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L ouise Hudson glanced up from the kitchen of the H&H Restaurant and immediately noticed six skinny, long- haired boys at her table. They looked hungry and broke. Several of them were shyly picking food from just one plate. Taking pains not to embarrass them, Hudson, known to all as "Mama Louise," brought more tableware and generously ladled out greens and smothered fried chicken, and then refused to charge them. This first "loaves and fishes" gesture for the Allman Brothers Band would sanctify H&H in the South's music landscape. SHE NOURISHED OUR SOULS "It's such a sweet story of how Mama Louise saw them sharing a plate because that was all the band members could afford, and she gave them food," said Scott Freeman, author of Midnight Riders: The Story of the Allman Brothers Band. "For me, it represents Mama Louise's personal code and sensibility and generosity of the spirit. I think it also symbolizes how many folks in Macon's Black community embraced the Allman Brothers. Like themselves, the Brothers were outsiders in mainstream Macon, and the fact that the group had a Black drummer was part of that as well." Hudson opened the soul food eatery in 1959 with Inez Hill, or "Mama Hill," and together they formed a dignified matriarchy unfazed by the startling sight of Macon's first hippies. Word of the women's kindness spread quickly around the water cooler at Capricorn Records, where Gregg Allman was effectively promoting his theory that a pork-heavy diet makes for better blues vocals. Macon in that era, with its columned mansions and "Old South" vibe, seems an unlikely setting for a newfangled word like intersectionality, but Hudson, who was 40 at the time, and the growing number of young men breezing into town trailing long, cornsilk hair enjoyed a special friendship that transcended race, gender and age. "Mama Louise did more than feed and nurture a ragtag group of musicians," said keyboardist Chuck Leavell. "She felt the spirit of the time. Blacks and whites were working JUNE/JULY 2022 | maconmagazine.com 41