Founding Allman Brothers Band guitarist Dickey Betts will have a stretch of U.S. Highway 41 named after him, pending approval from the Florida Department of Transportation.
The dedication is a fitting tribute to the Southern rock legend, who passed away in 2024 at the age of 80. Betts was born in Florida and resided in Sarasota County, right off the highway, for decades. He even referenced his deep ties to the region and the U.S. 41 itself in the lyrics of “Ramblin’ Man”, one of the ABB’s biggest hits, in the line, “I was born in the back seat of a Greyhound bus rollin’ down Highway 41.”
The Betts family’s Florida roots date all the way back to the 19th century, as Dickey explained in an interview with Sarasota Herald-Tribune‘s Wade Tatangelo: “Well, my family has been in Manatee County since like 1870, right after the Civil War. We homesteaded land in Myakka. All you had to do was put stakes down on the land and pay taxes on it and it was yours,” he said. “In fact, they named the road Betts after us out there.”
Indeed, Betts Road still exists east of Bradenton.
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Betts bounced between Manatee County and West Palm Beach throughout his upbringing, moving every few years so his father, a contractor, could work on new housing developments.
He went on to recall his first taste of notoriety, when he got in the newspaper for winning a talent show at the Manatee County Fair at age 14, saying, “that was my first kind of introduction to trying to get recognized.”
He left home two years later, at age 16, to join a traveling circus called the World of Mirth, where he performed on the Teen Beat stage, and later played with bassist Berry Oakley in the Jacksonville-based band Second Coming. The pair linked up with Gregg and Duane Allman during a fortuitous jam session in 1969, leading to the formation of the Allman Brothers Band that year. More than 50 years later, Betts is remembered as one of history’s finest musicians, landing a spot in Rolling Stone‘s 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in addition to a pair of Grammy Awards.
His son Duane Betts, who hosted a star-studded memorial concert for Dickey earlier this year, continues to carry on his legacy, playing guitar with his band Palmetto Motel and shouldering the ABB mantle along with Gegg Allman’s son Devon Allman with the Allman Betts Family Revival.