Are you ready, boots? Start walking

Posted on by brucehhackett

The medical profession has been telling us for decades, even centuries, that daily walking is an excellent way to maintain our good health, particularly as we grow older and lead more sedentary lifestyles. It helps pretty much all of our internal systems — muscles, bones, lungs, cardiovascular — and does wonders for our soul and emotional well being too.

Some people jog, or go cycling, or even rollerblading. But more and more people these days are taking morning walks, or afternoon walks, or evening walks, or perhaps all three. Sometimes it’s just a quick stroll around the block to let the dog do his business, and other times it’s a five-mile power walk with a like-minded human companion. Some folks even participate in fundraising walkathons.

Popular songwriters have found walking to be a fertile subject. Below, I’ve selected 20 songs from the classic rock era that mention walking in the title, with another 17 “honorable mentions” as well, bringing the Spotify playlist to more than two hours, which should be a fine soundtrack for a nice long walk!

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“Walk Away,” The James Gang, 1971

Joe Walsh wrote this rock/funk tune for “Thirds,” his final studio album with The James Gang before going solo. The lyrics describe a relationship that’s on its last legs, in which the man doesn’t want it to end but the woman no longer appears interested: “Seems to me you don’t want to talk about it, /Seems to me you just turn your pretty head and walk away…” Although it stalled at #51 when released as a single, “Walk Away” has endured as a hard rock classic, and has been a mainstay in The Eagles’ concert setlist after Walsh joined that band.

“Walking on Broken Glass,” Annie Lennox, 1992

Like many of the songs she sang and co-wrote as part of The Eurythmics, this hit single from Lennox’s 1992 debut LP “Diva” takes a depressing topic like romantic abandonment and attaches it onto an irresistibly danceable beat. Critics called it “a gloriously intoxicating pop song that focuses on the emotional upheaval of a shattered relationship” that makes the narrator feel as if she’s walking on broken glass. It peaked at #14 in the US, #8 in her native UK and #1 in Canada.

“Walk of Life,” Dire Straits, 1985

Mark Knopfler had originally planned for this whimsical rocker to be merely a B-side for one of the intended singles from the Dire Straits LP “Brothers in Arms,” but the band’s manager persuaded Knopfler to include it on the album, and it ended up a popular single in its own right. It peaked at #7 in the US and at #2 in the UK, the group’s highest charting single there. The lyrics refer to a busker in the London subway, playing old rock and roll songs like “Be-Bop-a-Lula,” “What I’d Say” and “I Gotta Woman” in order to make a few bucks “and do the walk of life.”

“Walk Like an Egyptian,” The Bangles, 1986

In 1985, songwriter Liam Sternberg was on a ferry crossing the English Channel in choppy waters, and watched as passengers stepped carefully and moved their arms awkwardly while struggling to maintain their balance. He compared their movements to the depiction of human figures in ancient Egyptian tomb paintings and was inspired to write an uptempo tune with lyrics that mentioned more modern scenes in which people walked in similar fashion. David Kahne, who was producing The Bangles’ second LP “Different Light,” urged the group to record it, and it ended up an international #1 hit in 1986-1987.

“Walkin’ My Baby Back Home,” Nat King Cole, 1952

More than 100 artists have covered this charming ditty since the songwriting team of Fred Ahlert and Roy Turk wrote it way back in 1930, when four different singers put it on the “Hit Parade” the same year. Nat King Cole reached #8 on the US pop charts with his definitive rendition in 1952, and it became the title song of a 1953 film of the same name. Since then, everyone from Ella Fitzgerald and Bing Crosby to Judy Garland and Dean Martin wrapped their voices around it, as have rock-era artists like James Taylor, George Benson, Willie Nelson and Van Morrison.

“Walking on the Moon,” The Police, 1979

Sting recalled this song came into being when he was drunk one night in a Munich hotel room. “I was feeling nauseous, but I had a riff in my head, and got up to walk around the room, singing the nonsense words ‘Walking ’round the room,'” he said. “In the morning, I changed it to ‘Walking on the moon,’ which was how I remember feeling years earlier, walking home from my girlfriend’s house.” The reggae-based tune became The Police’s second #1 single in their native England, but it failed to chart in the US, although the album it came from, 1979’s “Regatta de Blanc,” reached #25 on US album charts.

