Elizabeth Reed.A classic Allman Brothers tune inspired by Jazz greats Coltrane and Miles Davis.

From the Wik-

The original studio recording of "In Memory of Elizabeth Reed" is the fourth song on the group's 1970 album Idlewild South. It is a minor key instrumental song written by guitarist Dickey Betts, the first of several Allmans instrumentals to be written by him, and the first original instrumental song written by a member of the band. The original Rolling Stone review of Idlewild South said the song "just goes and goes for a stupendous, and unnoticed, seven minutes."

The song is named after a headstone Betts saw at the Rose Hill Cemetery in Macon, Georgia, a place frequented by band members in their early days for relaxing and writing songs, among other things. Considerable legend has grown up over what Betts was doing at the time, some fueled by a possibly put-on interview Duane Allman gave Rolling Stone. The cemetery was later memorialized by the band as the final resting spot of both band leader Duane Allman and bassist Berry Oakley.

The Rolling Stone Album Guide called "In Memory of Elizabeth Reed" in its original studio incarnation "the blueprint of a concert warhorse, capturing the Allmans at their most adventurous." The New York Times has written that "its written riffs and jazz-ish harmonies [allow] improvisers room." Accordingly, "Elizabeth Reed" has appeared in many Allman Brothers concerts, sometimes running half an hour or more, and on numerous Allman Brothers live albums, but first and most notably on At Fillmore East, which many fans and critics believe is the definitive rendition. In 2007, Rolling Stone named "In Memory of Elizabeth Reed" one of its Fifty Best Songs Over Seven Minutes Long — and in giving it Honorable Mention on its 100 Greatest Guitar Songs of All Time list made 2008, Rolling Stone called the At Fillmore East performance "transcendant".

Fillmore East recording

In this performance, Betts opens the song with ethereal volume swells on his guitar, giving the impression of violins. Slowly the first theme begins to emerge, and Duane Allman's guitar joins Betts in a dual lead that sometimes doubles the melody, sometimes provides a harmony line, and sometimes provides counterpoint. The next section has the tempo pick up to a Santana-like, quasi-Latin beat, with a strong second-theme melody being driven by unison playing and harmonized guitars.

Betts now takes a solo that starts from the second theme. This leads into an organ solo from Gregg Allman, with the two guitars playing rhythm figures in the background. Throughout, percussionists Butch Trucks and Jai Johanny Johanson play in unison, providing what has been described as "a thick bed of ride-snare rhythm for the soloists to luxuriate upon."

Now it is Duane Allman's turn, and he starts out quietly rephrasing the first theme. He then gradually builds to a high-pitched climax, with Berry Oakley's bass guitar playing a strong counterpoint lead underneath him against the band's trademark percussive backing. Allman cools off into a reverie, then starts up again, finding an even more furious peak. Parts of this solo would draw comparison to John Coltrane and his sheets of sound approach, other parts to Miles Davis and his classic Kind of Blue album. Duane Allman biographer Randy Poe wrote that the solo reflected the emerging jazz fusion movement, but in reverse: "[Allman]'s playing jazz in a rock context." Allman himself told writer Robert Palmer at that time, "that kind of playing comes from Miles and Coltrane, and particularly Kind of Blue. I've listened to that album so many times that for the past couple of years, I haven't hardly listened to anything else." Almost two decades later, Palmer would write of the Allmans, "that if the musicians hadn't quite scaled Coltrane-like heights, they had come as close as any rock band was likely to get." Rolling Stone would say in 2002 that the song's performance found the musicians "lock[ed] together ... with the grace and passion of the tightest jazz musicians," while in 2008, it said the trills, crawls, and sustain of the guitar work represented "the language of jazz charged with electric R&B futurism."

Following the Duane Allman solo, the band drops off and a relatively brief but to-the-point percussion break is taken by Trucks and Johanson, that reflects Kind of Blue drummer Jimmy Cobb's work. The full band then enters to recap the mid-tempo second theme, and the song is finished off abruptly. The Fillmore audience lets a couple of silent beats pass before erupting in applause.