Guitar Town: Jacksonville in the late 1960s
By Michael Ray FitzGerald
If you’re gonna come to this town with a guitar in your hand, you’d better know how to play that thing.
My family moved from Lemoore, Calif., to Jacksonville, Florida, in 1968. A high-school chum who had lived there told me I would love it—musically, Jacksonville was “really happening.”
He was right.
We arrived April 4, the day Martin Luther King got shot. My parents had gone to nearby Orange Park to look for a house. I was sitting in the bathtub in the hotel at Naval Air Station Jacksonville when the news from Memphis came over the radio.
Also on the radio that day was “Spooky,” a song by the Classics IV, a band from Jacksonville who had hit the No. 3 spot on Billboard ’s Hot 100.
I was surprised to discover there were bands all over the place. There were half a dozen rock groups at Orange Park Senior High alone: The Daybreakers, the Nu-Sounds, the Six Teens, the Sound Vibrations and others. The Daybreakers even had a local hit being played on 50,000-watt powerhouse WAPE-AM. Coincidentally, my new friends in the Daybreakers recorded at Sound Lab, the same Edgewood Avenue studio the Classics IV had started their careers.
“Jacksonville was the place to be,” said Mack Doss, a guitarist from Bradenton who had been in the Thunderbeats with Larry “Rhino” Reinhardt. “There were hundreds of gigs to be had.” One of the hottest pickers from Sarasota County was Dickey Betts, who used to fill in for 16-year-old Reinhardt on Sunday nights because those were school nights.Betts, who had played often in Jacksonville, told Doss to get his butt up to up to Jacksonvilleto find work. So he did. Doss moved to Jacksonville in 1966 and by 1967replaced guitarist J.R. Cobb in the touring version of the Classics IV. “I was 19 years old. I was playing on some demos at Sound Lab. Wally [Eaton, bassist for the Classics IV] heard me and hired me on the spot.”Doss was followed a year laterby Jacksonville guitarist Auburn Burrell, who went on to become a sought-after session player in Atlanta and Los Angeles.
The hippie movement hit Jacksonville in 1968 like a scene from Easy Rider. Being a long-haired rock musicianinNorth Floridacould be hazardous to your health. Packs of rednecks cruised around in “muscle cars,” looking for longhairs to terrorize. There was one area where you could be left alone: Riverside, Jacksonville’s answer to Greenwich Village.
My dad had taken me to Paulus Music downtown and co-signed for my first professional guitar, a cherry-red Gibson SG Standard, which we bought for the princely sum of $348.40—I’d wanted a Les Paul, like my buddy, Page, in the Daybreakers had, but it was out of our price range. I was to make the $22 monthly payments with wages I earned busing tables at the enlisted men’s cafeteria for $1.65 an hour. The jarheads constantly hassled me about my hair, which was maybe an inchover the tops of my ears. That job lasted about a month.
Things were getting tense between my dad and me. He didn’t object when I moved in with my grandmother, who had come down from rusty old Roxbury to get away from the gray slush and the cold. She bought a mobile home and rented a lot in a trailer park close to school. She also wound up making most of the payments on my guitar for me.
In Freeman’s Trailer Park lived local legend Paul Glass. His black, stringy hair was already almost to his shoulders. He had quit school a few months before I met him to become a rock musician with a band called Marshmellow Steamshovel and was making decent money. He spent most of his days in his parents’ trailer, shades drawn, practicing his Epiphone ES-335 replica. I brought my luscious, new SG by one day, hoping for some pointers. Never one for niceties, Glass sneered, “You don’t deserve this guitar,” as he lovingly fondled it. He wanted to borrow it, but I wouldn’t let it out of my sight. So we struck a bargain: He’d bring me along on his gigs; I would let him use the guitar and, in return, I would get to meet his bandmates and other musicians like Jeff Carlisi, later of .38 Special, and Leon Wilkeson of Lynyrd Skynyrd, who lived two blocks from Carlisi. I might even get to “sit in” and gain some valuable experience. This connection did eventually lead to my being invited to audition for a group called Sweet Rooster, which later became .38 Special.
