Dickey Betts' work on 'Eat a Peach' and 'Brothers and Sisters' will endure as one of the coolest creative peaks in rock ‘n’ roll history.
It was sometime in the mid-2000s and I was gliding across a freeway in my dad’s blue Dodge pickup, listening to 93.3 The Wolf with the windows down. He and I, we were on our way to the Eastwood Mall to grab something for my mom’s birthday—maybe a ring from Kay Jewelers, or a snow globe for her to add to her collection that’s overflowing on our living room shelves.
On top of that, my living circumstances were randomized—and I was eventually paired up with an exchange student roommate whose verbal English wasn’t strong, not to mention he was also a few years my senior. It was an isolating life to live, initially, though we would float in and out of school functions together in a combined effort to make some semblance of friends. It didn’t help that he and I were opposites .
The band would continue on, eventually wrapping up sessions in December 1971 and tacking on a number of live cuts to pad the project into a hybrid studio/live tracklist that masqueraded as a double-album clocking in at 68 minutes in length. The completion of—which featured “Melissa,” “Les Brers in A Minor” and “Ain’t Wastin’ Time No More”—became a last waltz for Gregg’s leadership, too, as he was suffering mightily in the wake of his older brother’s passing.
“Ramblin’ Man” was Betts’ swan song, even though he lived for 51 years after it came out. It’s a coming-of-age tale with an idyllic pastoral of the South as its backdrop, the perfect set-dressing for a cross-town drive or a dance around a fire pit. “My father was a gambler down in Georgia, and he wound up on the wrong end of a gun,” Betts sings. “And I was born in the backseat of a Greyhound bus rollin’ down Highway 41.
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