Stephane Grappelli wouldn’t fly, so Dickey Betts found Vassar Clements at a bluegrass festival—and Highway Call was born. "That album was done strictly for fun. We were making a lot of money with the Allman Brothers Band, and we had some time off, and Gregg was working on one of his records, and I just wanted to do a fun record. Get a bunch of guys I know and have some fun. ⁠The original idea for that was, I was going to do more of a country jazz kind of thing with Stephane Grapelli. But he will not fly. He would only go by steamship, and hell, he wasn't going to be over here for six months. I was going to have to go to Paris if I wanted to record with him. During that same period of time I ran into Vassar Clements at a bluegrass festival. I just got a bunch of unusual people that you wouldn't expect, like the Rambos, to play on it. And Conway Twitty's steel player John Hughey. The thing on there, "Let Nature Sing," that was from my old Navajo friend, he's passed away now about six months ago, but he was a Navajo priest out in Arizona. And one of his things was "let nature sing." When your mind is troubled and everything, just sit and let nature sing." Dickey Betts on Highway Call