Guitarist and songwriter Tommy Talton died on December 28, 2023. Fortunately for us, he and his band had gathered at Capricorn Studios in Macon, Georgia, in April 2022 to lay down seven tracks that became his final recordings, now collected on Seven Levels. These songs feature Talton’s never-miss-a-note intimate guitar work and his gravelly baritone vocals. Like Duane Allman, Talton was at one with his instrument, and his emotions flowed into his riffs and runs, transporting listeners with each caress of the frets.
In 1969, Talton and guitarist Scott Boyer formed Cowboy in Jacksonville, Florida, the forerunners of the music that came to be known as Southern rock. Cowboy released four studio albums between 1970 and 1977, and “Please Be with Me,” on which Duane Allman plays and Eric Clapton later recorded, is their best known song. Boyer died in 2018 and that same year the band’s final reunion album 10’ll Getcha Twenty, containing songs recorded in 2007, was released. In the years following Cowboy’s breakup, Talton played with a stellar cast of musicians including Gregg Allman (on Allman’s Laid Back album), Bonnie Bramlett, Dickey Betts, Clarence Carter, and Billy Joe Shaver, among others.
