in a corner beside his amp and baffle. Allman played slide guitar (which was not employed in previous attempts) and improvised the overdubbed performance, bringing all of the members to tears. "It was unbelievable," recalled Trucks. "It was just magic. It’s always been that the greatest music we played was from out of nowhere, that it wasn’t practiced, planned, or discussed." During their tenure in New York, the group made their debut over three non-consecutive nights at Ungano's in Manhattan, a club that would eventually become regarded within the ensemble as their "second home." Gregg Allman felt the band had rushed through their debut recording and was later unhappy with his vocal sound on the record; "They were recorded with the regular old tape echo "Heartbreak Hotel" setting," he recalled. Barber disagreed with this assessment, and, not wanting to cause any quarrels, Allman backed away. Composition The songs on the album were largely arranged after Gregg Allman joined the band in Jacksonville, Florida in March 1969. Most of the songs were devised from longer, impromptu jam sessions. The group's style evolved from a mix of jazz, country music, blues and rock, which was the result of each individual member turning the others onto their particular interests. Trucks introduced Johanson to the Grateful Dead and the Rolling Stones; Johanson likewise introduced the group to jazz musicians such as Miles Davis and John Coltrane, and Betts did the same with country music and Chuck Berry. Duane Allman had previously listened to Davis and Coltrane before Johanson's suggestion, and his two favorite songs — Coltrane's version of "My Favorite Things" and Miles Davis' "All Blues" — were the basis for the majority of the band's modal jamming, "without a lot of chord changes." The album opens with an instrumental, a cover of Spencer Davis' "Don't Want You No More," which had previously been employed on set lists of the Second Coming, Oakley and Betts' former band. Allman and Betts' guitars perform in unison on a five-note melody while Johanson concentrates on his hi-hat, and the song includes an organ solo. The song contains two guitar solos, with the latter "[coming] in behind the first one for a darting buildup that sound[s] like something taken from Brahms." It segues into a "lazy blues shuffle" titled "It's Not My Cross to Bear," which Allman had written in Los Angeles for a former lover. "Black Hearted