Allmans guitarist Dickey Betts wrote this song, taking the title from the 1951 Hank Williams song "Ramblin' Man."

Betts also sang lead on the track, which he described as mostly autobiographical, telling the story of a guy whose travels take him to many places, and who takes life as it comes.

"When I was a kid, my dad was in construction and used to move the family back and forth between central Florida's east and west coasts," he said in the book Anatomy of a Song. "I'd go to one school for a year and then the other the next. I had two sets of friends and spent a lot of time in the back seat of a Greyhound bus. Ramblin' was in my blood."

This was the first Allman Brothers Band single recorded without their leader, Duane Allman, who was killed in a 1971 motorcycle accident.

Duane's work is on their 1972 album Eat a Peach, but for their next album, Brothers and Sisters, they had to fill the creative and sonic void left by his passing.

Dickey Betts stepped up in a big way with "Ramblin' Man," which became the group's biggest hit and proved they could survive the loss.
A key line in this song emerged in 1969 when Dickey Betts was playing in various bands in Florida.

He would often stay with a friend, Kenny Harwick, who had a habit of asking questions and then answering them.

One day, he asked Betts how he was doing and then answered for him: "I bet you're just trying to make a living and doing the best you can."

Betts held onto that line until 1972, when he wrote the rest of the lyric at the house the band shared in Macon, Georgia.