Memories. Today’s birthday honoree is not a legendary musical artist; instead she is the ghost a jazz-influenced Allman Brothers classic. Sort of. As the story goes, guitarist Dickey Betts was inspired by a woman he was seeing in the group’s hometown of Macon, Georgia, but did not want to reveal her identity because she was the girlfriend of Boz Scaggs. Instead, he named the song after a woman whose headstone he saw at Rose Hill Cemetery, where band members often hung out in their early days to relax and write songs. Happy birthday to Elizabeth Reed (Nov. 9, 1845–May 3, 1935). May she rest in peace, except when she is grooving in her grave to one of the great rock instrumentals — “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed.”
