Jessica
by The Allman Brothers Band
- 104
- BPM
- D major
- Key
- 10B
- Camelot
- 32
- Danceability
- 45
- Acousticness
Dickey Betts wrote "Jessica" at the band's 432-acre farm in Juliette, Georgia, as a tribute to the gypsy jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt. Reinhardt played with two fingers on his left hand because of severe burns. Betts set out to write a piece that could be played that way. He had the main melody but grew frustrated with where it was going. Then his baby daughter, Jessica, crawled into the room and began bouncing to the music. He tried to capture the way she looked, and named the song after her.
Les Dudek said he wrote the bridge. By his account, Betts had invited him to dinner with an acoustic guitar. The song stalled after the opening riff. Dudek came up with a new section while Betts checked the steaks. Chuck Leavell disagreed that Dudek co-wrote it, and Butch Trucks doubted Dudek's account.
The band spent six days working on the arrangement at Capricorn Sound Studios in Macon, Georgia. Betts played the melody, Leavell played top harmony on Fender Rhodes, and Gregg Allman played the bottom line on Hammond organ. Dudek played acoustic rhythm guitar. Released in December 1973 as an instrumental single after "Ramblin' Man", it reached number 65 on the Hot 100. Rock radio formats played it more.
Jessica runs at 104 BPM, the tempo of mid-tempo pop, dancehall and indie. In classical terms it sits in andante territory. A bar of 4/4 lasts 2.31 seconds, and a quarter-note delay is 577 ms. It is in D major, Camelot 10B, which shares its notes with B minor and mixes cleanly with G major and A major.
We use multiple sources as part of our online research for the song story including Wikipedia.