Remembering Dickey Betts (December 12, 1943 – April 18, 2024)

When did you first become interested in playing music, and who were some of your early influences?

Dickey Betts : (Laughs) I was actually playing music before I was in the first grade. My dad brought home a ukulele for me. My dad could play just about any stringed instrument, but he was a fiddle player, which was his main instrument. He was really a fine bluegrass player. Back then we called it "string music." Bill Monroe kind of coined that phrase "bluegrass," because he called his band The Bluegrass Boys. So, my uncles all played, and my dad played, so when I was about four-years-old, I started playing little tunes on the ukulele, and started playing in the jam sessions when we'd get together on weekends a couple of times a month.

So I went from that to a mandolin, and I started playing banjo for a while, and after that I went to guitar. I didn't start playing guitar until I was sixteen. I had started getting interested in rock and roll and hot cars and girls, things like that. But as soon as I started playing guitar I studied everything that Chuck Berry did. And back then Chuck Berry was what Jimi Hendrix would be to the late sixties, that real different guitar sound. If you think about it, nobody bent strings and made sounds like Chuck Berry did back during the fifties.

Definitely one of the true guitar innovators.

Yeah, I mean, he had that loose tuning, and nobody knew what loose tuning was back then. I mean everybody sounded like Duane Eddy or The Ventures. (Laughs) Anyway- then I met a guitar player from Boston that could get that Chuck Berry sound, and I looked at his guitar and he had an unwound 3rd on there-which, everybody does that now, but then, it was a wound third string, and you couldn't get that Chuck Berry sound with that. That was my early influence and introduction, Chuck Berry.

And then I started playing a lot of The Ventures stuff along with that, and started studying B.B. King and Freddie King. I loved Freddie King when he came out with "Hideaway." It knocked me out. I had everything Freddie King did, and played a lot of his tunes. By then I had my own bands together. When I was seventeen I went on the road for the first time with a circus show. We had a tent on the midway, like at the state fair, and it was called "Teen Beat." (Laughs) And we was the band! And the barker you know, he'd come out and tell all of these outrageous lies about how the band had just been on The Ed Sullivan Show. (Laughs) You might have missed 'em, but they were there! It was like a side show on the midway. We did about twenty shows a day, these little thirty-minute shows. And we'd jump off of the top of the amps and do splits. And I could do the Chuck Berry duck-walk. It was kind of a little quick show. It was called The World of Mirth Shows. And I learned how to talk carny talk, which was like, if I was going to say "Michael" I would say "Me-a-zee-a-zikle." They put "z's" and "a's" all in the middle of words and you can't understand 'em. It was quite an education.

After that I came home and forged my birth certificate and started playing night clubs. I got more into a lot of the real old blues stuff. I had a friend here in town that was kind of an oddball. He already knew who Lightnin' Hopkins was, and Muddy Waters, and all of these people. He said, "Hey man, Chuck Berry is like pop. You've got to listen to some of the real stuff!" Then he showed me all of these real old players, he had all of these 78's and stuff. I got educated that way. I just met a lot of good people along the way. And then Lonnie Mack came along. He was like a ray of sunshine. There was just so much Beach Boys and that big sound from Philadelphia, (sings) da-do ron ron ron, da do ron ron." (Laughing) Then Lonnie Mack came out, and I played every damn thing he put out, you know. I don't play anything like him now, but back then I studied him. And I kind of got my shake from B.B. (King). Learning how to get that tremolo the way he does. And I never really studied Django Rhinehart, but I think every guitar player listens to and gets influenced by him. And I love Charlie Parker. I put my Charlie Parker stuff on and just listen to it. I don't try to learn any licks or nothing, I just put it on and enjoy it. Of course, when you're younger, you just put it on and learn it lick by lick.

Interview by Michael Buffalo Smith

Photo: Kirk West

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