Dickey Betts’ melodic sense, rooted in the “string music” (bluegrass) that his family played in his youth, produced memorable lines which Duane jumped on, using his great ear and technical facility to add harmony and counterpoint on the fly. This sympatico musical relationship helped create one of the greatest guitar partnerships in rock and roll history. Their partnership rewrote the book on how two rock guitarists could play together, just as Jaimoe and Butch Trucks did for drummers.
Betts’ ideas and concepts formed the Allman Brothers Band’s backbone and musical DNA, setting the template for so much of what we now know as Americana. His fantastic songwriting included “Blue Sky,” “Jessica,” “Ramblin’ Man” and “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed,” plus late-era classics like “Seven Turns” and the majestic “Nobody Knows,” tunes that seamlessly incorporate blues, country and jazz into their rock and roll.
He had a wide musical palette and a compositional sense that sparkled in everything he played, from the pithy fills on Gregg Allman’s “Melissa” to the burning solo breakdown on At Fillmore East’s “You Don’t Love Me” — a molten solo often credited to Duane — to the fiery psychedelic jazz-rock of “Liz Reed,” which Haynes described as “Django Reinhardt on acid.”
“Dickey’s a real Charles Bronson type,”
Gregg Allman said. “It doesn’t take long after you meet the guy to realize that there are things he knows about himself that you’ll never know, so don’t even get close to his space. Which is fine.”
- Tidal
Photo by Kirk West
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