“Walking in Memphis,” Marc Cohn, 1991

Cohn was a struggling Ohio songwriter in 1985 when he went to Memphis in search of inspiration. He visited the church where Al Green preached, and Elvis Presley’s Graceland mansion, and walked the streets and visited the blues and gospel nightspots of the downtown area. The song “Walking in Memphis” came pouring out upon his return home, and attracted enough attention to gain a record deal, and the song turned into not only his debut single, reaching #13 on US charts and #3 in Canada, but also garnered a Song of the Year Grammy nomination that earned Cohn the Best New Artist Grammy in 1991.

“Walk Away Renée,” The Left Banke, 1966

Keyboardist Michael Brown has said he was inspired to write this piece of baroque pop about a girl he had fallen for named Renée Fladen. He said it was an unrealized relationship because he was too timid to approach her, so he mythologized her instead. Brown’s band, The Left Banke, had a big #5 hit with “Walk Away Renée” in the summer of 1966, and a #15 follow-up single (also about the same girl) called “Pretty Ballerina” in early 1967 rescued the group from being “one-hit wonders.”

“I’m Walkin’,” Fats Domino, 1957

Domino, one of the original rock and roll pioneers out of New Orleans, had 20 hits on the R&B charts between 1949 and 1955 before he finally broke through on the pop charts with the iconic “Ain’t That a Shame.” He followed that with three more consecutive Top Ten hits — “Blueberry Hill,” “Blue Monday” and “I’m Walkin'” — in 1956 and early 1957. The latter, co-written by Domino and jazz great Dave Bartholomew, was covered by Ricky Nelson later the same year, reaching #17.

“Walk This Way,” Aerosmith, 1975

Guitarist Joe Perry and vocalist Steven Tyler, struggling for lyrics as they recorded this track for their “Toys in the Attic” LP, took a break and went to see the Mel Brooks comedy “Young Frankenstein,” in which Marty Feldman’s Igor character told Gene Wilder’s Dr. Frankenstein character to follow him as he limped off, saying “Walk this way.” They decided it would make a great title and lyric for the chorus, and the song ended up a Top Ten hit in 1977. Then in 1986, “Walk This Way” returned to the Top Ten in a collaboration with the rap group Run-D.M.C.

“Walk the Dinosaur,” Was (Not Was), 1989

In 1981, Don Fagenson and David Weiss formed a group they called Was (Not Was) based on Fagenson’s toddler son’s propensity to talk in contradictions. They struggled through the 1980s until their 1988 LP “What Up, Dog?” spawned the quirky #7 tune “Walk the Dinosaur,” which became a big music-video hit in 1989, utilizing scenes from the cartoon “Daffy Duck and the Dinosaur.” Randy Jacobs, one of the song’s cowriters, said that although the lyrics were about nuclear Armageddon, “it became a singalong dance anthem because of the Flintstones-like video that probably got played too much.”

“Walking the Dog,” Rufus Thomas, 1963

Thomas was a singer/songwriter/DJ/comedian in the 1940s and 1950s who made his first chart appearance on the US pop charts at age 46 when his bluesy tune “Walking the Dog” peaked at #10 in December 1963. The Rolling Stones recorded a cover version for their debut LP three months later. Soon enough, another dozen artists took their turns at it, including Johnny Rivers, Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels, the Everly Brothers, Aerosmith, Spirit and Roger Daltrey.

“Walk a Mile in My Shoes,” Joe South, 1968

South was a ubiquitous session guitarist in the 1960s, appearing on albums by Bob Dylan, Simon and Garfunkel and Aretha Franklin. He was also a successful songwriter, writing hits like “Down in the Boondocks” for Billy Joe Royal, “Hush” for Deep Purple and “Rose Garden” for Lynn Anderson. When he penned more socially provocative songs, he became a recording artist in his own right, enjoying chart success with “Games People Play” as well as “Walk A Mile in My Shoes,” a plea for compassion and tolerance between those of different backgrounds.

“Walk on the Wild Side,” Lou Reed, 1973

Inspired by the 1956 Nelson Algren novel of the same name, Reed wrote “Walk on the Wild Side” for his second solo LP “Transformer,” and it became a surprise hit in the spring of 1973, reaching #16. Its lyrics pushed against boundaries for its time, touching on formerly taboo topics like male prostitution, transgender people and oral sex. “I always thought it would be kinda fun to introduce people to characters they maybe hadn’t met before, or hadn’t wanted to meet,” said Reed.

