Gregg Allman, one of the two brothers from legendary rock band the Allman Brothers Band, has died. He was 69.

Allman was born on Dec. 8, 1978, in Nashville. He was also born a ramblin’ man, if his band’s 1973 classic rock hit was any indication. He, along with his brother Duane, helped to create one of the most successful classic rock bands of all time. With that came not just music, but drugs, women and ― at times ― tragedy, including the early death of Duane.

In his later years, Allman developed hepatitis C, and suffered from an irregular heartbeat and a respiratory infection and had to have a liver transplant. In 2017, he canceled a planned summer tour, sparking worries about his health. 

Allman was born to Willis Allman, a WWII veteran who stormed Normandy Beach, came back to his bride after the war, and had two sons. His father’s life was cut short when Gregg was just 2 years old. After Willis Allman offered a stranger a ride home from a bar one night, the man fatally shot him in the back.

Neither Gregg nor Duane showed any interest in emulating their father’s military career. The boys hated the military school their mother sent them to, but found their footing in music while there, according to Rolling Stone.

“I learned to play mostly from black people,” Allman told The Guardian in 2015. “We used to listen to a station that called itself ‘The black spot on your dial.’ It played Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf, and it hit Duane and me like spaghetti hitting a wall.”

By the time the Allman Brothers Band was formed in 1969, Gregg and Duane were legitimate country hippies ― long-haired, drug-smoking free-loving spirits. Duane played guitar, with Gregg on vocals. Other founding members of the band included drummers “Butch” Trucks and Jai “Jaimoe” Johnny Johnson, along with “Dickey” Betts on guitar and Berry Oakley on bass.

The Allman Brothers Band blended country, jazz, blues and Southern rock in such seamless riffs, pounding drums and twangy vocals that it earned them a place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995, and a Lifetime Achievement award at the Grammys in 2012. The movie “Almost Famous” was also, in part, inspired by the band.

The Allman Brothers Band produced their biggest hits in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, including “Ramblin’ Man,” “Midnight Rider” and “Whipping Post.” During this time, the band experimented heavily with drugs and attracted many groupies on tour.

“Gregg was just a pretty boy,” drummer Butch Trucks told Rolling Stone in 1999. “He had blond hair, and the girls were hanging all over him.”

In his book My Cross To Bear, Gregg bragged about his sexual exploits.

“I would have women in four or five different rooms,” Allman wrote about staying in hotels while on tour. “Mind you, I wouldn’t lie to anybody; I’d just say, ‘I’ll be right back.’”

During those earlier years, he and his bandmates were also experimenting with drugs, including (but not limited to) PCP, cocaine and speed. The band loved psychedelic mushrooms so much, they made them their unofficial logo and tattooed a mushroom on each of their calves, according to Rolling Stone.

In 1971, just as the band found itself being propelled into stardom, Duane Allman died in a motorcycle accident. He was  24.

“Duane was the king of laughter, always making jokes,” Gregg Allman told The Guardian in 2015. “You’ve got to keep laughing. It was what Duane would have done, and wanted us to do.”

At Duane’s funeral, Gregg played songs on his older brother’s antique guitar.

“This is a very old guitar, a very beautiful piece,” he said to a crowd of 300. “It was made in 1920 and I’m very proud to have it. And I’m very proud that you all came.”

In 1975, Allman married singer Cher in Las Vegas. The marriage lasted nin days, ending after Allman allegedly pulled a knife on her while trying to score heroin. They reconciled after learning Cher was pregnant with their son, Elijah Blue.

In 1977, Cher divorced Allman for good. The final straw was reportedly at an awards show, when Allman passed out face-first in a plate of spaghetti.

“Every now and then,” Allman wrote in his 2012 memoir, “I’ll think of all the hell I caused other people over the years.” 

Allman eventually embraced sobriety. 

“I’m doing great,” Allman told the Savannah Morning News in 2013. “I’ve been clean and sober for 19 years. I just came off one of best the tours I’ve ever done, and I feel good every day.”

In “Ramblin’ Man,” Allman croons: “And when it’s time for leavin, I hope you’ll understand / That I was born a ramblin’ man.”

We understand, midnight rider. 

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In this week’s episode of “Scheer Intelligence” Robert Scheer speaks with documentarian John Scheinfeld about his latest film, “Chasing Trane” about jazz icon John Coltrane. The two also discuss Scheinfeld’s earlier film, “The U.S. vs. John Lennon,” and Lennon’s political activism during the Vietnam War.

