For Allman Brothers, Tragedy Bore Success
On the night of Dec. 29, 1973, at the Philadelphia Spectrum, a crowd of about 20,000 people heard the soaring, ethereal notes of Dickey Betts' new solo on his hit song, Ramblin' Man. It was full of energy, so much so that it fed into the audience, who began to rise and applaud Betts while he was still playing. He wrapped up the song, and the band began playing Jessica. I thought the building would shake.
It was the final step on his journey that started two years before, on Oct. 29, 1971.
Fifty years ago, Duane Allman died in a motorcycle accident. It was a terrible irony that after years of working to create a band that accomplished his vision of a blue/jazz/rock fusion led by the innovative use of two lead guitarists and two drummers, along with a trend-setting bassist and his brother who could sing the blues.
Only a few months before, the Allman Brothers Band released the live, double album At Filmore East, and the group, which had a small but passionate fan base, achieved national recognition. Duane, a one-time sought-after session player who also played with Eric Clapton, was hailed as one of the leading lights of his generation. He played with an intensity and raw energy that in retrospect was untamed -- its wild thrusts blasted into your eardrums. Then there was his slide playing. Using a Coricidin pill bottle as his instrument, Allman's slide was miles ahead of anything people had heard at that time. It could be raunchy, sweet, soulful, or rockin'. He was also a lifeforce of a personality, someone who could bring out the best in everyone by his leadership.
And then he was gone. How, wondered the fans, the critics, the disk jockeys, and even the ABB's members and road crew, could the group continue?
It did because Betts emerged from Duane's shadow to become, all too briefly, one of America's preeminent guitarists.
Betts' style all wrong for critics
Rolling Stone Magazine published a list of the top 100 guitarists of all time in 2003. Betts was listed a 58. Eight years later, the magazine published an updated list: Jimi Hendrix was number one, Duane Allman was second, and Betts fell to 61st. So why, as the world ponders what might have been had Duane Allman lived, has his fellow brother lacked the recognition he briefly held?
Rock guitar is definable in these words: fast, hard, and fastest. Its apotheosis was “heavy metal,” played by Hendrix, Jimmy Page, Alvin Lee, Clapton (with Cream), Van Halen, etc.
Betts was not fast, and not heavy. If anything, he was of a style anathema to the writers who make the lists: country.
Before he picked up a guitar, Betts learned to play the fiddle and ukulele. His strength, however, was that he could play with feeling, much more so than Duane Allman. He expressed this on the band's first album without Allman.
Duane had recorded a few songs for the forthcoming Eat a Peach record (and contrary to what people think is a solo effort, Betts accompanied Allman on the acoustic guitar piece, Little Martha). The plan was to include more live music left over from the Filmore shows for a double album. But new songs without Duane needed to be written and recorded. One of Greg Allman's first efforts writing was a love ballad called Melissa. Gregg Allman didn't think it was right for the ABB, but he proposed it.
While Betts showed a variety of styles on the album, such as his slide playing on Aint Wastin' Time No More, the instrumental Les Bres in A Minor, and his ode to love (recorded with Duane) Blue Sky. But Melissa has a poignancy, a wistfulness that not only expresses the song's emotion for the woman who is loved, but for the brother who is greatly missed. It was Betts at his lyrical, melodic best.
Allman Brothers Band suffers second tragedy
Then came Brothers and Sisters, dedicated to bassist Berry Oakley, who also died in a motorcycle accident nearly a year to the day and not far from where Duane died. Despite another loss, the band came through. Gregg Allman contributedWasted Words, Come and Go Blues, and Betts contributed Ramblin' Man, Jessica and Southbound, three decidedly different styles that included wonderful solos by Betts. But he also does great work on the blues ballad, Jelly, Jelly, dishing out great licks between Gregg Allman's vocals, and a powerful ending (despite a slight hitch in one of his licks). Overall, it's among his best work on the album. It's unfortunate the band never performed Jelly, Jelly while on tour.
But the direction of the band was changing from its blues-based style.
Drummer Butch Trucks said, “After Duane died, we started heading in a country direction because that was Dickey's background. We all thought Ramblin' Man was too country to even record. We knew it was a good song, but it didn't sound like us. We went to the studio to do a demo to send to Merle Haggard or someone and then we got into that big long guitar jam, which kind of fit us, so we put it on the album and it became a hit. Then more and more it became Dickey's band.”
A little too country?
The last song on Brothers and Sisters is "Pony Boy," with Betts on acoustic slide guitar, Lamar Williams on upright bass, and Trucks played percussion by banging on a piece of plywood on the floor; there was not drum kit on there.
If Trucks thought Ramblin' Man was too country, he must have thought he heard Pony Boy at the Grand Ol' Opry. Granted, Betts stayed true to his country roots, but maybe he stayed a little too true a little too often.
Danny Goldberg, who managed the band from 1989-91, said, “Dickey said to me once that he wished he hadn't agreed that the band be called the Allman Brothers, that he felt cursed and marginalized by that. He felt that he had written a lot of music and been integral to the band, but because his name was not Allman, he would never have the clout, and that bothered him. And he certainly had a point.”
Band was breaking at height of popularity
Yet as the group achieved its greatest popularity, it was starting to crack at the seams. Several of the band members were heavy into drugs and alcohol – some using it to deal with the loss of Duane and Berry -- and there were splits into who was going to lead the group and which musical direction it would follow. “It's my band now!” Betts told another member.
The band's next effort was Win, Lose or Draw, a real disappointment. Betts contributed one of his most sophisticated instrumental compositions, High Falls, but he also contributed Louisiana Lou and Three Card Monty Draw, another ultra-country song. The band broke up afterwards, and the surviving original members of Betts, Gregg Allman, Trucks, and Jai Johnny Johnson, reunited several times, until Betts was asked to leave because of his erratic playing brought on by drugs, alcohol and his inner demons.
Last year, I came upon a video of the band from a 1991 performance in Germany. Betts was into his biker look: Wide bandana, hair down to his shoulders, his arms revealing a multitude of tattoos. To introduce one song, he began to play in a way I had never heard before: it was loud, fast, pounding. He then segued into the familiar opening notes of One Way Out. There, in that short burst of sound, Betts was a “rock” guitarist. It would have been against his nature if he had played that way all the time, but he could have included it more into his playing. Maybe then he'd be much higher on the lists.