“Walk on By,” Dionne Warwick, 1964

The legendary songwriting team of Burt Bacharach and Hal David came up with this tearjerker classic for song stylist Dionne Warwick, one of many the duo wrote for her in the 1960s. It peaked at #6 on US pop charts. The lyrics urge the narrator’s former lover to just keep walking by if they’re about to encounter each other: “Make believe that you don’t see the tears, just let me grieve in private, /’Cause each time I see you, I break down and cry, so walk on by…” A few dozen artists have recorded the song since then, including Isaac Hayes, Gloria Gaynor, The Stranglers, Average White Band, Melissa Manchester and Cyndi Lauper.

“Walking Man,” James Taylor, 1974

Bruce Springsteen may have been “born to run,” but it seems as if Taylor was more the “born to walk” type. His catalog has a few delightfully uptempo tunes, but most of his songs, especially from his first four or five albums, are mellow, tuneful reflections on a more chill lifestyle. The title track from his 1974 LP “Walking Man” is a case in point, celebrating the man who strolls through life in contemplation: “The walking man walks, doesn’t know nothing at all, /Any other man stops and talks, but not the walking man, /Born to walk, walk on, walking man…”

“I Walk the Line,” Johnny Cash, 1957

Cash had approached Sam Phillips at Sun Records in the hopes of recording gospel songs, only to be told Phillips was more interested in “rockabilly” artists at that point, including Elvis Presley and Carl Perkins. Cash adapted the songs he was writing, speeding up the tempo of his ballads, and in 1957 he scored his first #1 hit on the country charts, “I Walk the Line,” which was also a #17 crossover hit on the pop charts. The song’s lyrics discuss resisting temptation, being accountable, and remaining faithful to his wife, though they would later divorce and he married June Carter in 1968, to whom he remained married until both died with five months of each other in 2003.

“Walking on Sunshine,” Katrina and The Waves, 1985

British guitarist/songwriter Kimberley New came up with this effervescent tune in the early ’80s as he was joining the band Katrina and the Waves. “I’d love to say ‘Walking on Sunshine’ relates to a significant event in my life, like walking out of my front door and seeing a comet or something,” he said, but it’s just a piece of simple fun, an optimistic song,” The group recorded it themselves in 1983, but after getting a record deal in 1985, they re-recorded it with a horn section for their Capitol Records debut, and it became a Top Ten hit in the US, the UK and Australia.

“Walk Between Raindrops,” Donald Fagen, 1982

Following Steely Dan’s decision to take a break after their seventh LP “Gaucho” in 1980, Fagen recorded the polished jazzy solo effort, “The Night Fly,” in 1982. Fagen had been inspired by jazz music of the ’40s and ’50s when he was growing up, and the songs he wrote for the album reflect that, none more so than the album’s closing track, “Walk Between Raindrops.” The lyrics describe a memorable romantic encounter in Miami during which a couple take an evening walk and dodge a rainstorm as they return to her apartment.

“These Boots Are Made For Walkin’,” Nancy Sinatra, 1966

Appearing in a 1963 comedy western, Frank Sinatra uttered the line, “They tell me them boots ain’t built for walkin’.”  Country singer-songwriter Lee Hazlewood composed this song around a modified version of the phrase, and intended to sing the song himself, but Sinatra, a friend of his, persuaded him to give it to his daughter Nancy to record.  “Coming from a guy, the words sound harsh and abusive, but it’s perfect for a young girl to sing,” he reasoned.  The song, interpreted as a girl serving notice to her boyfriend that she refused to be pushed around, struck a nerve, reaching #1 on US pop charts in the spring of 1966.

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Honorable mentions:

“The Walk,” Mayer Hawthorne, 2011; “Walking on the Sun,” Smashmouth, 1996; “Walk Like a Man,” The Four Seasons, 1963; “Walk on the Ocean,” Toad the Wet Sprocket, 1991; “Walking on a Thin Line,” Huey Lewis and The News, 1983; “Walk on the Water,” Creedence Clearwater Revival, 1968; “Walking Through Fire,” Mary Chapin Carpenter, 1992; “Walk in My Shadow,” Free, 1970; “Walk Right In,” Dr. Hook, 1977; “When You Walk in the Room,” Jackie DeShannon, 1963; “Walking in the Wind,” Traffic, 1974; “Walkin All Night,” Little Feat, 1973; “Walking Slow,” Jackson Browne, 1974; “Walkin’ and Talkin’,” The Marshall Tucker Band, 1975; “Walk Into Light,” Ian Anderson, 1983; “Walking in the Rain,” The Ronettes, 1963; “Walking On Air,” Stephen Bishop, 1989.

