The Last Mushroom: Jaimoe Carries the Original Allmans’ Final Mark

In a recording studio near his home in Bloomfield, Connecticut, Jaimoe rolls up his right pant leg. On his calf sits a small, smudged mushroom, darkened with age. The other five originals had theirs in color. Those are gone now, along with the men who wore them. The story, documented in Rolling Stone in 1971, traces back to San Francisco after a Winterland show, when the band visited tattoo artist Lyle Tuttle. The mushroom was a nod to what they consumed together. Jaimoe’s is the only one left.

The significance extends past ink. Guitarist Warren Haynes, who joined the Allmans in 1989, calls Jaimoe “one of the most defining members.” A jazz devotee before the band existed, Jaimoe pushed their blues foundation toward improvisatory looseness. That dimension, Haynes says, would have been missing without him. It shaped the group’s sound from the inside.

He was also a rare presence: a Black musician at the center of Seventies Southern rock. Muscular from years of bodybuilding ambition, often dressed in berets and glasses, he cut a figure that Bert Holman, a longtime observer turned manager, described as an enigma. The image mattered, but the playing mattered more.

The last mushroom on his calf is a small thing. But it marks a specific bond, and a specific loss. Jaimoe doesn’t need to look far for reminders.