Elizabeth Reed & the Allman Brothers
She’s more than just inspiration for the song’s title
Today marks the 180th birthday of Elizabeth Jones Reed Napier, namesake of Dickey Betts’s most famous instrumental: “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed.” Reupping my most read post in honor of the anniversary.
Welcome to Long Live the ABB: Conversation from the Crossroads of Southern music, history, and culture.
Thanks to all of y’all for reading. Your feedback has been good for my writer’s soul. When I started this endeavor, I genuinely believed there was a community of folks out there interested in the things I am interested in and write about. Y’all have proven I’m not the only one interested in the intersections of Southern music, history, and culture through the lens of the Allman Brothers Band.1 Thanks for joining me for the ride.
I started @LongLivetheABB on social media in 2022, a few months before launching Play All Night! Duane Allman and the Journey to Fillmore East. My goal was to share content from my research archives with as many folks who were interested.
It took awhile to gain momentum but at this point I have well over 15,0002 followers on various channels, including here on Substack.3
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/longlivetheABB
Substack is the hub for all of these activities, the place where I share my thoughts with folks who’ve subscribed to Long Live the ABB.
I get some ideas from social media and they’ll often coalesce in longer form here.4
Such is the case with today’s post on Elizabeth “Bessie” Jones Reed Napier.
As expected in any book about the Allman Brothers Band, I referenced “Liz Reed” repeatedly throughout Play All Night! Duane Allman and the Journey to Fillmore East. It is one of the ABB’s best, a tune that is uniquely theirs.
There’s no documentation of exactly when Dickey brought his composition to the band but the song has its origins in Macon. By January 1970, the Allman Brothers Band was opening sets with it, including a February stint at Fillmore East opening for the Dead. That same month, the group recorded a demo of “Elizabeth Reed” at Capricorn Studios in preparation for recording Idlewild South.5
This is an excerpt from p128 of Play All Night:
“Elizabeth Reed” demonstrated Betts’s talent as a composer and marked a new avenue for the band: instrumentals. “Dickey wasn’t secure enough about what he was doing,” Jaimoe reflected, “which worked to his advantage, because he’d have something almost perfect before he’d bring it in.”
“In Memory of Elizabeth Reed” reflects the influence of Miles Davis and John Coltrane on Betts and the entire band. The song’s arrangement in February 1970 is similar to the studio version recorded later that year and most famously on At Fillmore East. It features multiple movements and tempo changes as well as solos by all but Oakley, who plays lead bass throughout. Though instrumentals were not new to the band’s repertoire, “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed” was its first original, fully formed instrumental. It remained in the band’s set list for the next forty years.
Betts called the tune a pure expression of his spiritual commitment to music: “When I write something that I’m proud of, like ‘Elizabeth Reed,’ where does that melody come from? That melody is given to me because I’ve dedicated myself so much to that guitar.” Betts’s use of religious terminology conveys his (and the band’s) belief that music is a spiritual and communal experience. ABB audiences appeared to understand and appreciate this connection.
Dickey drew inspiration for its title from the grave of Elizabeth Jones Reed Napier, who is buried in Macon’s historic Rose Hill Cemetery.6
Rose Hill Cemetery
Rose Hill holds a special place in ABB lore.7 It runs along the Ocmulgee River and the Atlanta South freight train line. It sits at the foot of College Street, where the group lived in the infamous “Hippie Crash Pad,” Twiggs Lyndon’s apartment at 309 College. Legend has it that the band and family spent time in their early days roaming the cemetery. (Having visited many times, I get it. Rose Hill is a really cool place.)
Photographer Stephen Paley shot some iconic images at Rose Hill, including the image on the back of the ABB’s debut album.8 Several other memorable shots from that photo shoot have long captured my imagination, including this one from the top of the Bond-Johnston mausoleum (where Paley shot the back album cover).9
And this of Duane and Gregg at the same spot, a wider shot of an inset photo from the debut album.
Rose Hill is also the final resting spot of the four ABB members who have died: Duane Allman (1971), Berry Oakley (1972), and Gregg Allman and Butch Trucks (both 2017). The plot has spots reserved for Jaimoe and Dickey Betts.
In Memory of Elizabeth Reed
Dickey wrote “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed” for Carmella Scaggs, wife of Boz Scaggs.
