Founding Allman Brothers Band Guitarist Dickey Betts Dead at 80

Dickey Betts, a formative determine in southern rock as a founding member of the Allman Brothers Band, has died. He was 80. For each a statement from the band, Betts “passed absent peacefully in his dwelling in Sarasota, Florida, subsequent a period of time of declining overall health.” Betts performed guitar given that childhood and commenced doing with Berry Oakley in their band Next Coming in 1967. Shortly soon after Oakley met Duane Allman and started jamming with his good friends, they invited Betts. That inevitably coalesced into the unique 6-piece lineup of the Allman Brothers Band, featuring Betts on a dueling direct guitar opposite Duane.

When Duane Allman died in a 1971 bike crash, Betts grew to become the band’s most important guitarist and singer, and even discovered Duane’s slide guitar parts. In the several years soon after Allman’s death, Betts wrote and recorded of the Allman Brothers’ most enduring hits, like “Ramblin’ Person,” “Blue Sky,” and “Jessica.” The band to start with broke up in 1976, as Betts had started a solo occupation with his band Terrific Southern. He joined the band for a reunion in 1979, and soon after their up coming breakup he fashioned the brief-lived team Betts, Corridor, Leavell, and Trucks with his bandmates Chuck Leavell and Butch Vehicles and Wet Willie singer Jimmy Hall. Soon after more solo function, Betts returned to the all over again-reunited Allman Brothers Band in 1989. His appearances with the band grew to become spotty in the 1990s, even though, till his bandmates kicked him off their 2000 Summer months Marketing campaign Tour by fax information (reportedly in excess of his drug and liquor use). Betts sued his bandmates and was properly fired from the band afterward. He ongoing his solo occupation, even embarking on his very own tour in summer 2000 with the Dickey Betts Band.

Betts’s freewheeling guitar participating in in the Allman Brothers Band, which blended rock, blues, and place audio, was a defining influence on each southern rock and jam bands. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with the band in 1995 and has been named a single of the biggest guitarists of all time by Rolling Stone. With Betts’s death, drummer Jaimoe is now the only surviving founder of the Allman Brothers Band. “Play on Brother Dickey, you will be endlessly remembered and deeply missed,” the band reported in their assertion.