One in every of America’s quintessential album rock bands had been abruptly on the verge of a No.1 single on October 13, 1973.
The Allman Brothers Band had been climbing the Billboard Sizzling 100 for weeks with guitarist Dickey Betts’ “Ramblin’ Man.” The group had flirted with the chart 4 occasions earlier than, firstly in 1971 when “Revival (Love Is Everywhere)” edged to No.92. Three 1972 singles, “Ain’t Wastin’ Time No More,” “Melissa” and their model of Elmore James’ “One Way Out,” peaked at Nos.77, 86 and 86 once more, respectively. However even the Prime 40 was new territory for them till “Ramblin’ Man” got here alongside.
On the chart of October 13, 1973, the monitor made a sudden surge from No.7 all the way in which to No.2, behind Cher’s “Half Breed.” The group’s Brothers and Sisters album was changing into the most important of their profession, and that very same week, spent what turned out to be the final of 5 weeks in a row at No.1 on Billboard’s 200-place album chart. May the good masters of southern rock now take the outstanding leap and turn into the kings of Prime 40 radio too?
The reply, because it turned out, was not fairly. Per week later, the Cher single did fall from No.1, however it was not “Ramblin’ Man” that inherited its crown. Racing up on the blind facet, the Rolling Stones’ “Angie” accelerated from No.5 to the highest, denying the Allmans their second of final singles glory. To rub salt, the Stones additionally usurped the brothers on the album chart, ending that run for Brothers and Sisters with the Goat’s Head Soup album.
Betts the rambler
When Dickey Betts reminisced with the Wall Avenue Journal about “Ramblin’ Man,” he stated: “After I was a child, my dad was in development and used to maneuver the household forwards and backwards between central Florida’s east and west coasts. I’d go to at least one faculty for a yr after which the opposite the subsequent. I had two units of associates and spent lots of time behind a Greyhound bus. Ramblin’ was in my blood.
“But the song, as I originally wrote it, had a country flavour and needed to be Allmanized – given that rock-blues feeling. I thought of Eric Clapton’s “Layla” – which had come out a yr earlier – with its lengthy jam on the finish. I figured one thing like that may work. Once we went into Capricorn Sound Studios in Macon in October ’72, ‘Ramblin’ Man’ was the primary music we recorded – and it will be [bassist] Berry Oakley’s final music earlier than he died in a bike crash a month later.”
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