Boz moved to Macon in 1969, after he had finished recording Boz Scaggs in Muscle Shoals, an album Duane shined on.
Boz and Carmella fell in with the ABB and crew and Dickey (then still married) and Carmella started having an affair. The relationship inspired “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed.”
To hide the song’s origin, Dickey named his song after a grave at the very bottom of Rose Hill, along the railroad tracks and the Ocmulgee River.
At various times he’s described Elizabeth Jones Reed Napier’s gravesite as a favorite writing spot and (in later years) a place he and Carmella used to rendezvous.
The latter is how Duane described it in jest in an interview, something Dickey recounted to Cameron Crowe in 1973:
“I wrote that song for a certain person,” Dickey says, “but I didn’t know what to call it. There was a tombstone nearby that read In Memory of Elizabeth Reed, so that’s what I called the tune. Some writer once asked me how I wrote the song and Duane said, ‘Aww, he fucked some girl across a tombstone and that’s what it’s about.’ Don’t you know that got printed in an instant. You can imagine how the girl I wrote it for felt after that.”10
The song is pretty incredible if you ask me, a real representation of the glory of the original Allman Brothers Band. The version on At Fillmore East is definitive—13+ minutes of ABBsolute magic. I call it “perfection in musical form.”
So who exactly was Elizabeth Reed?
Elizabeth Jones Reed Napier was known as “Bessie.” She grew up in Savannah and studied art, piano, and voice at Macon’s all-women’s Wesleyan College, graduating in 1862.
Bessie met her husband Briggs, then serving in the Confederate army, at a concert at Wesleyan.11 They married in 1865, less than a year after Briggs lost a leg in the Battle of Atlanta.
Bessie was the mother of 12 children, only 5 of whom reached adulthood.
The Napiers, Bessie’s husband’s family were a significant, and very wealthy, Macon family. Her husband’s grandfather Thomas Napier was a veteran of the Revolutionary War who owned 6000+ acres in Bibb County, including a home in Vineville—an area then just outside of Macon known for its large plantation homes.
Leroy, Bessie’s father-in-law, was a major funder of the Confederate cause12 in addition to serving as a Confederate officer. He also had a home in Vineville.13
Best I can tell, the Big House, the ABB’s communal home in Macon (and now an ABB museum) is located on land that once belonged to Skelton Napier, Thomas’s son/Briggs’s brother.
Briggs Napier died of cancer in 1895.
Bessie lived another 40 years.
She died on May 3, 1935 in her daughter’s house at 113 Rogers Avenue in Macon.14
Why is that significant?
Take a look at the screenshot below. The red spot is 113 Rogers Avenue. To the left, at 2321 Vineville Avenue, is the Big House, the communal home of the Allman Brothers Band from 1970-1973.
Elizabeth Jones Reed Napier, inspiration for one of the Allman Brothers Band’s greatest songs, died within a stone’s throw of the Big House!
And it was just less than 35 years before the ABB moved into the neighborhood.
I’m quite sure Dickey didn’t know any of this backstory when he wrote “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed,” but I find it fascinating nonetheless.
Thanks for reading, y’all.
I appreciate you.
I reserve the right to interpret this WIDELY. 🍄
As of October 2024 that # exceeds 50,000 (not all unique users) across all platforms.
Shout-out to my dude Ken Switzer for his help in launching this. Check out his work.
I’ve learned the hard way that social media is no place to engage in any sort of dialog. I am dedicated to doing that here on Substack.
See Idlewild South tracksheet at Duaneallman.info.
Rose Hill is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
I write a good bit about Rose Hill around here.
He shot the cover at 315 College Street, right next door to the Hippie Crash Pad. The building is now part of Mercer University. The Hippie Crash Pad burned in a fire many years ago.
Duaneallman.info has a cool story on the Paley photo shoot.
Elizabeth Reed studied art, piano, voice, and met her husband at a concert?! You can’t make this shit up.
His purchase of $58,000 in Confederate war bonds was ostensibly the largest individual purchase in history. See https://npgallery.nps.gov/GetAsset/bbb36920-84a2-4a65-9074-4e9a6845bccd/.
Leroy Napier’s home is long gone. His brother Skelton’s is still there at 156 Rogers Ave. It’s listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
I can’t tell if the house is still there or not, but I do not think so.
Great post.Learned much about the creation of a great song.
Interesting as always. Kinda feel bad for Boz.