The conversation begins with a look at the parallels between Lennon and Coltrane. Noting that the two music legends “overlapped in time,” Scheer tells Scheinfeld: “What you capture in both stories is a search for integrity and rebellion.”

After delving into Lennon’s political activism during and after the Vietnam War, the two discuss Coltrane’s legacy. Scheinfeld notes that Coltrane was a “practice nut” who would practice “hours and hours every day.”

“Yes, jazz exists today, but it’s not the same thing,” Scheer says.

Scheinfeld explains Coltrane’s background and musical process, and the two agree that his music defied any genre.

“He seemed to always be learning and seeking the truth,” Scheinfeld says. “I didn’t want to make a jazz film. In fact, I think the word ‘jazz’ appears in ‘Chasing Trane’ maybe five times. This is a journey film … it’s a portrait of this remarkable artist.”

Listen to the full conversation and listen to past editions of “Scheer Intelligence” here.

— Adapted from Truthdig.com

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Chinese foot-binding is perceived today as unusual, gruesome, an antiquated fetish, an erotic tradition. 

For decades in China, young girls’ bones were broken and their feet tightly bond in a painful process that would eventually make them appear more desirable to men, according to historians. Their deformed feet, known as lotus feet, were tucked into embroidered shoes and viewed as delicate and dainty. It was a way to show off their social status. It was, at the time, chic.

One study, however, suggests that there was another reason girls were subjected to the practice ― and it wasn’t all about beauty or sex.

Research published in the book Bound Feet, Young Hands suggests that some women’s feet had been bound at a very young age so they could be trained to sit still for hours and help create textiles and clothing for the family.

“What’s groundbreaking about our work is that [foot-binding was] not confined to the elite,” Laurel Bossen, the book’s co-author, told HuffPost. The study, Bossen added, dispels the view that the goal was only to try to please men.

To uncover this little-known history of foot-binding, Bossen and the book’s co-author, researcher Hill Gates, interviewed over 1,800 elderly women in remote villages across China and found that foot-binding was widespread among peasant populations, shattering the belief that foot-binding was a status symbol of the elite.

All the women surveyed were born when foot-binding was still an accepted tradition. It’s unclear when the practice began exactly, but Bossen believes foot-binding in China goes back as far as 1,000 years.

“As the last generation of these foot-bound women disappears, we fortunately managed to interview many of them,” Bossen told HuffPost. “There is no other body of data based on interviews with foot-bound women that is as comprehensive as this. It was really a last chance to do it.”

The type of foot-binding practiced in rural communities was a form of discipline, the book argues. Mothers bound young girls’ feet so they would stay still and work with their hands, creating yarn and spinning thread, among other things, which families could use or sell.

“Women who bound their daughters’ feet had their own interests in controlling the labor of young girls and young women,” she said. “We reject the view that women were exempted from work, treasuring their precious bound feet and not economically important. They developed hand skills and worked with their hands throughout their lives.”

These new findings, Bossen believes, prove that women in rural areas who had bound feet didn’t get the recognition they deserved.

“Chinese women were contributing more to society than they received credit for,” she said of the rural women with bound feet. “They were making very important contributions in the form of textiles [that have] been undervalued and mostly just forgotten.”

And while this new research suggests that this painful practice wasn’t solely for men’s desire, it doesn’t make the practice any less oppressive.

Bossen explained, “It robbed young girls and then women throughout their lives of their ability to do other things, to move around and play, to have more choices. Of course it’s oppressive.”

The practice of foot-binding began to be banned in the early 20th century, though some women, like those interviewed by Bossen, kept their feet bound their entire lives. Bossen believes the stories of the women she interviewed might have gotten lost in history as their generation passed away. 

Still, Bossen and Gates’ book doesn’t deny that “lotus feet” were created to make a woman appear more desirable. Accounts written by feet-bound women in 19th century China, published by the University of Virginia, show that women often believed the tighter the foot-binding, the better the husband they’d attract. 

The research does, however, show that these women were more than just sexualized objects. They worked hard to contribute to their families and to the larger society.

“We often underestimate how important handwork was in China’s pre-industrial economy,” she told HuffPost. “The intense pressure on women to work with their hands, to spin, weave, sew, and stitch cloth, bedding and textile products for their families and for sale has gone unrecognized.”

Their research, Bossen added, aims to look at the whole woman and not just her bound feet.

“Somehow, people have been so fascinated by the feet that they ignored the rest of the woman and what she did,” she said.

“It’s very rare to find people who notice the role of handwork in the lives of foot-bound women or who ask these elderly women what work they did when they were young girls.”

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