Wilmington native Johnny Neel, who died this week at age 70, was legendary in Nashville. Best known to the broader public for his stint with the Allman Brothers Band, he made his mark in Music City as a songwriter, session musician, charismatic performer – and as the subject of countless stories of his carrying on that nobody will put on the record.
Warren Haynes, the guitarist who played with Neel in the Dickey Betts Band and joined ABB at the same time Neel did in 1990, left a heartfelt tribute on Facebook, to which Michael McDonald added his condolences.
He was sitting in with a band at a blues jam and he sang a song and played harmonica. The first thing I noticed, other than that he was blind, was that he sang better than their singer and he played better harp than their harp player. After he was done, I approached him and introduced myself and told him how much I enjoyed hearing him to which he replied “I’m really a keyboard player but this band doesn’t have keyboards.” “Wow,” I thought. He must be a helluva keyboard player — and he was.
Neel, originally John Neel Amalfitano, spent his first 30 years in Wilmington. Blind since infancy, he was 7 when he started learning piano at the school for the blind he attended in Baltimore, and at 12 he cut his first singles, for Vince Rago’s Wilmington label Richie Records. “Talking About People” got airplay in both Wilmington and Philadelphia. Whoever posted this video refers to it as “obscure Northern Soul.”
Neel grew out of that boyish soprano into a gruff baritone perfect for the blues. It wasn’t long after he moved to Nashville that he fell in with Haynes and through him the other members of the Allman Brothers Band. He only appeared on one ABB album, “Seven Turns,” and toured with them when they reunited for their 20th Anniversary, but he played with various offshoots of the band for years. He co-wrote four of the songs on “Seven Turns,” including “Good Clean Fun,” a No. 1 hit on the Modern Rock Tracks chart in 1990. The video includes only a few glimpses of Neel.
Neel released a few well-regarded solo albums back in the 20th century, but his output increased markedly in the 21st – nine LPs between 2000 and 2012. He mostly stuck to territory between blues, country and Southern rock, but he could also dip back into his early soul experience for tunes like “Cross My Mind,” the leadoff track on his 2004 album “Gun Metal Blue.”
Neel suffered a stroke in 2019 but had recovered enough to make a limited return to performing recently. He died of heart failure.