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When it’s time for leaving, I hope you’ll understand

Posted on by brucehhackett

Throughout the 1960s, most rock bands had two guitarists — a rhythm guitarist who played chords and established the song’s basic structure, and a lead guitarist who provided the multi-note solos that soared above it all and often stole the spotlight.

Then in 1969 came The Allman Brothers Band, which featured two supremely talented lead guitarists in Duane Allman and Dickey Betts. One would play lead while the other supported on rhythm, then they’d switch roles. Most impressive, though, was when they played lead guitars simultaneously. In the studio, these passages were precise and rehearsed, but on stage (and captured on live albums), Allman and Betts were master improvisationalists. Hearing the way these guitarists played off one another, giving each other room while adding a harmony solo to the melody solo, was truly special, and it was a primary reason the Allman Brothers were regarded, for a while, as the best band in the country.

Dickey Betts in the 1990s

Duane Allman died shockingly young, at 24, in a motorcycle accident just as the band was becoming successful. And now Dickey Betts has died as well, succumbing to cancer and pulmonary disease at age 80 last week.

As Betts put it in “One Way Out,” the 2014 biography of the band, “Because of the name of the band, a lot of people assumed Duane was the lead player and I was the rhythm guy. He was so charismatic and I was more laid back then. But he went out of his way to make sure people understood we were a twin-guitar band. ‘That was Betts who played that solo, not me,’ he would say. ‘We have two lead guitarists in this damn band!’

“Duane and I talked about how scared we got whenever the other played a really great solo. But then he’d chuckle and say, ‘This isn’t a contest. We can make each other better and do something deep.””

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Betts was drawn to music at a young age, learning ukulele at age five, then mandolin, banjo and guitar as his hands got bigger. His musical family listened to a lot of country music, Western swing and bluegrass, and as a teen, Betts became fascinated with rock ‘n’ roll and the blues. He played many dozens of gigs with different rock bands all over Florida and up the East Coast. In 1967, he met bassist Berry Oakley and formed Second Coming.

Betts in 1968

“In our band, Berry and I would take a standard blues and rearrange it,” Betts said. “We were really trying to push the envelope. We wanted to play the blues in a rock style like what Cream and Hendrix were doing. We liked taking some of that experimental stuff and putting a harder melodic edge to it. One of our favorite things to do was to jam in minor keys, experimenting freely with the sounds of different minor modes. We allowed our ears to guide us, and this type of jamming eventually served to inspire the writing of songs like ‘In Memory of Elizabeth Reed.’

“But we weren’t some garage band. We were a nightclub band. We had brought ourselves up in the professional world actually playing in bars, and that gives you a lot more depth. Duane and his brother were doing the same thing, so we all had a lot of miles under our belt when we met, despite our ages.”

When The Allman Brothers Band came together in 1968, they featured two drummers (Butch Trucks and Jai Johanny “Jaimoe” Johnson), bassist Oakley, Gregg Allman on vocals and organ, and the Betts-Allman guitar attack. They focused on blues with a rock edge, and while their self-titled debut album in 1969 performed poorly on the charts, it established them as a force to be reckoned with.

Betts’ first attempts at songwriting, which came on their next LP, “Idlewild South,” were impressive indeed. “Revival” opened the album with a burst of uptempo optimism — “People can you feel it, love is everywhere” — while the instrumental track “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed” built on an infectious riff and showcased both Betts’ and Allman’s complementary styles.

The Allman Brothers front line (from left): Duane Allman, Dickey Betts, Berry Oakley in 1970

But the band knew that something was missing from those first albums. They didn’t capture the excitement and ferocious output you’d hear when they played in concert, and they knew they needed their next release to be a double live album, where they had the chance to stretch out and show their phenomenal skills as an improvisational jam band.

“At Fillmore East” was that album, produced by the great Tom Dowd from performances at the famed New York City venue in March 1971, featuring seven extended songs over four sides. In particular, “Whipping Post” and “Liz Reed” were a revelation, showing how the guitarists had been inspired by freeform jazz greats like John Coltrane and Miles Davis, and the album ended up peaking at #13.

