Dickey Betts, a co-founder of the Allman Brothers Band and probably the most influential and vibrant figures within the realm of music identified loosely as southern rock, died on April 18, 2024, following a interval of declining well being. His passing at 80 years previous left simply co-drummer Jai Johanny Johanson, aka Jaimo, because the final surviving member of the unique line-up of the group.
A press release on behalf of the band recalled how Betts’s “extraordinary” guitar taking part in, alongside that of Duane Allman, “created a singular dual-guitar sound that turned the signature sound”. Till that time it had been conventional for two-guitar bands to have outlined roles for soloists and rhythm gamers.
The assertion remembered Betts as being “passionate in life, be it music, songwriting, fishing, searching, boating, golf, karate or boxing”, including: “Dickey was all-in on and excelled at something that caught his consideration.”
It concluded: “Betts joins his brothers, Duane Allman, Berry Oakley, Butch Vans and Gregg Allman, in addition to ABB crew members Twiggs Lyndon, Joe Dan Petty, Purple Canine, Kim Payne and Mike Callahan in that previous Winnebago within the sky touring the world, taking their music to all who will pay attention.”
The Allman Brothers Band shaped in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1969, their freeform model fusing collectively parts of nation, rock, blues and jazz. Whereas brothers Duane (guitar) and Gregg Allman (keyboards, vocals) had been the band’s leaders, Betts was a big member, writing most of the band’s quintessential songs together with Blue Sky and Ramblin’ Man, and in addition the instrumentals In Reminiscence Of Elizabeth Reed and Jessica, the latter of which turned the theme tune to the British TV present High Gear.
On stage and within the studio, the band turned identified for his or her improvisational abilities. Their tune Mountain Jam (primarily based on the 1967 Donovan music There Is a Mountain), which appeared on 1972’s part-live double album Eat A Peach, would function an prolonged instrumental jamming car for the Allman Brothers Band all through their lengthy and distinguished historical past.
Additionally recognised for his unpredictable, hellraising rock-star behaviour, Betts was the inspiration for the character performed by Billy Crudup within the 2000 movie Nearly Well-known. Throughout Betts’s youth, trashed resort rooms, arrests and fights with band members and authority figures had been just a bit too commonplace.
Forrest Richard Betts was born in West Palm Seashore, Florida. At 5 years previous he performed the ukulele, and progressed to performing in a number of native bands earlier than assembly future ABB member bassist Berry Oakley III and forming the group Second Coming. After the pair jammed with Duane Allman, Duane invited them to staff up collectively.
Along with his connection to Eric Clapton, Duane introduced pedigree to the Allman Brothers Band, though the ex-session star admitted: “I’m the well-known guitar participant, however Dickey is the great one.”
When Duane died in a motorbike crash in October 1971, with the group poised for a industrial breakthrough by way of their double dwell set At Fillmore East, Betts stepped as much as take a much bigger position. When only a 12 months later Berry Oakley died in remarkably comparable circumstances, crashing his bike right into a bus simply three blocks from the place Duane had been killed, a lesser band would have combusted. However someway the Allmans continued to reinvent themselves, with Betts performing as unofficial chief for his or her fourth album, 1973’s Brothers And Sisters.
Though the ABB turned superstars, drug utilization started to spiral, and the band members grew aside. When Gregg Allman reluctantly testified towards his private street supervisor John ‘Scooter’ Herring in a 1976 federal medicine case, the Brothers had been torn asunder. After a cut up in 1976, Betts launched a solo album, Freeway Name, earlier than forming Dickey Betts & Nice Southern.
A reunion ensued for the Allmans’ 1979 album Enlightened Rogues, however regardless of promoting half one million copies the spark was lacking, and three years later, having misfired with Attain For The Sky and Brothers Of The Highway, the band broke up once more.
In 1989 a brand new line-up celebrated ABB’s twentieth anniversary, with guitarist Warren Haynes, beforehand of Dickey Betts’s solo group, serving to them to rediscover their kind with the back-tobasics, Tom Dowd-produced 1990 album Seven Turns.
“I wound up spending twenty-five years of my life as a member of my favorite band,” Haynes said, because the horrible information of Betts’s dying broke. “It didn’t take lengthy to understand, standing subsequent to Dickie with that lovely tone, that I had rather a lot to work to do on each with my tone and with my model. He threw me within the lake and I needed to be taught to swim. I’m perpetually grateful for that once-in-a-lifetime alternative.”
With Gregg Allman and Betts at loggerheads, for what was described as “private causes” – the band had insisted that Dickey go into rehab – he was suspended previous to a tour in 1990. The transfer was meant to be short-term. “Ain’t no approach we are able to hearth Dickey,” founding member Butch Vans mentioned on the time. Nevertheless, the primary of a number of police studies for claims by his long-suffering spouse Donna of home assault muddied the waters. Betts insists he was sacked for demanding an audit of the band’s cash from the band’s administration.
“[Dickey] was simply loopy as a bat, y’know,” Gregg Allman defined on the time. “However the primary factor is that it wasn’t working musically any extra.”
After Betts filed a lawsuit, there was little lifelike probability of him making a return to the Allman Brothers, so he resumed a solo profession. In later years his son Duane (named after Duane Allman) joined him on lead guitar in Dickey Betts & Nice Southern.
Betts and Gregg Allman reconciled earlier than the latter’s dying in 2017. Betts’s daughter Christie is married to Tesla guitarist Frank Hannon. A street canine to the top, Betts remained on the street even after mind surgical procedure because of a fall at his Florida residence in what was described as a “freak accident”. He additionally suffered a minor stroke.
Betts was inducted to the Rock And Roll Corridor Of Fame with the remainder of the Allman Brothers Band in 1995. Nonetheless with out him, the group wrapped their profession in October 2014 upon completion of what had develop into an annual run of exhibits at New York’s Beacon Theatre. They proceed to be hailed as an affect by Lynyrd Skynyrd, ZZ High, The Black Crowes and Child Rock, amongst others
Regardless of having develop into poster boys for the style, Betts “hated” the label ‘southern rock’, commenting: “I feel it’s limiting. I’d slightly simply be often known as a progressive rock band from the South. Calling us that pigeonholed us, forcing folks to anticipate sure sorts of music from us that I don’t suppose are truthful.”
In 2020, Betts was name-checked in Bob Dylan’s music Homicide Most Foul, which included the road: ‘Play Oscar Peterson, play Stan Getz, play Blue Sky, play Dickey Betts’. Whereas Betts was thrilled by that, he was modest sufficient to say: “Nicely, he [Dylan] simply used me as a result of [my name] rhymes with Getz.’”