As part of my instruction in guitar lore, Glass took me to see a Riverside band called the Second Coming, which featured a virtuoso picker named Dickey Betts. If Clapton was God, as the saying went, then Betts was Jesus—he could play Clapton’s solo on “Crossroads” note-for-note. Clapton himself couldn’t do that.[1]
“Dickey was already considered one of the hottest guitar players in Florida,” said Richard Price, a bass player from Sarasota who worked with guitarist Larry “Rhino” Reinhardt in a band called the Load. Price would later replace Oakley in the Second Coming.
Sarasota keyboardist Reese Wynans, who would join the Second Coming in 1969,told author Alan Paul, “Dickey was the hottest guitar player in the area, the guy [guitarists] looked up to and wanted to emulate.”
Forrest Richard “Dickey” Bettshad been performing on and off in Jacksonville for several years. Many if not most of the prominent players in the Bradenton-Sarasota area came to Jacksonville in those days because there were so many gigs to be had. Betts had spent several months here in the mid-1960s with hisBradenton band, the Jokers, who were fixtures at the Westside’s Normandy Club.
Back home in Sarasota, Bettsran intoRaymond Berry Oakley, a guitarist and bassist from Chicago, who had relocated to the area after leaving Tommy Roe’s band. In 1967, psychedelic music or “acid-rock” was the next big thing, and Oakley wanted to get in on it. Betts was reluctant at first because it was easier and safer to eke out a steady paycheck playing bar-band dance music. Oakley convinced him that psychedelic blues, a la Blue Cheer and Cream, was the wave of the future, and they needed to ride it. He talked Betts into forming an “underground” group they called the Blues Messengers along with Betts’ wife, Dale, on keyboards, guitarist Reinhardt and drummer/vocalist John Meeks.
Before moving to Sarasota, Meeks had played along to records at aAtlanta discothequecalled the Scene, whose owners were openinganother location in Jacksonville and needed a band. The Jacksonville location, at 4403 Roosevelt Blvd., near the corner of U.S. Highway 17 and San Juan Avenue, happened to be adjacent to the Riverside district. The owners came to see the Blues Messengers in Tampa. An offer was tenderedwiththe demand that the band change its name to the Second Coming. Betts told a Guitar World interviewer this was because the owners thought Oakley was a ringer for Jesus. “We thought that was corny as shit, but the club owner offered us double what we were making in Tampa.”
The Second Coming came to Jacksonville and became the house band at the Scene. Reinhardt, wanting to start his own band, came up and played for a while but decided to back to Sarasota, where he worked with a group called Bittersweet with keyboardist Reese Wynans along with drummer Ramone Sotolongo. Reinhardt and Sotolongo left Bittersweet to form the power trio the Load, adding bassist Richard Price. Sotolongo was soon replaced byMonty Young, and the group landed a steady gig at Dub’s Steer Room in Gainesville.
The Second Coming arrived in Jacksonville on DATE.“We were the only [guys] in town with long hair,” Betts told an interviewer. “We’d be driving around and people would throw shit at us.” Scene co-owner Leonard Renzler put the members up in an apartment above the R&R Bar, a downtown strip joint he co-owned.After getting the lay of the land, the band membersrented an oldVictorian house at 2799 Riverside Ave. they nicknamed “the Green House.”
The Second Coming began its six-night-a-week grind at the Scene, becoming an instant hit. Big-name musicians would stop in after concerts to “sit in” with the band. One night a pair of musicians from Daytona Beach, Duane and Gregg Allman of the group Hour Glass, sat in.
