Rock legend and Sarasota County resident might be coming out of retirement
Lately, I've been listening to a lot of Dickey Betts; the legendary guitarist, composer and singer who co-founded the Allman Brothers Band and now lives in retirement in Sarasota County.
Namely, I've been playing the newly issued Dickey Betts & Great Southern album "Southern Jam: New York 1978." It's a killer, live performance originally broadcast on radio and now available as a double CD and streaming on services such as Spotify.
"The source master was taken directly off the Pre-FM reel to reel," reads the Amazon description. "The band Great Southern consisted of Betts, 'Dangerous' Dan Toler (guitar), David 'Rook' Goldflies (bass), Michael Workman (keyboards), David 'Frankie' Toler (drums), Doni Sharbono (drums) and Mimi Hart (background vocals)."
It's Betts leading his Great Southern group shortly before the Allman Brothers reformed to record their '79 comeback album "Enlightened Rogues," featuring the hit single "Crazy Love."
"Southern Jam: New York 1978" features the earliest known recording of "Crazy Love," with Betts introducing it by saying, "We just wrote this song a couple days ago."
The track list of Betts originals from his Allman Brothers and solo career also includes "In Memory of Elizabeth Reed," a "Jessica-Southbound-Jessica" medley, "Long Time Gone," "High Falls," "Blue Sky" and the closer, "Ramblin' Man."
Now that we no longer have Gregg Allman, the only surviving Allman Brothers are Betts and Jaimoe, the percussionist who tours with his Jasssz Band.
Yes, Betts is retired, has been for several years, but that might change as the Rock and Roll of Famer approaches his 74th birthday Dec. 12.
On Tuesday, Betts' manager, David Spero, posted the following on Facebook:
"This is a huge what if, but what if Dickey Betts decided to play 10 cities, what should they be?"
Stay tuned for news, I hope, about a Betts tour, especially a tour that includes one more dazzling show at Robarts Arena in Sarasota.
For now, here's Betts talking about several of his most famous songs during our 2013 interview at his Osprey home.
'Blue Sky'
“That’s a cool song. I wrote that for, I was married to an Indian girl whose last name was Wabegijig, which means 'clear blue sky,' so I was writing it for her and I was writing it as ‘She’s my blue sky, she’s my sunny day’ (Betts sings). And I thought, Nah, this would be a better song if I just sang it to the sky instead of to a woman. That was a very good move that could make or break that song. It made it more universal. If you’re a songwriter, that’s not a big jump. In fact, in ‘Ramblin’ Man,’ the original line to that was ‘Playing my music and doing the best I can.’ Everybody doesn’t play music, but everybody works for a living. I asked Gregg to sing ‘Blue Sky’ and actually the producer, Tom Dowd, he said, ‘No, why don’t you sing it.’”
'Ramblin’ Man'
“I was going to send ‘Ramblin’ Man’ to Johnny Cash. I thought it was a great song for him. But everybody in our band liked that song. Even my dad liked the song, before we recorded it or anything.” (Betts' says his favorite version is the one where Bob Dylan takes lead vocals at a Tampa concert in 1995 featuring Betts on vocals and guitar.)
'Jessica'
“I’m in there trying to write ‘Jessica’ and my daughter (named Jessica), she was like a year and a half, two years old, she comes crawling in the room and I started playing to her, and I was thinking of Django Reinhardt.”
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