Founding Allman Brothers Band Guitarist Dickey Betts Dead at 80

Photo: Kirk West/Getty Images

Dickey Betts, a formative figure in southern rock as a founding member of the Allman Brothers Band, has died. He was 80. Per a statement from the band, Betts “passed away peacefully in his home in Sarasota, Florida, following a period of declining health.” Betts played guitar since childhood and began performing with Berry Oakley in their band Second Coming in 1967. Shortly after Oakley met Duane Allman and began jamming with his friends, they invited Betts. That eventually coalesced into the original six-piece lineup of the Allman Brothers Band, featuring Betts on a dueling lead guitar opposite Duane.

When Duane Allman died in a 1971 motorcycle crash, Betts became the band’s primary guitarist and singer, and even learned Duane’s slide guitar parts. In the years after Allman’s death, Betts wrote and recorded of the Allman Brothers’ most enduring hits, including “Ramblin’ Man,” “Blue Sky,” and “Jessica.” The band first broke up in 1976, as Betts had begun a solo career with his band Great Southern. He joined the band for a reunion in 1979, and after their next breakup he formed the short-lived group Betts, Hall, Leavell, and Trucks with his bandmates Chuck Leavell and Butch Trucks and Wet Willie singer Jimmy Hall. After more solo work, Betts returned to the again-reunited Allman Brothers Band in 1989. His appearances with the band became spotty in the 1990s, though, until his bandmates kicked him off their 2000 Summer Campaign Tour by fax message (reportedly over his drug and alcohol use). Betts sued his bandmates and was effectively fired from the band afterward. He continued his solo career, even embarking on his own tour in summer 2000 with the Dickey Betts Band.

Betts’s freewheeling guitar playing in the Allman Brothers Band, which blended rock, blues, and country music, was a defining influence on both 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 one of the greatest 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 forever remembered and deeply missed,” the band said in their statement.