Dickey Betts Dies: Allman Brothers Guitarist, Singer & Songwriter Was 80

Erik Pedersen
·6-min read
Dickey Betts Dies: Allman Brothers Guitarist, Singer & Songwriter Was 80

Dickey Betts, the Allman Brothers Band’s Grammy-winning co-founding guitarist, singer and songwriter behind such classics as “Ramblin’ Man,” “Blue Sky” and “Jessica,” died today of cancer at his home in Osprey, FL. He was 80.

His family posted the news on social media.

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“Dickey was larger than life, and his loss will be felt world-wide,” the family wrote on Instagram. “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.”

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Born Forrest Richard Betts on December 12, 1943, in West Palm Beach, FL, Betts was leading a band called the Second Coming in 1969 when he began jamming with future guitar legend Duane Allman and others in what would coalesce into the Allman Brothers Band. Also made up of lead singer-keyboardist Gregg Allman, Betts’ Second Coming bandmate and bassist Barry Oakley, and drummers Butch Trucks and Jaimoe, the group would go on to define Southern rock and become Rock and Roll Hall of Famers in 1995.

Mixing a stew of influences with virtuoso musicianship including two-guitar harmony and long, drawn-out jams, their legendary live shows inspired generations of musicians from other Southern bands including Lynyrd Skynyrd, Molly Hatchet and Blackfoot to jam groups like Phish. The group scored eight career Grammy nominations spanning 1980-2004 and won Best Rock Instrumental Performance in 1996 for a live recording of Betts’ “Jessica” from the album An Evening with the Allman Brothers Band: 2nd Set.

The Allman Brothers released their eponymous debut LP in 1970, but it barely dented the Billboard 200 album chart despite featuring such eventual classics as “Dreams,” “Whipping Post” and “Trouble No More.” Idlewild South arrived nine months later and cemented the group as a commercial force while their concerts begat legend. The disc spawned the Allmans’ first charting single, the Betts-penned “Revival,” and included such future staples of classic rock radio as “Midnight Rider,” “Statesboro Blues” and Betts’ instrumental “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed.”

The album reached the Top 40, but the group’s next disc would be a stone classic.

The double live set At Fillmore East was recorded over two nights in March 1971 in New York City and released four months later. It captured the band’s intense concert set in 76 unforgettable minutes and includes many of the group’s future radio regulars and a nearly 23-minute take on “Whipping Post.” It reached No. 13 on the Billboard chart, went platinum and became one of rock’s most celebrated live records.

Future reissues of At Fillmore East would include all tracks and clock in at more than two hours, with the six-CD 2014 box set The 1971 Fillmore East Recordings running more than six hours.

The hard-rocking, hard-living group was firmly established as rock royalty when tragedy struck. Group leader Duane Allman, who also had gained fame as the guitarist opposite Eric Clapton on “Layla,” died in a motorcycle accident in October 1971 at 24. The group would dedicate its next album to their fallen bandmate, and it changed everything.

Eat a Peach, a two-disc mix of studio and live tracks, streeted in February 1972, cracked the Top 5 and went platinum with such gems as “One Way Out,” “Ain’t Wastin’ Time No More,” “Melissa” and the Betts-penned “Blue Sky.” It also featured the side-long “Mountain Jam,” a leftover from the Fillmore East shows.

But fate intervened again that October when Oakley was killed in a motorcycle crash in Macon, GA, just blocks from where Duane Allman died a year earlier.

The band decided to carry on, and its next album would become a monster.

Betts became the leader of The Allman Brothers Band, and Brothers and Sisters arrived in August, with contributions from the late Oakley. Betts wrote and sang lead on its first single, “Ramblin’ Man,” which was an out-of-the-box radio smash. Featuring Betts’ instantly recognizable, country-flecked riff, it soared to No. 2 on Billboard’s Hot 100 — kept from the top spot by the Rolling Stones’ “Angie” — and drove Brothers and Sisters to a five-week run atop the album chart.

“I guess the song is more or less autobiographical,” Betts told Rolling Stone of “Ramblin’ Man” in 1975. “Not right down to the point, but overall it’s a pretty true song.”

Facing numerous trials from addiction, health woes and heartbreak over the years, the group wouldn’t come close to replicating the pop success of “Ramblin’ Man” or Brothers and Sisters but continued to record hit albums — 1975’s Win, Lose or Draw reached No. 5 — and tour hard. The Allmans took a hiatus in the mid-’70s, during which a plane crash decimated Lynyrd Skynyrd and Betts released the album Dickey Betts & Great Southern, but returned in 1979 with its sixth studio set Enlightened Rogues. It featured Betts’ “Crazy Love,” which would become the band’s second-biggest pop hit, cracking Billboard’s Top 30.

As Southern rock reached its commercial peak, the Allmans signed with Clive Davis’ Arista Records, and their first album for the label was Reach for the Sky in 1980, featuring Betts’ minor pop hit “Angeline” and making the Top 30. Brothers of the Road arrived the following year, led by the Betts tune “Straight from the Year,” a Top 40 pop single that fueled the LP into the Top 50.

The band then moved to Epic Records, which had seen commercial success with Gainesville’s Molly Hatchet. The Allman Brothers would make their half-dozen albums for the label, led by 1990’s Seven Turns, which featured new guitarist Warren Haynes. All but the last of the group’s Sony discs made the Top 100. 1994’s Where It All Begins went gold.

During that time, Betts was replaced on multiple concert dates, and he would play his last show with the band in 2000. He was replaced by guitar prodigy Derek Trucks, nephew of founding drummer Butch Trucks.

The band amassed four platinum and seven gold albums during Betts’ tenure, spanning studio, live and compilation sets. The group also caught the attention of Hollywood. The band’s signature songs – from their own “Ramblin’ Man” and “Whipping Post” to standards like “Statesboro Blues” – were beloved of directors from William Friedkin and Martin Scorsese to Ang Lee.

Betts went on to work on solo and side projects including the Dickey Betts Band before having a mild stroke and surgery in 2018. His work with the Allman Brothers continues to be popular to this day, with songs blanketing classic rock radio. Betts also was name-checked in the Charlie Daniels Band’s 1975 Southern rock celebration track “The South’s Gonna Do It”: “Now people down in Georgia come from near and far/To hear Richard Betts pickin’ on that red guitar.”

He is survived by his fifth wife, Donna, who he married in 1989, and their children Kimberly, Christy, Jessica and Duane.

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