"Jessica" is seven-and-a-half minutes of light and love - what producer Johnny Sandlin called "the happiest song I've ever heard." The instrumental surfaced at an intensely turbulent time for the Allman Brothers Band, which was reeling from the deaths of two founding members and struggling with drug addiction. That didn't stop guitarist Dickey Betts from composing a paean to bright-eyed innocence, its jaunty melody inspired by (and named after) his infant daughter. "Jessica" may have performed tepidly on on the charts, but constant FM radio airplay (and its role as the opening theme to Britain's popular motoring show Top Gear) ensured its status as one of the Allmans' defining compositions - an aural representation of unbridled positivity, hatched in its lingering vacancy.
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