The Second Coming was a very busy band. Instead of taking a day off on Sundays,the band members,at Oakley’s behest, began hosting regular afternoon jam sessions, called “be-ins,” at Willowbranch Park, six blocks from the Green House, where the band played for free for an enthusiastic audience of local hippies. Sometimes they would convene at a patio bar called the Forest Inn in the Lake Shore district, three miles west of Willowbranch.This was a genius marketing move, because the local hippies were too young to get into the Scene; these free concerts enabled the Second Coming to find its audience and vice versa.
The group garnered a substantial and loyal following, myself and Glass included.
Alan Facemire, a part-time jock at WAPE, signed on as manager in late 1968. He produced a single for Steady Records, owned byFairfield, N.J.-based International Tape Cartridge Corp. The record,which Facemire proceeded to play on-air, consisted of Betts’slightly off-key rendition of Cream’s “I Feel Free” backed with Dale Betts doing Jefferson Airplane’s “She Has Funny Cars.” These recordings and others, made at Sound Lab on Edgewood Avenue, were transferred to Hourglass Records, also owned by ITCC, along with some other tracksintended for an album that was never released.
Dale Betts was having a baby, so classically trained keyboardist Reese Wynans came up from Bradenton to take her place. She returned tothe group strictly as a singer; Wynans remained on keyboards.
The Green House was getting crowded. Oakley and his wife, Linda, along with the Bettses, had moved to the roomier “Gray House” a block down the street at 2844 Riverside Ave. Facemire, wanting to expand his management roster, invited the Load to Jacksonville to share bills—and accommodations—with the Second Coming. Reinhardt, Price and Young moved into the Gray House.By November of 1968, Duane Allman had become a regular guest as well.
Betts’ guitar playing was our drug.Glass and I would go almost anywhere to get it. We hitchhiked all over Northeast Florida—as far as Ravine Gardens in Palatka—to hear Betts at every possible opportunity. One night, the two of us set out on a hitchhiking excursion into one of Jacksonville’s toughest blue-collar neighborhoods. This was a risky undertaking for semi-longhairs, but we braved our way to the Woodstock Youth Center on Beaver Street to get our dose of Betts’ magic.
It was not the band’s best performance. The group had a mystery guest sitting in: Betts stood by as most of the solos were taken by a diffident young man who looked like the Cowardly Lion and spent most of the show staring down at his Fender guitar, blond stringy hair draped over his face.
Glass and I were outraged. We had nearly risked our lives to see and hear Betts. We couldn’t understand why Betts was letting this guy hog the solos. “We came to hear Dickey!” we heckled. “Dickey can play circles around this dude!” It would be months before we found out that this dude was Duane Allman and that he was almost famous.
Allman was somewhat well-known around these parts, and this was hardly the first time he had sat in with one of Betts’ bands. The two had known each other since Betts’ days with the Jokers—but, Betts told Guitar World, they had not hit it off. From Daytona Beach, about 90 miles south of Jacksonville, Duane Allman and his younger brother Gregg, as the Allman Joys, had been semi-regulars at a downtown-Jacksonville joint called the Comic Book Club. Glass had mentioned the Allman Joys to me once or twice; none the less,he didn’t recognize the mostly obscured face onstage that evening.
The Allman Joys had cut some sides in Nashville with producer/publisher Buddy Killen of Dial Records, but no hits ensued. After flopping on Dial, Duane and Gregg Allman regrouped under various configurations, many of which signed to national labels to little or no avail. After signing to Liberty with the Hour Glass, Duane got sick of scuffling around Los Angeles and bolted for FAME (Florence Alabama Music Enterprises) Studios in Muscle Shoals, Ala., while brother Gregg decided to stay with Liberty in Los Angeles and make a go of it. Duane hounded FAME owner Rick Hall, who slowly took a liking to Allman and eventually provided him steady work as a session guitarist, performing with the likes of Clarence Carter, Boz Scaggs and others.
