“Little Martha” by Allman Brothers Band

"Little Martha" closes out the studio tracks on Eat a Peach, the Allman Brothers Band's fourth album, released on Capricorn in 1972, and it's the only song the band recorded that Duane Allman, their leader and lead guitarist, wrote entirely on his own. He cut it in October 1971, a few weeks before he was killed in a motorcycle accident, which gives its sunny bounce a sting in hindsight.

It's a fingerpicked instrumental duet with barely anything around it: Allman plays lead on a Dobro resonator guitar and Dickey Betts plays rhythm on a flat-top, both tuned to open E. Tom Dowd produced. That plain tune and the way the two parts play off each other won the fans over fast, and Leo Kottke, who played it often, once called it "the most perfect guitar song ever written".

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.