(I bought LIVE AT FILLMORE EAST as a kid when it was first released, the double LP on the pink label. I've continuously owned a copy in 8-track, then cassette, then several CD versions, finally scoring the Tom Dowd remix that consolidated all the live tracks from it and EAT A PEACH, to my mind the best. It has loomed over me my entire life, like the black plynth in 2001, and influenced my evolution in a similar fashion)
Dickey Betts was a cracker. In rural Florida, away from Miami or Dizzy World, regular time-clock or farm and ranch people use the term as natives would. It came from herding the ancestral cattle the Spanish brought with them that could stand the climate. Herded with whips that made that sound, folks adopted that term to separate themselves from the new people. These were people that hunted and fished and played music in families or at fish fries.
He grew up with Grand Ole Opry music, bluegrass, and Southern Gospel. Hot country bands in the 50's and 60's featured some hot picking from the great bands of guys like Ernest Tubb or Hank Thompson, whose tunes often featured harmony leads between a guitar and fiddle, a fiddle and steel, etc. This would show up later . . .
Duane saw a complimentary and kindred spirit in him, no small compliment, and they knew the same musics, the same places, the same world. Listen to the tracks they appeared on, and Duane is always the more outside player, and all the slide work, Dickey always melodic from pentatonic shapes, an indelible ID. But the blend of the 2 was epic and magic.
After Duane's passing, he had to meld their parts into one, a daunting task, and he'd never played slide before Duane's death, so he had to hurriedly learn that as well.
Beginning with BROTHERS AND SISTERS, he stepped right up to the plate, with a broadside:
Vicious rhythm between him and Chuck Leavell behind the verses.
And yet after all the various Allman lineups and his Great Southern projects, HIGHWAY CALL always makes me think I'm seeing into his other side. A country record where he enlisted The Rambos, the Southern Gospel greats with Dottie Rambo out front, and the fiddle wizard Vassar Clements, I've always loved this record. This is the kind of background so many of us came from, these roots. From that project, here's 'Rain'. You hear all his cues, his roots are showing, the gospel harmonies, the twinned leads, his angular melodic leads, steel and fiddle.
Back porch music after a long day fishing off the bank.
The title track, spreading out across the outro.
This dual nature, the deep and hard rock and blues, coming from country and gospel, a potent, Southern thing.
We won't see his like again.
