In Memory of Dickey Betts From the Allman Brothers

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April 2024 has been a rough month for classic rock fans. In addition to losing Mike Pinder from the Moody Blues on April 24, on April 18, we bid a sad goodbye to Allman Brothers guitarist Dickey Betts, who died due to cancer and complications from COPD. Betts was 80.

While guitarist Duane Allman and keyboardist/occasional guitarist/vocalist Gregg Allman were the Allman Brothers’ focal points, during Betts’ time in the band from its inception until his acrimonious departure in 2000, he admirably served in two distinct roles. Initially, a six-string harmonizer and counterpart for Duane Allman, after Allman died in a 1971 motorcycle accident, Betts stepped into the lead position, also providing the band with its biggest hit with 1973’s “Ramblin’ Man.”

While Duane Allman’s fiery slide guitar is rightly revered, Betts’ tasty lead work was an invaluable part of the Allman Brothers’ sound. As Mike Roe, master guitarist of the 77s, describes it:

By that time (1973), I’d been playing guitar for nine years but had hit a plateau with it, and not a very good one technically. I needed a way into something bigger, something closer to the new sounds I was being alternately inspired and challenged by.

In the midst of all of this was The Allman Brothers Band, sporting the amazingly gifted Duane Allman on both slide and standard electric guitar, and his trusty partner Dickey Betts alongside him playing a smoother, slightly more melodic version of Duane’s intense approach. To this day, the Allman’s mostly live recordings from the early 70s still rank among my very favorites of that musical era.

It was Dickey’s soloing in particular that helped me to finally make a huge leap forward in my electric guitar playing. Dickey was the master of taking his time to construct a solo from the ground up, building his melodic ideas slowly and patiently until they eventually flowered into a burning crescendo that paved the way for Duane to step in and take that energy all the way home.

After Duane’s sudden passing, the Allmans chose not to replace him but rather bravely carried on with the addition of a brilliant piano player named Chuck Leavell, leaving Dickey on his own to carry Duane’s torch. This might have proved an overwhelming task to a guitarist of lesser skill than Dickey, but Betts brought the goods every time and became even better as a result.

I saw the band play at the Oakland Coliseum in 1973 and they were still absolutely riveting to watch. Seeing Betts do his thing in person was a turning point for me because I saw how his eye contact and personal connection with the audience pushed him to new heights in his playing.

I can never repay Dickey for how he inspired me to “next level” on guitar, but I can still encourage any young player that wishes to learn the basics of good rock guitar soloing in a band context to check him out.

Betts and company made it cool to be unapologetically Southern. As the late 1960s turned into the early 1970s, Selma and Martin Luther King Jr.’s murder were still fresh in the American psyche. And then came the Allman Brothers, following their muse wherever it led with zero compromise on any front. An interracial band at a time when it was legitimately dangerous in certain parts of the country to be so, the Allman Brothers broke all the barriers even as they broke all the rules. Betts was a vital element of the band’s sound, one that inspired Lynyrd Skynyrd and others to similarly embrace both the freedom of jamming when one has something to say musically and their Southern heritage. Were it not for the ramblin’ man, the free bird would have never flown.

Godspeed, Dickey Betts.