The Legendary Guitar Exchange: Delaney Bramlett and Duane Allman’s Musical Bond
Delaney Bramlett was no stranger to the music elite, counting icons like George Harrison and Eric Clapton among his close friends. Though, his relationship with Duane Allman stood out as especially special.
In the late 1960s, the guitarist of the Allman Brothers Band formed a deep friendship with Bramlett, becoming an integral part of the musical circle surrounding Delaney & Bonnie and Friends. Allman contributed to several recordings with the group,and in 1970,he gifted Bramlett a stunning three-tone sunburst 1961 Fender Stratocaster featuring a rosewood fretboard.
As Bramlett recounted in an interview with guitar Player, this gift was a heartfelt gesture from a friend who felt like family.
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“Duane had left the Allman Brothers to tour with my band,” Bramlett shared in the March 1996 issue of the magazine. “Sometimes he’d play my goldtop, and I often played his Strat becuase I loved it. While we were performing in New York, he had to head to macon for a while. My brother discovered the Strat in his room with a note that read: ‘To Delaney, my best friend. Wear it in good health.’”
The last time Bramlett saw Allman was at the funeral of blues legend King Curtis, who passed away in August 1971. Tragically, Allman died just over two months later, on October 29, while Bramlett was touring in western Oregon.
“My brother received a call informing him that Duane had died,” Bramlett recalled. “He waited until I finished my show to tell me. The next thing I knew, I was attending Duane’s funeral.”
This generous gift was particularly poignant given that Bramlett had once denied Allman the return of a guitar he desperately wanted back: the very first electric guitar he ever owned.
In 1961, Allman’s mother purchased a cherry-red double-cutaway 1959 Gibson Les Paul Junior to prevent him from constantly borrowing his brother gregg’s Teisco Silvertone. Eventually, Allman pawned the Gibson, and not long after, Bramlett acquired an electric guitar that bore a striking resemblance to Allman’s lost instrument.
“I called Duane to boast about it, and he asked, ‘Does it have a big scrape on the back?’ I replied, ‘Yes.’ He then said, ‘That was my first electric guitar. I pawned it and forgot where. Can I have it back?’ I responded, ‘No way. This is a real good one.’”
Bramlett’s memory of his guitars was not always precise. In the same Guitar Player interview, he recounted a tale about another notable instrument in his collection: a rare 1913 Gibson Style O archtop that had once belonged to Eric Clapton and George Harrison.
According to Bramlett, he and Clapton stumbled upon the guitar while touring in support of Clapton’s debut solo album.
“We were always on the lookout for guitars,” Bramlett explained. “We found this neck sticking out of a dumpster,pulled it out,and there it was. One of the real rare ones. It had a broken neck,but other than that,it was a beauty.”
However, this narrative doesn’t align with the documented history of the guitar.
Clapton had acquired the 1913 Gibson by 1968, and he and Harrison used it during the songwriting sessions that lead to some of their most important works. The guitar is famously linked to “Badge,” the Clapton-Harrison collaboration featured on Cream’s final album, Goodbye, and also “Here Comes the Sun” and other songs they penned in the late 1960s. Clapton eventually gifted the guitar to Bramlett around 1970.
The instrument became known as ”Pattie,” a tribute to Pattie Boyd, Harrison’s former wife who later married Clapton. In May 2025, the guitar was listed for nearly $1 million on Reverb before being offered by Heritage Auctions in November of that year, where it ultimately did not sell.
(Image credit: Birmingham post & Mail/Mirrorpix/Mirrorpix via Getty images)
Bramlett’s collection expanded to include other iconic guitars,such as Harrison’s 1968 Rosewood Telecaster,which has since returned to Harrison’s estate. He sold Allman’s Les Paul Junior in 1999, and many of Bramlett’s remaining guitars were auctioned off following his passing in 2008. While Bramlett may have embellished the details surrounding the acquisition of one of the most historically significant guitars he owned, there’s no denying that he was the custodian of some truly remarkable instruments.
