Dickey Betts, the Les Paul-wielding guitar hero who co-founded the Allman Brothers Band and helped define Southern rock, has died according to a statement from his family. The cause was cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, Betts’ manager David Spero confirmed to Rolling Stone. He was 80.

“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.”

Alongside brothers Duane and Gregg Allman, bassist Berry Oakley, and drummers Butch Trucks and Jai Johanny “Jaimoe” Johanson, Betts founded the Allman Brothers Band in March 1969. The band created its own sound, one that mixed blues traditions with the grit of rock ‘n’ roll and, when onstage, borrowed from jazz for lengthy improvisations. The Allmans crossed cultural boundaries as the mixed-race lineup forged bonds with another seminal jam band the Grateful Dead while also embracing their status as Southern rock pioneers by performing with descendants like The Marshall Tucker Band. The Allmans, the Dead, and The Band even teamed up in 1973 for Summer Jam at Watkins Glen, which for decades was the largest concert in history with an estimated attendance of over 600,00.

There was also a darkness that ran through the Allman Brothers Band’s legacy. Motorcycle accidents claimed the lives of Duane Allman and Berry Oakley just as the band was beginning to take off in the early 1970s. Dickey Betts became the group’s leader and helmed the band through its most commercially successful period. With the band’s life of heavy touring came interpersonal issues and substance abuse problems, causing the band to break up twice—once in 1976 and again in 1982. After reforming in 1989, tensions continued to mount between Dickey and the rest of the band, particularly Gregg Allman, until he was dismissed (allegedly by fax) from the band in 2000. Dickey Betts never again performed with the Allman Brothers Band, which went on until 2014 with a stable lineup. Following Gregg and Butch’s deaths in 2017, drummer Jaimoe is now the last surviving original member of the Allman Brothers.

Forrest Richard Betts was born on December 12th, 1943 in West Palm Beach, FL to a musical family who nurtured his early love of bluegrass and country music. His music career began at age 5 when he started playing ukelele, and as Betts grew so did his instruments as he graduated to mandolin, banjo, and guitar. By 16 he was touring with rock bands across the Eastern United States, ultimately forming the Second Coming with future ABB bandmate Berry Oakley in 1967.

In 1969, a buzzworthy guitarist from Muscle Shoals’ FAME Studios named Duane Allman alongside fellow FAME musician Jaimoe linked up with Dickey and Berry in Jacksonville, home of Butch Trucks. The five musicians started jamming together on a regular basis and played free shows with a rotating lineup of keyboardists and singers. According to Dickey Betts in a 2017 Rolling Stone interview, he was the one who suggested recruiting Duane’s brother Gregg who was out in California. When Gregg came home to Florida, he joined the group and on March 26th, 1969, the Allman Brothers Band was born.

Through their first three albums—two studio, one live—along with a prodigious tour schedule, the Allman Brothers were becoming a driving force in the evolution of rock music at the turn of the 1970s. Though 1969’s self-titled and 1970’s Idlewild South displayed the group’s songwriting talents, it wasn’t until 1971’s At Fillmore East—considered one of the greatest live albums of all time—that the Allman Brothers were fully able to show listeners across the country what the group was about.

But the Allman’s trajectory was dealt a crushing blow in 1971 with the death of Duane Allman in a motorcycle accident, followed the next year by Berry Oakley in the same manner only blocks away from where Duane had crashed. Loss would become a defining characteristic of the Allmans’ legacy, but just as tantamount to the group’s six-decade career was the determination to carry on, with the line, “The road goes on forever,” from Idlewild South‘s “Midnight Rider” becoming a group mantra.

Following Duane’s death, Dickey became the de facto leader of the band and chartered the group to its only #1 album with Brothers and Sisters in 1973. The album’s hit single “Ramblin’ Man”, written and sung by Betts, catapulted the Allmans to the forefront of mainstream rock and the band toured heavily for the next several years. Betts contributed some of the group’s most lasting songs, including instrumentals “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed” and “Jessica”, sing-along “Blue Sky”, and many more.

Success came with its share of obstacles, and after Gregg Allman testified against his own road manager Scooter Herring in 1976 following a drug bust, the band split for the first time. Despite the band’s status as beloved pillars of the developing Southern rock and jam band movements, personal differences within the group broke them apart on two occasions. A reunion at the dawn of the 1980s didn’t last long, with the band again splitting in 1982, sitting on the shelf for several years, and reforming in 1989.

“The Allman Brothers was a year-by-year thing,” guitarist Warren Haynes, who joined the band in the 1980s, said in the biography One Way Out. “There was no indication that it was capable of staying together for years to come. We all looked at it as each tour could be the last one, and there was no reason to think otherwise.”

By the late 1990s, old tensions and old habits had flared up again. Amid shifting lineup changes, bringing in young guns like Derek Trucks and Oteil Burbridge, Betts was infamously faxed a message in 2000 saying that his services were no longer needed within the band. The group alleged that the split was due to Dickey’s drug and alcohol abuse, a claim which he contested.

In Dickey’s absence, the group’s lineup solidified in 2001 with the return of Warren Haynes, a lineup that stuck until the Allman Brothers Band played its final show at the Beacon Theatre in 2014. Betts, meanwhile, reactivated his solo band under the banner Dickey Betts & Great Southern, though the project never reached the same level of success he had with the Allmans. In a 2017 interview with Rolling Stone, Betts said that he and Gregg reconnected for a couple sparse conversations before Allman’s death from cancer that same year.

“Gregg could only whisper, but we got things worked out,” Betts said. “We went through the court thing, so he thought I had it out for him. I had to let him know I didn’t.”

Dickey all but retired from performing live in the mid-to-late-2010s. Around that time, Dickey’s son Duane Betts—named for Dickey’s late bandmate—began making a name for himself. After a stint as a touring guitarist with Dawes and playing in his dad’s band, Duane Betts joined up with Gregg Allman‘s son Devon Allman to form the Allman Betts Band. During one of the group’s recent breaks, Duane also issued his debut solo album, Wild & Precious Life, which features a contribution from latter-era Allman Brothers guitarist Derek Trucks. Last year, Dickey Betts attended a performance of the Allman Betts Family Revival—an all-star celebration of the Allman’s music led by Duane and Devon—for his 80th birthday.

“I’ve had a great life and I don’t have any complaints,” Dickey said in 2017. “I don’t know what I would’ve done to make it different. There are lawsuits I probably could have dealt with better. But so what? You do the best with your amount of time.”