregg Allman's "My Brother Duane" Interview.)

I was unable to track down Jim Shepley in time for that cover story, but heard from him several months later. On May 12, 1982, we spoke about his experiences with Duane. As you’ll see, he revealed a wealth of details about Duane’s youth, personality, musical adventures, girlfriends, drug use, and more.

When did you first encounter Duane?

I met Duane down in Daytona Beach, Florida. I guess I was about 14 or 15 when I first met him, maybe a little younger. Actually, I met him in a pool hall, of all places. He’d come in and I was shooting pool. I saw him and he kind of came over and we just started talking. And from there, I learned that he had just moved down from Tennessee with his mother and his brother. We found out we lived very close to one another. So that’s how we started getting to know each other.

Where was he living in Daytona Beach?

He was living on a street called Van Avenue, which is actually Daytona Beach Shores. I lived about a mile and a half away from him.

What year was this?

This was about ’60, ’61 – it could have been ’59. I’m not exactly sure.

Were you already playing the guitar?

Yeah, I’d been playing awhile. The kind of guy Duane was, if he saw something he liked and wanted to do, look out! I always had a lot of respect for him, because he had energy to do what he wanted to do. I was playing the guitar, and he just said to himself, “I want to play the guitar.” So we just started getting together. Part of why we had a friendship was to play the guitar. He had just bought a cheap Silvertone Sears guitar, an electric. He may have had an acoustic before – I don’t know. But he had this little piece of junk – you know, the old Danelectro-type guitar. We just got together and we started playing. I showed him the things I knew, and as I learned more things I kept showing him. I was always getting together with him, jamming and showing him stuff. He kind of looked up to me. The thing that you’ve got to realize about Duane is that if he liked you and if he had respect for you, he’d look up to you. His father had been killed in a bizarre incident up in Tennessee, so he didn’t have a father. If he saw someone that was a little older than him that he had respect for and looked up to, he kind of latched on to you that way.

The funny thing is, when he first came into town, nobody really liked the guy. He had a cocky attitude, and he was kind of an aggressive, brazen type. He just wasn’t your social personality kid that was gonna go around and kiss everybody’s ass to make you like him. And that’s what I liked about him. I appreciated his candor and honesty and his kind of raw personality. He had a hell of a sense of humor! He was a smart, smart person.