Dickey Betts R.I.P. - And then there was one (Jaimoe)

Over50drumguy

Over50drumguy

Silver Member
With the passing of Dickey ! ……
Jaimoe is the last original member of the Allman Brothers .
The Allmans were a big part of my musical life growing up . I’ve seen them and the ensuing lineups over 50 times over the years. My late guitarist brother and I would play and cover many if not almost all their tunes and many an extended Allman bros. jams were had .
R.I.P Mr. Betts . Thanks for all the music and memories !!!

nypost.com

Dickey Betts, Allman Brothers guitarist, dead at 80

Dickey Betts, a singer, songwriter and guitarist for the Allman Brothers Band, died Thursday in Osprey, Florida. He was 80. Dickey Betts, guitarist for the Allman Brothers Band, died at 80. In an I…
nypost.com nypost.com
 
:(
 
When I was just getting a handle on playing lead guitar in the early 70's, I saw the Allman Bros in Philly. I remember Dickey Betts absolutely blew me away with his extended solos on "Ramblin' Man" and "Jessica." I had never heard a guitarist do what he did that night, and at that point, I'd seen a lot of shows, and heard a lot of great guitar players. I immediately started copying Dickey's style. It was he, along with Leslie West, who taught me those sweet melodic licks, four frets down from the usual Pentatonic blues stuff that almost every rock guitarist plays. Dickey played them clean, and Leslie played them with overdrive, but they were similar.

In his later years, Dickey's health suffered. He battled the bottle for a long time, was in an out of the Allman Bros, and finally, had to retire from playing due to failing health. I saw a sad video of Dickey trying to play "Blue Sky" a couple of years ago. It was hard to watch. His chops were gone, and he fumbled through the solo.

I prefer to remember the great player who inspired me. RIP.
 
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Yeah I saw that last night. One of the greats. I had the good fortune of seeing ABB twice back in the 70s/80s. Their shows were epic jam sessions. Just incredible.
RIP Mr Betts and thank you.

Blue Sky...both the song and his wife.

 

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Reading through the Allman Brothers Dreams box set book . Haven’t looked at this in over 20 years . Pretty cool trip back .

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BobC said:
When I was just getting a handle on playing lead guitar in the early 70's, I saw the Allman Bros in Philly. I remember Dickey Betts absolutely blew me away with his extended solos on "Ramblin' Man" and "Jessica." I had never heard a guitarist do what he did that night, and at that point, I'd seen a lot of shows, and heard a lot of great guitar players. I immediately started copying Dickey's style. It was he, along with Leslie West, who taught me those sweet melodic licks, four frets down from the usual Pentatonic blues stuff that almost every rock guitarist plays. Dickey played them clean, and Leslie played them with overdrive, but they were similar.

In his later years, Dickey's health suffered. He battled the bottle for a long time, was in an out of the Allman Bros, and finally, had to retire from playing due to failing health. I saw a sad video of Dickey trying to play "Blue Sky" a couple of years ago. It was hard to watch. His chops were gone, and he fumbled through the solo.

I prefer to remember the great player who inspired me. RIP.
Click to expand...

Theres a humorous video on YouTube of him teaching In Memory of Elizabeth Reed with his son helping where he's communicating with whoever made the video off screen about how he's playing it slow on purpose. You can tell that the person is confused about why he's doing it that way.

He seemed like a simple (in a genuinely as perceived way), unassuming person who just happened to change the Earthscape and moulded the playing for a genre.
 
Over50drumguy said:
With the passing of Dickey ! ……
Jaimoe is the last original member of the Allman Brothers .
The Allmans were a big part of my musical life growing up . I’ve seen them and the ensuing lineups over 50 times over the years. My late guitarist brother and I would play and cover many if not almost all their tunes and many an extended Allman bros. jams were had .
R.I.P Mr. Betts . Thanks for all the music and memories !!!

nypost.com

Dickey Betts, Allman Brothers guitarist, dead at 80

Dickey Betts, a singer, songwriter and guitarist for the Allman Brothers Band, died Thursday in Osprey, Florida. He was 80. Dickey Betts, guitarist for the Allman Brothers Band, died at 80. In an I…
nypost.com nypost.com
Click to expand...
My brother, also a guitar player, first turned me on the Allmans when he brought home the Eat a Peach LP. He and I also had many bedroom / basement Allman Brothers jams, including doing all of Mountain Jam - a fun trip with only guitar and drums. We were loud and not too great, but our parents never seemed to mind. I know every single note of that album - R.I.P. Dickey.
 
JoeVermont said:
My brother, also a guitar player, first turned me on the Allmans when he brought home the Eat a Peach LP. He and I also had many bedroom / basement Allman Brothers jams, including doing all of Mountain Jam - a fun trip with only guitar and drums. We were loud and not too great, but our parents never seemed to mind. I know every single note of that album - R.I.P. Dickey.
Click to expand...

Awesome!!!
Being from a musical family where our parents were musically inclined and all 5 kids played multiple instruments it was much of the same ! Lots of noise in the house until we grew and improved to actually sounding decent on our instruments , but they never seemed to mind . That is until my brother and I were older and threw live rock parties in the yard for hours at a time 😂. Mother would go out grocery shopping only to come home to find a hundred people , a second drummer 2 or three more guitarists and a bass player or two . She was worried we were driving the neighbors nuts but they were in the yard as well 😂. Having an older( by 3 years) excellent guitarist for a brother constantly turning me on to and making me play new music was invaluable. I always knew I was fortunate in that way and missed it terribly with his passing to the point it made me give up music for a long time .
Fortunately years later the sadness passed and the memories made me miss it and pulled me back in . Friends tried to get me back into it and said I was wasting my talent and time but it just wasn’t in me . His death sucked the musical wind from my sails . I’m glad I finally came to a place where I missed it and realized he’d want me to play and had dreams of him saying ….. WTF are you doing ??!!!!??? Get off your ass and play !
 
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