Reelin’ in the Years 235: Ramblin’ Man. RIP Dickey Betts
Posted in 1970s, Events dear boy. Events, Music, Reelin' In The Years at 12:00 on 26 April 2024
Guitarist, singer and songwriter Dickey Betts of the Allman Brothers Band has died.
Among other songs he wrote perhaps the band’s most famous track, Jessica, used as the signature tune for the TV programme Top Gear.
Despite that tune’s lasting appeal the band never had a hit in the UK.
This, another of his compositions, was their biggest in the US.
The Allman Brothers Band: Ramblin’ Man
Forrest Richard (Dickey) Betts: 12/12/1943 – 18/4/2024. So it goes.
Tags: Dickey Betts, Ramblin’ Man, Reelin' In The Years, The Allman Brothers Band, Top Gear
Janusz
29 April 2024 at 03:39
I read your tribute to Dickey Betts in less than a minute, then spent the next three days trying to figure out why some artists make it big in other countries and some don’t. Touring abroad must have something to do with it, as well as local radio and television exposure. There again, different countries have different tastes in popular music.
Last year I came across a relic of my time as social secretary of a UK college: a four-page list of artists and bands available for hire, with asking prices. That list also gave me food for thought. Some of the bands in the lowest £50-or-less tier went on to become famous (Supertramp and Thin Lizzie, for example). The converse, however, doesn’t appear to hold. In the over-£1,000 tier are Black Sabbath, Jethro Tull, T. Rex, and Ten Years After. All big then, all big thereafter.
With artists such as The Allman Brothers Band, perhaps the laid-back country style didn’t generate the same enthusiasm abroad as other US styles. I revisited some of the Old Grey Whistle Test archives, and major US artists are there aplenty, but few made it to the UK charts.
jackdeighton
29 April 2024 at 23:21
Janusz,
Touring will certainly have something to do with it. Maybe some US bands didn’t think the UK was a big enough market to bother with. (The opposite is true for UK bands and the US.) Some bands hardly translate at all. Oasis, for example, never made it big in the US, Wonderwall perhaps apart. The best ones will succeed in most countries. As to the laid-back country style, it didn’t harm the Eagles over here. I don’t think you can analyse it.