A few months earlier, during a July 1968 gig at the Comic Book Club with the Hour Glass, Allman and Berry Oakley met and got along famously.Allman started visiting the Green House to jam with Oakleyand in November started staying there between sessions at Muscle Shoals. This was just prior to Allman’s working with soul sensation Wilson Pickett at FAME. Allman’s guitar work on Pickett’s version of the Beatles’ “Hey, Jude”—a song Allman suggested they record together—pricked up the ears of Atlantic Records VP Jerry Wexler, who felt it was a stroke of genius. Wexler brought Allman to New York to record with Aretha Franklin. Allman’s solo on “Hey, Jude” even caught the attention of Eric Clapton.
His reputation burgeoning, Allman moved to Muscle Shoals and managed to talk FAME owner Hall into signing him to a five-year recording contract so he could make his own album.[2]Hall brought in his friend Phil Walden, who had managed Otis Redding and Percy Sledge, as Allman’s manager. Allman wanted to put together a real, full-time band. At first Walden suggested he try to reunite the members of the Hour Glass, but Sandlin and Hornsby would have none of it. Allman cut some tracks using them as session players. He offered guitarist Eddie Hinton, a Jacksonville native who grew up in Alabama and had played with Hornsby and Sandlin in the Five Men-its, a slot in the new band. Hinton too declined.
Walden suggested former Percy Sledge drummer Johnny Johnson, who came to FAME to check out the prospect. Allman liked Johnson and asked him to join the band. In January 1969, he hired Oakley as his session bassist and brought him to Muscle Shoals, hoping Oakley would join the new band. Allman, Oakley and Johnson did do quite a bit of jamming in Studio B in their spare time, yet Oakley remained reluctant. Even though he loved playing with Allman and Johnson, Oakley remained fiercely loyal to Betts and the Second Coming. After all, forming the band was his idea in the first place.
Rick Hall was getting frustrated.Allman had cut seven or eight sides, but the project was not jelling. Even worse, it became clear to Hall that Allman was no singer. Atlantic’s Wexler was keeping an eye on the project and felt he could develop it into something marketable. Hall sold Allman’s contract to Atlantic for $10,000. However, Wexler didn’t know quite what to do either, so he decided to turn it over to Walden, whose role would change from manager to record executive. Wexler suggested Walden form a joint venture with Atlantic: Walden would bear the financial risk of developing the actand producing the recordings, and Atlantic would distribute the final product. The new label would be called Capricorn, and Allman’s as-yet-unnamed project was to be its flagship act. Walden, however conveniently forgot to recuse himself as Allman’s manager.[3]
Fed up with Muscle Shoals and wanting to do own thing,Allman,with Johnsonin tow,bolted for Jacksonville to scout musicians. The pair wanted Oakley in particular. Allman again started sitting in with the Second Coming. Impressed with Betts’ playing, he decided to add him to the mix. According to Linda Oakley, this was entirely Allman’s idea, not as a result of any demands made by Berry Oakley. In any case, it solved the problem of Oakley’s being reluctant to walk out on Betts.
Allman had already considered the prospect of using double drummers—he got the idea from James Brown—so when he and Johnson landed in Jacksonvillein early May, Allman got in touch with drummer Claude “Butch” Trucks. In fact Allman and Johnson crashed at Trucks’ house in the Arlington district. Trucks too began sitting in with the Second Coming at the group’s Sunday jams.
In 1966, the Allmans had heard Trucks’ folk-rock trio, the Bitter Ind, which included guitarist Scott Boyer and bassist David Brown, in Daytona Beach and befriended them. In 1967, after a quick name change to the 31st of February, the triosigned to Vanguard Records. A year later, disgusted with the Hour Glass project and Los Angeles, Duane and Gregg Allmancame to Jacksonville and joined the 31st of February. The new five-piece line-up recorded several tracksat Henry Stone’s tiny studioin Hialeah in an effort to produce a follow-up album for Vanguard, which the label declined.