Guitarist defined the Allmans’ sound
SARASOTA COUNTY, Fla. – Dickey Betts, a driving force behind the Allman Brothers Band that launched Southern rock and influenced the jam band scene, died Thursday at his Florida home, according to longtime manager David Spero.
“It is with profound sadness and heavy hearts that the Betts family announce the peaceful passing of Forrest Richard ‘Dickey’ Betts (December 12, 1943 - April 18, 2024) at the age of 80 years old,” reads the statement from the Betts family.
“The legendary performer, songwriter, bandleader and family patriarch was at his home in Osprey surrounded by his family. Dickey was larger than life, and his loss will be felt world-wide. At this difficult time, the family asks for prayers and respect for their privacy in the coming days. More information will be forthcoming at the appropriate time.”
The Allman Brothers performed a singular amalgam of rock, blues, jazz and country marked by the pioneering, twin lead guitar playing of Dickey Betts and Duane Allman, best heard on the band’s landmark 1971 live album ”At Fillmore East.” After the tragic deaths of Duane Allman and then bassist Berry Oakley, Betts became the de facto leader of the band, writing and singing the chart-topping single “Ramblin’ Man” from their platinum-selling 1973 album “Brothers and Sisters,” which also features key Betts compositions such as “Southbound” and the hit instrumental “Jessica.”
Betts released several acclaimed solo albums in the 1970s and 1980s before playing an integral role in reforming the Allman Brothers Band in ’89 following a seven-year hiatus. Joined by founding singer/keyboardist Gregg Allman and drummers Butch Trucks and Jai Johanny Johanson (known as Jaimoe), Betts brought his Dickey Betts Band guitarist Warren Haynes into the fold and wrote the vast majority of the material for their 1990 comeback album “Seven Turns,” which features Betts singing the hit title track.
The Allman Brothers spent the first half of the ’90s regularly issuing well-received new studio and live albums while filling amphitheaters nationwide, often headlining lineups with popular jam bands who were influenced by albums like “At Fillmore East,” its follow-up “Eat A Peach” and “Brothers and Sisters.” The Allman Brothers were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995 by Willie Nelson. During the ceremony, Betts’ explosive guitar work was the highlight of the band’s performance of the blues standard “One Way Out,” which they first popularized when Duane Allman was in the band.
“We had some real tragedies losing Duane (Allman) and losing Berry Oakley and we had to keep the band together, had to keep it effective, and viable through all that period,” Betts told the Herald-Tribune in 2019. “We took off the (1980s) and Gregg and I put our little bands together and played clubs. After we got back together a lot of writers from Rolling Stone and stuff were calling us dinosaurs and making fun of bands like us and wondering if we could still play and we were determined. It gave us more drive and we showed we weren’t done yet. We made some of our best records and I think that helped put us in the Hall of Fame.”
While many celebrities have lived in Sarasota and Manatee counties including Betts’ longtime bandmate Gregg Allman, none have roots as deep as Betts’, whose songwriting and guitar playing would go on to influence acts including Lynyrd Skynyrd, Marshall Tucker Band, Gov’t Mule and Tedeschi Trucks Band. The Betts family started living here, in the southeastern Manatee County community of Myakka City, about the time of the Civil War. Drive around the area east of Bradenton today and you are bound to find Betts Road.
Forrest Richard ‘Dickey’ Betts born in Florida
Forrest Richard Betts was born on Dec. 12, 1943. The boy everyone called Dickey traded his ukulele for a mandolin and then a banjo and then an electric guitar because he noticed the electric guitar impressed the girls.
At 16, he left home to join the circus and got a gig playing the Teen Beat stage of World of Mirth, which traveled the country from 1933 to 1963.
“Our band would do like splits and we had basketball knee pads and we’d go sliding on our knees playing and then I’d pick the other guitar player up on my shoulders and we had all this s--- going on,” Betts told me during a 2014 interview at his home. “So we did like 10, 12 shows a day. It was like Vaudeville or something except it was rock ’n’ roll. That was my first road trip.”
