Blake Dowling: A Florida band, a ramblin’ man

Every generation has its “scene” for music.

Some are a blast to live through (1990s in the South) some are over the top and great to read about (1980s Los Angeles), and then some are an actual cultural revolution like the 1960s in San Franciso and Haight Asbury East/Jacksonville, and that is where it all begins for today’s story.

“What the Grateful Dead was to San Francisco, The Allman Brothers Band (ABB) was to the South. They gave young Southerners reasons to be proud of their heritage.

The Allman Brothers Band represented something bigger. To be cool and hip in the South at that time, you were into the Allman Brothers Band,” said Scott Freeman. author of “Midnight Riders, The Story of the Allman Brothers.”

Those two bands, the Dead and ABB co-existed for many years and often crossed paths musically.

One of their shows together was then they played in the biggest concert of all time in 1973, with over 600,000 fans attending their Summer Jam show at Watkins Glen. They not only played their own sets (the Band also performed) but all the artists jammed together.

They showcased their commonality with a one-hour all-star set featuring ABB, the Grateful Dead, and the Band performing “Mountain Jam,” “Johnny B. Goode” and “Not Fade Away.”

While Macon, Georgia, gets mentioned a lot as the home of the Allman Brothers Band, Jacksonville, Florida, was really ground zero. The Allman Brothers Band formed in Duval County in 1969, just a few short years before that legendary show.

The original lineup was Duane Allman (slide, lead guitar), Gregg Allman (vocals, organ, songwriting), Dickey Betts (lead guitar, vocals, songwriting), Berry Oakley (bass guitar), Butch Trucks (drums), and Jaimoe (drums).

Much like on the West Coast, Jacksonville had a community of young people hanging out in parks, playing music, and living the hippie lifestyle. One such area was Willowbranch Park, where bands like Second Coming played.

This was the band that included Oakley and Betts, who would soon form ABB with the others.

The counterculture needed a home base, and the Five Points neighborhood and the area along Park Street were it. Low-cost housing, music stores, and other shops that appealed to the residents were there. It was a true scene, and there would not have been an ABB without it. (Thank you, Sharp, for this information.)

Nor would there have been an ABB without Betts, who was born in West Palm Beach on Dec. 12, 1943. Before his band Second Coming and ABB,  Betts began his career playing with a traveling circus called the Swinging Saints.

By the time the Allman Brothers released their epic 1971 live album “At Fillmore East,” the band had rocketed to superstar status and never looked back. They enjoyed multiple golden eras, highly successful albums, and legendary tours.

They were also inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1995 and Dickey Betts was the influence for the character of Russel Hammond in Cameron Crowe’s cinematic masterpiece, “Almost Famous.

This film was inspired by 16-year-old Cameron hitting the road with the Allman Brothers in 1973.

The look of Russell only scratches the surface of Dickey’s persona.

Betts had the look of a true cowboy rock and roller, with a somewhat mystical tribal vibe. When he led the band to their triumphant return to glory in the 1900s, he reminded me of a Native American leader with a Billy the Kid outline meets Slash. Especially in their video for their late 80s hit “Seven Turns.”

Betts penned that song to get them back on the map in that era and it is still my No. 1 tune from the group. I heard it live once at an ABB show in Vail, Colorado, years ago with a solid crew.

Thank you, Sharp, Bonnie, and Edwards, for driving across the country with me for that one.

Duane and Gregg Allman gave this super group their name, but it was Betts who led them when they needed it. He dealt with the angst of losing Duanne Allman early in their career or led them back to the Promised Land in the late 90s. He was the man, the rambling man specifically, writing their highest charting hit by the same name as well as other monsters like “Jessica” and “Blue Sky.”

You can check out an amazing version of those songs starting with Jessica in this 1982 UF bandshell show.

And who opens with an instrumental? Betts and Company.

When Dickey and ABB played the bandshell again in 1993, right in the middle of the UF campus, they helped solidify — for me and many others — our own scene. We might not have walked around barefoot with flowers in our hair, but we loved music, and that show was as good as it gets.

In fact, it was then that ABB became my favorite band, and they have held that title ever since.

The band put out their 11th record the following year, called “Where it All Begins,” and after their 1970s glory and rest stop for the 1980s, that album cemented their legacy. The album was recorded in Jupiter, Florida, at a ranch owned by Burt Reynolds and produced several hits, including the title track Where It All Begins written by Dickey Betts.

Paul Evans of Rolling Stone described the album as “Twin leads, Two drummers, an impossibly soulful vocalist — no American band ever emerged with the sheer power of the Allmans.

Not long after that bandshell performance, the band returned to Gainesville to play at the O’Connell Center. They further inked their No. 1 status to me personally, edging out my childhood favorite band, Mötley Crüe, by a close margin.

After the show, my date, Lisa, asked me if I wanted to go meet the band. I said yes, and I met those legends for the first time.

It was a standard meet and greet and I remember talking to Warren Haynes a while, but Dickey (and Greg Allman too) just blew the room away. Star power, mystic vibe, charisma, partying, whatever it was they had too cool for school 20-year-old me saying, “Will you sign my shirt, sir?” like a massive dork fanboy.

I saw the band many more times over the years and had the opportunity to work in the building that housed their record label in Atlanta. Capricorn Records was housed at 83 Walton Street in the 90s, and we leased out the second floor in one of my first jobs.

Bumping into their original manager Phil Walden ( also a music legend in the lobby of the building never got old. Or bumping into Cake, Col Bruce, Widespread Panic or any of the other amazing artists on their roster.

One of the bands we managed, Sister Hazel, furthered their own lore by touring with ABB twice and lots of stories came from those outings. Rumor has it they even asked my friend Ryan from Sister Hazel to join the band.

A few years later, I was in Los Angeles for a meeting at the Capitol Records building with then-label President Andy Slater, and he asked that we all go around the conference room and name our favorite band.

Answers varied from U2 to the Beatles, but when it came to be my turn, I said the Allman Brothers Band. Bands like that only come around once in a lifetime; their tunes are the anthems that play behind the scenes for our life’s journey, and there will never be another ABB. Rest in peace Dickey Betts, as your song goes, “we will all be singing, and we will all be friends as that is back where it all begins.”