Said Betts: “It’s very hard to go freestyle with two guitars. It’s easy to sound like two cats fighting if you’re not careful. Duane would almost always wait for me to come up with a melody and then he would join in on my riff with the harmony. A lot of his notes are not the notes you would choose if you sat down to write it out, but they always worked. Our band came along at a wonderful time for improv, and we felt free to just play and work things out on the fly. Doing that gave it all a certain spark.”

They toured relentlessly and also continued writing and recording new material for their next album. Betts wrote the sunny, joyous “Blue Sky,” a love song to his then-wife, a Native American named Sandy Blue Sky, “but I decided to drop the pronouns and make it like I was thinking of the spirit, like I was giving thanks for a beautiful day. It made it broader and more relatable. It was a bad marriage, but it led to a great song.”

Betts said he and Allman often played acoustic guitars together backstage and in hotel rooms and buses, working out things they would later play electrically. “Little Martha,” a brief instrumental duet on Dobro guitars, came out of that.

Betts and Allman working out arrangements on acoustic guitars, 1971

Then, as the album was nearing completion, disaster struck. In a flash, Duane Allman, the band’s spark plug and spiritual leader, was gone. “We thought about breaking up and all forming our own bands,” said Betts, “but the thought of just ending it and being alone was too damn depressing.”

Thom Doucette, harmonica player and Duane’s confidant, noted, “It was kind of a leaderless operation there for a while. It very easily could’ve ended right there, but Betts pulled it out of the fire. Dickey’s personality and ego were pretty big, so he sort of took over. Someone had to, and Gregg hated responsibility and confrontation, and didn’t want to do it.”

The album, “Eat a Peach,” reached #4 and included both live and studio tracks, both with and without Duane’s contributions. On the road, the group proceeded as a five-piece, though Betts found it frustrating. “I had to learn to play Duane’s slide guitar parts, and we no longer had that dual guitar thing going. But we got through it by just playing, all the time. It’s all we knew how to do, and it’s what Duane would’ve wanted.”

Betts leading the band in 1972-73, with Gregg Allman (left) and Jaimoe (right)

The entire band tended to be excessive in their use of drugs and alcohol, but Oakley took Duane’s death particularly hard, diving deeper into the escape they provided. When he was killed in October 1972 under eerily similar circumstances, again the remaining members were faced with how to proceed. As Betts put it, “We found another bass player in Lamar Williams, but replacing Duane with another guitarist was simply out of the question.”

The answer, they found, lay in using a different instrument as the second lead: the virtuoso keyboard work of Chuck Leavell, who’d been playing with Dr. John. “When we added Chuck, it gave us a new wrinkle that energized us,” said Betts. “I’m not sure the band would’ve lasted as long as it did if it weren’t for Chuck. He was such a strong player.”

Betts, meanwhile, hit his stride as a songwriter, composing four of the seven tracks that comprised their 1973 album “Brothers and Sisters,” which reigned as #1 in the US for two weeks that autumn. The galloping “Southbound,” the front-porch country blues track “Pony Boy” and the exhilarating instrumental “Jessica” (with Leavell featured prominently) showed the diversity of Betts’ musical influences. His leanings toward country music manifested themselves most famously on “Ramblin’ Man,” which peaked at #2 as their highest charting single ever.

The song initially met some resistance from within. Drummer Butch Trucks recalled, “We knew ‘Ramblin’ Man’ was a good song, but it didn’t sound like us. It was too country to even record. But we made a demo to send to Merle Haggard or someone, and ended up getting into that long guitar jam (with guest guitarist Les Dudek adding the dual lead), which kind of fit us. So we put it on the album after all, and it ended up being our biggest hit.”

The fame that came with that album and single proved to be a double-edged sword. It made them a bigger concert draw than ever, packing arenas, stadia and festivals, but it also ramped up the partying and internal tension. For his part, Betts dipped his toe in solo waters with the country-heavy “Highway Call” LP in 1974, while Gregg Allman became more withdrawn and distracted by his own solo album (“Laid Back”) and tour, and a whirlwind relationship with pop star Cher. When he was threatened with prison on drug charges, he chose immunity by testifying against his roadie/drug dealer, which left such a bad taste that the band broke up in 1976.

Betts in 1976

A self-described workaholic during that period, Betts soldiered on with a new band and album, “Dickey Betts & Great Southern,” which saw Betts teaming up with guitarist Dan Toler on seven songs all written by Betts, notably the seven-minute piece “Bougainvillea.” A second Great Southern LP, “Atlanta’s Burning Down,” followed.