Betts’ next road trip was playing with the band The Jokers, immortalized in the Rick Derringer song “Rock and Roll, Hoochie Koo.”
The Jokers were a regionally popular act that could fill 1,500-capacity dance halls. After playing with them in Indiana, Betts returned home and teamed up with fellow guitar player Larry “Rhino” Reinhardt, a Bradenton native who would go on to play with Iron Butterfly and Captain Beyond, bass guitarist Berry Oakley and keyboardist Reese Wynans. They emerged in the late 1960s in Jacksonville as Second Coming band.
Duane Allman, already a famed session guitarist, and his good friend Jai Johanny “Jaimoe” Johanson, who had played drums in Otis Redding’s band and then with Sam & Dave, moved to Jacksonville in March of 1969, and soon that’s where the Allman Brothers Band formed with Duane Allman and Betts sharing lead guitar duties, Oakley on bass, and Jaimoe playing drums alongside Butch Trucks, with whom Duane and his younger sibling Gregg Allman had worked with before. Gregg Allman, who was living in Los Angeles in early ’69, joined a few weeks later – at the urging of Duane, Betts and the rest of the musicians – to handle lead vocals and play the Hammond B-3 organ.
Betts co-founds Allman Brothers Band in 1969
The Allman Brothers Band relocated to Macon, Georgia, and their debut album came out in November of 1969. The band toured the country virtually nonstop for an entire year and then released “Idlewild South,” which includes the Allman Brothers’ first charting single, “Revival,” written by Betts, as well as the debut of his instrumental “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed.”
The definitive, 13-minute rendition of “Elizabeth Reed” appears on the Allman Brothers’ masterpiece, the 1971 double live album “At Fillmore East.” “Elizabeth Reed” is one of only three originals on the album that also includes the instrumental “Hot ’Lanta” (credited to the entire band) and the Gregg Allman original “Whipping Post,” which clocks in at 23 minutes and features some of Duane Allman and Betts’ most inspired guitar playing.
A few months after the “Fillmore” release unofficial bandleader Duane Allman died in a motorcycle accident. Almost exactly a year later, Oakley died in a motorcycle accident. Both men were 24 years old and riding near their respective homes in Macon.
Betts’ composition “Blue Sky,” the first Allman Brothers song with him on lead vocals and one of the last to feature the gorgeous guitar harmonizing of Betts and Duane Allman, appears on the hit 1972 double album “Eat a Peach.”
‘Brothers and Sisters’ features Betts’ hit song ‘Ramblin’ Man’
The Allman Brothers’ next album, 1973’s “Brothers and Sisters,” includes “Ramblin’ Man.” Betts wrote and sang lead on the song as well as playing lead guitar.
“Ramblin’ Man” is the Allman Brothers Band’s first and only Top 10 pop hit, reaching No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and No. 1 on the U.S. Cashbox Top 100.
“I was going to send ‘Ramblin’ Man’ to Johnny Cash,” Betts told me. “I thought it was a great song for him. But everybody in our band liked that song. Even my dad liked the song before we recorded it or anything.”
During Bob Dylan’s Sept. 30, 1995, concert at the USF Sun Dome in Tampa. Florida, Betts joined Dylan on stage for several numbers including “Ramblin’ Man.” Betts told the story of how it came to be while seated at his Sarasota County home in 2014.
Dylan says, “Let’s do ‘Ramblin’ Man.’” “All right, let me write the words down,” Betts tells him.
“I know the words,” Dylan says. “I should have wrote that song.”
Betts unleashed one of his warm, charming laughs.
The success of “Brothers and Sisters,” in large part, because of “Ramblin’ Man” made the Allman Brothers rock stars.
Betts is survived by many local family members including his wife of more than three decades, Donna Betts, and his daughter, country music singer Kimberly Betts, who performed around Sarasota-Manatee with her band Gamble Creek, which featured her son (Dickey’s grandson), Grant Tyler, on guitar.