Dickey Betts, Allman Brothers Band Singer-Guitarist, Dead at 80
He was not on the list.
Don Keefer, a versatile character actor for six decades who starred in the original 1949 Broadway production of Death of a Salesman and made an indelible impression as “a bad man, a very bad man” on The Twilight Zone, has died. He was 98.
Keefer, a founding member of the legendary Actors Studio in New York, died Sept. 7 of natural causes in his Sherman Oaks home, his son, Don M. Keefer, told The Hollywood Reporter.
Keefer is perhaps best known to audiences as the terrorized, Perry Como-starved man who can’t help but think “bad thoughts” during his birthday party and thus is transformed by a petulant 6-year-old (Billy Mumy) into a macabre jack-in-the-box with a dunce cap in the disturbing 1961 Twilight Zone episode “It’s a Good Life.” (Cloris Leachman plays the boy’s mom.)
As Bernard, the Loman family’s young next-door neighbor, Keefer was the last surviving castmember of the original Pulitzer Prize- and Tony Award-winning Broadway production of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, directed by Elia Kazan and starring Lee J. Cobb. He then reprised the role for his movie debut in the 1951 film version, which Miller detested.
Keefer played the scientist who woke up Woody Allen in Sleeper (1973), was Carrie Snodgress’ father in the screen adaptation of John Updike’s Rabbit, Run (1970) and appeared as the school janitor confronted with a monster in a box in a segment of Stephen King’s Creepshow (1982).
Keefer’s final onscreen appearance came when he portrayed a homeless panhandler on the courthouse steps in the 1997 box-office hit Liar, Liar. He improvised his two scenes with star Jim Carrey, and at the end of his weekend of work, Keefer was escorted off the set by director Tom Shadyac amid applause by the cast and crew, his son recalled.
Keefer also appeared with Humphrey Bogart in 1954’s The Caine Mutiny (co-starring Fred MacMurray as the character Lieutenant Keefer); opposite Ronald Reagan and future wife Nancy Davis in Hellcats of The Navy (1957); with Carl Reiner and Alan Arkin in The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming (1966); with Paul Newman and Robert Redford in Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid (1969); and with Redford and Barbra Streisand in The Way We Were (1973).
Keefer also held his own with some big names in the 1940s and ’50s on Broadway: Helen Hayes in Harriet, Paul Robeson, Uta Hagen and Jose Ferrer in Othello (he played Iago’s henchman Roderigo) and Zero Mostel in Kazan’s Flight Into Egypt.
Moving to Hollywood from New York in the mid-1950s with his wife, the late actress Catherine McLeod, Keefer also starred in an acclaimed stage version of John Hersey’s The Child Buyer and in the John Houseman productions of Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull and Antigone at UCLA in the ’60s.
Dickey Betts, the singer, songwriter, and guitarist of the Allman Brothers Band whose piercing solos, beloved songs and hell-raising spirit defined the band and Southern rock in general, died Thursday morning at the age of 80. The cause was cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, Betts’ manager David Spero confirmed to Rolling Stone.
“It is with profound sadness and heavy hearts that the Betts family announce the peaceful passing of Forrest Richard ‘Dickey’ Betts (December 12, 1943 – April 18, 2024) at the age of 80 years old,” Betts’ family announced in a statement to Rolling Stone. “The legendary performer, songwriter, bandleader, and family patriarch was at his home in Osprey, Florida, surrounded by his family. Dickey was larger-than-life, and his loss will be felt worldwide. At this difficult time, the family asks for prayers and respect for their privacy in the coming days. More information will be forthcoming at the appropriate time.”
Although he was often overshadowed by Gregg and Duane, the brothers who gave the Allmans their name, Betts was equally vital to the band. His sweetly sinuous guitar style introduced elements of Western swing and jazz into the band’s music, especially when he was duetting with Duane. As a singer and writer, Betts was responsible for the band’s biggest hit, 1973’s “Ramblin’ Man,” as well as some of their most recognizable songs: the moody instrumental “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed,” the jubilant “Jessica,” and their late-period comeback hit “Crazy Love.”
From his trademark mustache to his badass demeanor, Betts was so iconic that he inspired the character of Russell (played by Billy Crudup) in Cameron Crowe’s Almost Famous. “Goddamn, that guy looks like me!” Betts told Rolling Stone of his first reaction to the movie. “I didn’t do the jumping off the roof or the ‘golden god,’ but I knew Cameron.”
Born Forrest Richard Betts in West Palm Beach, Florida, on December 12, 1943, Betts began playing ukulele around age five, followed by banjo and mandolin. “When I finally got to about seventh grade,” he told RS, “I learned about girls and rock & roll and Chuck Berry.” As a teenager, he put together his own band while earning a living as a house painter and mail carrier.