When Allman and Betts mended fences to reunite The Allman Brothers Band in 1979, it would be with Toler and bassist David Goldflies in the lineup in place of Leavell and Williams, who chose not to participate. The group came storming back with the strong “Enlightened Rogues” album, which made the US Top Ten, but again, there were storm clouds on the horizon, this time because of new record label demands and changing tastes in the music industry.

Betts (right) with Toler at a 1979 concert in Cleveland (photo by Bruce Hackett)

“When the music trend started turning away from blues-oriented rock towards more simple, synthesizer-based dance music arrangements,” Betts said, “the suits at Arista Records started pushing us hard in that direction, but we were never able to do that convincingly, mostly because we didn’t want to. Sure, we wanted a hit, but not if we had to make concessions. We broke up in ’82 because we decided we just better back out, or we would ruin what was left of the band’s image.”

Betts and Allman each kept their tools sharp through the Eighties by playing clubs with their own bands, and when the 4-LP box set “Dreams” was released in 1989 to commemorate the Allman Brothers’ 20th anniversary, the time seemed right to try again.

The arrival of the classic rock radio format created a favorable climate, as did the emergence of blues guitar virtuoso Stevie Ray Vaughan. “He opened the whole thing up,” said Betts. “He just would not be denied, and kept making those traditional urban blues records, and people got to appreciating the blues again. We didn’t want to record without touring first, but it was hard to tour without a record to support and generate interest. The box set took care of that.”

With both Trucks and Jaimoe back on drums, and Betts’ colleagues Warren Haynes and Allen Woody on slide guitar and bass, the band was reborn a third time, churning out three new studio albums in four years (“Seven Turns,” “Shades of Two Worlds” and “Where It All Begins”), liberally sprinkled with great Betts songs. The group performed nearly 100 dates annually, and not only were original fans thrilled to have the group back in the picture, but a new generation of listeners embraced their music as well.

Betts (right) with Warren Haynes, 1993

Still, as always with this star-crossed band, problems surfaced. First Allman and then Betts fell victim to their own addictions and excesses, sometimes missing shows because of an inability to perform (Allman) or a mercurial temper and difficult ego (Betts).

“Dickey was capable of being really great, knowledgeable about all sorts of things, musical genres, art, news of the world, all of that,” said Danny Goldberg, the band’s manager for a spell. “But he was also capable of being really mean and physical, mostly when he was drinking. People were scared of him.”

In 2000, Betts lost two close friends within a few days of each other, which threw him for a loop and exacerbated his demons. Betts became so difficult to work with that the rest of the band felt they had no choice but to move on without him. Sadly, he never performed nor recorded with his old bandmates again after that.

In the years since, Betts stayed as active as his deteriorating health would allow, playing clubs and releasing a handful of live albums on smaller labels. When Allman was near death in 2017, working on one last album, he contacted Betts and asked him to join the sessions, but time ran out before that could happen.

Betts mellowed quite a bit in his final years, refusing to badmouth Allman or other members in the press. He was more than willing to concede his own part in the estrangement that plagued his relationships. “Substance abuse is an occupational hazard of being a musician,” he reflected. “It’s like working in an industrial waste factory. That shit is around, and so easy to get. And you can go for three hours and feel like a king, but it doesn’t work in the long run. Man, I’ve been there.”

Betts in 2018

In the wake of Betts’ death last week, Haynes spoke highly of his compadre’s musical talent. “Dickey played awesome straight traditional blues, but he also had this Django Reinhardt-on-acid side of him that was very unique. Most cats that can play blues as convincingly as Dickey cannot stretch out to that psychedelic thing like he could.”

Duane Allman’s daughter, 55-year-old Galadrielle Allman, spoke glowingly about how Betts and her father created magic together. “It’s so hard to respond to losses like this, to try to comprehend that we all just keep losing the originals, the creators, the artists who wrote the book,” she said. “My father could not have reached the heights he reached without Dickey beside him. They raised one another up and created a sound together that changed music. We are so lucky that, although everything else eventually goes, the music stays.”

R.I.P., Dickey. I’m cranking up your music a lot these days…

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The playlist below collects Allman Brothers Band songs written (and usually sung) by Betts, as well as songs he wrote for his solo LPs. Perhaps my favorite, “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed,” appears twice — in the incendiary electric version from 1971, and again in a live acoustic performance from 1995.