On a porch in 1968, nursing an elbow injury from a horse fall, Duane Allman emptied a glass Coricidin cold medicine bottle, slid it over his ring finger and taught himself slide guitar in a single afternoon. Within a few years he was recognized worldwide as a master of the electric guitar, and by 24 he was gone. This episode traces the Nashville-born guitarist from the murder of his father in 1949 and a resented stint at military academy to the B.B. King concert that convinced him and his brother Gregg to devote their lives to music.

We look at the mechanical advantage of a naturally left-handed player fretting a right-handed guitar, the failed Los Angeles band Hour Glass, and the Muscle Shoals session on Wilson Pickett’s cover of Hey Jude where a blistering solo caught the ears of Jerry Wexler and Eric Clapton. From there we follow the formation of the Allman Brothers Band in Jacksonville, the dual lead guitar harmonies with Dickey Betts, the all-night Miami jam with Clapton that became Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs, the Fillmore East live recordings, and the October 1971 motorcycle crash in Macon, Georgia. We close on the eerie death of bassist Berry Oakley 13 months later, the album Eat a Peach, and the words carved into a Mississippi highway cutting: Remember Duane Allman.

• Why a glass cold medicine bottle produced a smoother, longer-sustaining slide tone than metal
• The Hey Jude session with Wilson Pickett that broke every unwritten rule for a session player
• How two lead guitars playing in thirds became the Allman Brothers signature
• Gibson humbuckers versus Clapton’s Fender single coils on the Layla sessions
• The Macon motorcycle crash, Berry Oakley’s death three blocks away, and the Eat a Peach tribute