RIP Dickey Betts

The drive from Statesboro to Augusta on Route 25 captures a lot of the essence of the Georgia countryside, at least in the southern part of the state. I've only driven through the North on I75...wouldn't mind see more of the mountains.

 

The Tedeschis/Trucks are doing a good job of keeping up that Florida tradition. Derek Trucks can be spotted at Jaguars practices once in awhile.

 

That's where all the UFO cattle dissection stories of the day came from.

 

Phil Lesh cribbed the long modal jam idea from . . . John Coltrane.

 

An acquaintance of mine in southwest Virginia is a mandolin player in his late 70s who was part of that Jacksonville scene when those guys were around. He worked as a touring musician for several of them before giving up life on the road in the mid-to-late 80s. He's got some incredible stories about the house parties and studio adventures.

Honestly thought he was bullshiting me for a good while, until he started pulling out old pictures.

 

Years ago a co-worker and I palled around and she dragged ignorant me to concerts I otherwise wouldn't have seen at the Lonestar, Ritz, Beacon, Palladium, wherever in 80s NYC: Chuck Berry, Joe Cocker, Jimmy Page, Springsteen, what was left of The Band ("Who? The Band?" "You know -- The Weight. You'll know it when you hear it!"). We saw the Dickey Betts Band and .38 Special at the Capitol Theater in Passaic about 1986, and maybe the Gregg Allman Band was on that bill, too. She was smart and nice and a bit of a hippy and recommended I move up to her job when she left the company. We're still friends and I am grateful for the friendship and the memories.

 

Betts' slide guitar solo on "Jessica" is just fantastic. And the piano work by Chuck Leavell is incredibly great, too.

Perfect song for when you're flying down an empty rural highway. I always play it on the road.

 

The most disappointing show I've ever been to was Marshall Tucker. My buddy had been before and said it was bad. I said, no, no, it's MTB, has to be good. He said it was so bad he left early.
We went. We left early. They have about 5 songs, and the rest are crap.

 

They had more than 5 songs, but they have no original members.

 

The MTB live album from 73 or 74 is great, we used to go crazy singing "24 Hours at a Time."

 

When I saw them, there was one.
Actually, I saw Skynyrd, Outlaws, MTB, and Molly Hatchet each with one surviving member.

 

MTB really hasn't aged well, but they have/had a few really good tunes, Take the Highway, 24 Hours at a Time, etc.

Allman Brothers went through many different lineups, and after they threw Dickey out, and brought Derek Trucks in, the sound definitely changed. And they didn't play the songs Dickey penned, either. Which was too bad, but obviously understandable.