In the mid-Sixties, a member of a Midwestern band named the Jokers heard Betts and recruited him for out-of-state tours. Back home in Florida later that decade, Betts formed the Second Coming, a band that also included bass player Berry Oakley. The two ended up meeting and jamming with Duane Allman, who asked both to join the newly formed Allman Brothers Band in 1969. “It took a lot of talking and getting along,” Betts told Rolling Stone in 2017, “but we all knew this was something we had heard in our heads for a long time. We had to talk Duane into calling Gregg because they were having a brotherly fight, and Duane didn’t want Gregg. Oakley and I said, ‘Come on, Duane, the band is too goddamn powerful. We need Gregg’s voice in there.’”
Although his initial role in the band was co-lead guitarist along with Duane, Betts made his mark as a writer thanks to his exuberant “Revival” on the band’s first album, 1969’s The Allman Brothers Band. During the band’s first few years, he and Duane took rock-guitar improvisation and two-guitar dueling to new heights, as heard on the 13-minute version of “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed” on the band’s At Fillmore East live album from 1971. Right before Duane Allman’s death, the band recorded Betts’ “Blue Sky,” a country-influenced gallop inspired by his first wife, who is Native American; the song that became one of the band’s signature songs.
After Duane Allman’s death in a motorcycle accident in 1971, Betts became the band’s de facto lead guitarist and frontman, a role he wasn’t always comfortable with. Featuring both “Ramblin’ Man” and “Jessica” — the latter named after Betts’ daughter — the band’s 1973 album, Brothers and Sisters, album crossed over into pop. Betts’ 1974 solo album, Highway Call — one of the best of the Allmans offshoot projects — incorporated country, jazz, bluegrass, and gospel.
The bond between the Allmans and Jimmy Carter, whose 1976 presidential campaign they supported by way of benefit concerts, also applied to Betts personally. “I remember going to a jazz concert at the White House [1978],” Betts told Rolling Stone last year. “Of course, I got there and I left my damn ID at home. But the Marines said, ‘Oh, go ahead in.’ They knew me very well and knew I wasn’t going to do any harm. Jimmy was walking around the premises and someone said to me, ‘Go over and talk to him,’ but I didn’t want to bother him. Then I went to use the men’s room in the White House, and as I was coming out, I ran into Jimmy with a group of people and he said, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, this is Dickey Betts, one of the best songwriters around nowadays.’ That just floored me.”
But after Gregg testified in a drug trial involving a band employee, which infuriated Betts, the Allman Brothers Band fell apart for the first time. Betts recorded two albums with his own band, Great Southern, which didn’t replicate his Allmans success. In 1979, the Allman Brothers regrouped, broke up again a few years later, and reunited again in 1989.
In the Nineties, the Allmans experienced a musical and career rebirth, and Betts became its driving force especially after Gregg relapsed in the middle of the decade. But Betts could also be moody and volatile; in 1976, he was arrested for drinking and clashing with police. That side of him resumed; in 1993, he was arrested in Saratoga Springs, New York, after getting into a shoving match with cops, and his drinking led to fights with band members and missed shows. In 2000, he parted ways with the Allmans. Betts always insisted he was fired, while drummer John Lee “Jaimoe” Johnson told Rolling Stone in 2017 that Betts quit. “Dickey was always sort of the guy who was — I don’t want to say troubled, but was more of a loner,” Allmans manager Bert Holman told RS in 2017. “More separate than the rest of the guys.”
Although his falling out with the Allmans left a bitter taste in his mouth for years, Betts told RS that, in the end, he looked back fondly on his decades with them. “I would’ve done something,” he said. “I would have worked for somebody landscaping. I was very pragmatic and industrious. But it wouldn’t have been as nice as what happened when I met up with that bunch of guys.”
For much of the 2000s, Betts tried kick-starting his own career and music, although he was overshadowed again by the Allman Brothers Band, who continued without him (with guitarist Warren Haynes and Derek Trucks). In 2014, Betts quietly announced his retirement and told Rolling Stone in 2017 that he decided to stop recording music.
Despite the turbulence inside the Allman Brothers Band, Betts said he and Gregg had spoken right before Allman’s death, in 2017. After Allman’s death — and after Betts talked about retirement — he was coaxed into returning to the road in 2018, with his own son (also named Duane) joining his band. In August of that year, though, Betts suffered and then recovered from a mild stroke. Last December, Betts attended an 80th-birthday concert in his honor by the Allman Betts Family Revival band, near Betts’ longtime Florida home.
In 2017, Betts looked back at his life with no regrets, telling Rolling Stone: “I’ve had a great life and I don’t have any complaints,” he says. “If I could do it again, I don’t know what I could do to make it different. There are lawsuits I probably could have dealt with better. But so what? You have to get in there and fight and do the best with your amount of time.”
No comments:
Post a Comment