The Allman Brothers Band scored its first and only Top Ten pop hit with the fuel-injected "Ramblin' Man," a career-defining showcase for writer and singer
Dickey Betts, who emerged as the group's driving creative force in the aftermath of founder
Duane Allman's death.
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It's no small miracle that the Allman Brothers Band survived the October 1971 motorcycle accident that claimed Duane's life: beyond the loss of the group's architect and musical visionary, one half of their signature twin-guitar sound - Betts' counterpart and creative foil - was also gone for good. But after weeks of mourning, the Allmans rallied and began assembling 1972's two-LP Eat a Peach, which featured unreleased live material (including a 34-minute "Mountain Jam" recorded during their historic 1971 Fillmore East run) alongside a handful of new studio efforts like the Betts original "Blue Sky," his debut as a lead vocalist.
Sessions for what would become the Allman Brothers Band's next studio album, Brothers and Sisters, commenced at Macon, Ga.'s Capricorn Studios in the summer of 1972, but quickly derailed over Gregg Allman's long-incubating ballad "Queen of Hearts." "I had this pile of confetti around the piano where I'd tear [the song] up in a rage, and then go back to it," Allman told American Songwriter in 2011. "I finally played it for the band, and said ‘Why don't we just try it?' And one of them - I won't say who - said ‘Well, it just ain't sayin' nothin'.' I was livid. So I got on the first thing smokin' to Miami and recorded [Laid Back, his first solo album]."
Work on Brothers and Sisters finally resumed in October, with Betts emerging as the Allman Brothers Band's de facto leader. "It's not like Dickey came in and said 'I'm taking over. I'm the boss. Do this and that,'" road manager Willie Perkins told Allmans biographer Alan Paul. "It wasn't overt. It was still supposedly a democracy. But Dickey started doing more and more of the songwriting."
"Ramblin' Man" first appears on the Allmans bootleg The Gatlinburg Tapes, recorded in eastern Tennessee in April 1971 during an off-day jam session. Betts' bandmates initially feared the song – inspired by the 1951 Hank Williams tune of the same name – sounded too close to country music for comfort, but the flamethrower jam that concludes "Ramblin' Man," bolstered by harmonies from guitarist Les Dudek, erased any doubts about its bona fides. "We played it all live. I was standing where Duane would have stood, with [bassist Berry Oakley] just staring a hole through me, and that was very intense and very heavy," Dudek told Paul.
The version of "Ramblin' Man" featured in KORD is an alternate take captured during the Brothers and Sisters sessions. Although the Allmans and producer Johnny Sandlin discarded this version in favor of the definitive take included on the LP, it's fascinating to explore the Allmans' in-studio process using KORD's stem player: isolate Betts' guitar as he works out the shape and structure of his now-immortal "Ramblin' Man" solo.
"That's the best I heard since Duane," declared Allmans roadie Red Dog when management and crew listened to the "Ramblin' Man" playback, but Betts had little time to savor the scope of his achievement: on Nov. 11, 1972, Oakley suffered his own fatal motorcycle mishap three blocks from the site of Duane's accident, and days later, the Allmans buried their bassist's body directly beside Duane at Macon's Rose Hill Cemetery. The shellshocked survivors unanimously voted to carry on, with bassist Lamar Williams (an old friend of ABB drummer Jaimoe) and pianist Chuck Leavell joining the lineup.
Brothers and Sisters followed in August 1973. Executives at Capricorn Records waffled on whether to release "Ramblin' Man" or Gregg's opening track "Wasted Words" as the album's lead single until national promotion director Dick Wooley sent advance tapes of the former to Atlanta's WQXI-AM and Boston's WRKO-AM, and "listener phone-in reaction was near-phenomenal." "Ramblin Man" ultimately reached number two on the Billboard Hot 100, but it could not dethrone "Half-Breed," the second solo chart-topper by mononymous singer and television personality Cher, previously one half of the husband-and-wife folk-rock duo Sonny & Cher. Gregg Allman would cross paths with Cher backstage after a January 1975 performance: "She smelled like I would imagine a mermaid would smell," he wrote in his memoir My Cross to Bear. "I was so rude; I didn't say hello or nothing at all, because I was so blinded by her." Although their first date ended when Allman passed out from shooting heroin, Cher was smitten, and three days after finalizing her divorce from Sonny Bono, she and Allman wed in Las Vegas. (Cher filed to dissolve the marriage nine days later.)
"Ramblin' Man" remained a fixture of the Allman Brothers Band's set for decades, appearing on numerous live LPs and solo Betts releases - all of which he seems to prefer to the Brothers and Sisters recording. "[Sandlin] sped it up," Betts complained to the Sarasota Herald-Tribune in 2020. "He didn't think we had the tempo up enough, so he sped it up. You know, they speed something up, your voice goes up. But it was a hit. But it was not the way we cut it… I heard it and thought ‘That doesn't sound quite like my voice.' Then I found out later they sped it up. I said ‘You son of a bitch.' But they do that shit to you."
