From News Services
Wednesday, April 26, 2006; B06

Philip Walden, 66, whose Macon, Ga.-based Capricorn Records launched the Allman Brothers Band and became known as "the citadel of Southern rock" in the 1970s, died April 23 at his home in Atlanta. He had cancer.

Mr. Walden, whose career began when he started managing Otis Redding and booking shows for other R&B artists in the late '50s, started Capricorn in 1969.

Capricorn earned a reputation as the South's most successful independent record label in the 1970s, with acts such as the Allman Brothers Band and the Marshall Tucker Band. Its roster also included Wet Willie, Elvin Bishop and the Dixie Dregs.

Over the years, Mr. Walden endured and overcame rocky times at Capricorn, including bankruptcy proceedings and a late 1970s lawsuit by the Allmans, in which the courts ruled the band had been underpaid for album sales.

He also overcame problems with cocaine and alcohol in the 1980s and stayed in show business by managing the career of Jim Varney, the actor-comedian whose Ernest P. Worrell character constantly asked, "Know what I mean, Vern?"

Mr. Walden reentered the record business with a revived Capricorn Records in the early 1990s.

Born Jan. 11, 1940, in Greenville, S.C., Mr. Walden grew up in Macon, where he became an early fan of R&B music. He was a student at Mercer University in Macon in 1959 when he began operating an artist-management company, Phil Walden Artists and Promotions.

One of his first clients was Redding, a then-unknown young R&B singer he met at an amateur contest at a Macon theater. Beginning in 1962, Redding recorded a string of hits, including "Respect" and "Try a Little Tenderness."

From his success with Redding, Mr. Walden began managing or booking other R&B acts, including Sam and Dave, Joe Tex, Percy Sledge and Clarence Carter.

Mr. Walden and Redding had planned to build a recording studio together, but their plans ended when Redding died in a plane crash in 1967 at age 26.

Instead, with the encouragement of Jerry Wexler, an influential executive at Atlantic Records, Mr. Walden launched Capricorn Records.

The label, which was initially distributed by Atlantic, was intended to be an R&B singles label. But, Mr. Walden told the Chicago Tribune, "quite honestly, after Otis's death, black music just didn't seem the same for me. . . . I had tried before to get some rock-and-roll clients [to manage], and now I was hellbent on proving I could come up with some rock groups" for Capricorn.

After hearing a tape of Wilson Pickett performing "Hey Jude," Mr. Walden recalled in the 1991 interview, he asked the producer who the guitarist was. "He said it was some long-haired hippie guy down in Muscle Shoals. I said: 'I'm going to Muscle Shoals. I'm gonna sign him and put a group around this guy.' "

The guitarist was Duane Allman. Shortly after the release of the band's breakthrough album, "The Allman Brothers Band at Fillmore East," which went platinum, Allman died in a motorcycle accident.

In 1977, Capricorn ended its distribution deal at Warner Bros. Records, and Mr. Walden moved to PolyGram Records. When PolyGram was hit hard by an industry-wide slump two years later, Capricorn filed for bankruptcy.

In 1991, Mr. Walden made a distribution deal with Warner Bros. and relaunched Capricorn Records in Nashville with the Georgia rock band Widespread Panic as the label's first act.

Mr. Walden sold Capricorn in 2000 for a reported $13 million to New York-based Volcano Records and started the label Velocette in Atlanta. He went into semi-retirement about 2001, and the label is now run by his daughter, Amantha, and nephew Jason Walden.

In addition to his daughter, Walden is survived by his wife, Peggy Hackett Walden; a son, Philip M. Walden Jr.; a brother; and four grandchildren.