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THE MARSHALL TUCKER BAND-
“THERE’S GOLD IN THEM GRASSROOTS”
THE GASTONIA GAZETTE
GASTONIA, NORTH CAROLINA
MAY 2, 1976

It’s 3:00 A.M. in the Capricorn sound studios on Broadway and while George McCorkle and Doug Gray of the Marshall Tucker Band get whipped in a game of Ping-Pong by the band’s roadies, down the hall in the main control room, Toy Caldwell, Marshall Tucker’s lead guitarist and songwriter, and producer Paul Hornsby are listening
to John McEuen of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band add some banjo overdubs to Caldwell’s ‘Long Hard Ride,’ the title track to the band’s fifth album and their first recorded instrumental. Mark Pucci, Capricorn Record’s publicist, is also there, touting the song as the next ‘Rawhide’, but as a publicist he knows he’s able to do little with press releases to help Tucker.
Marshall Tucker is a grassroots band, and its own greatest asset for publicity. For the last three-and-a-half years, the band has been on a “long hard ride,” covering the country in a customized bus on a grueling tour schedule, trying to play most of their markets at least twice a year. “We play a place,” says Toy, “and when we come back, there are twice as many people as before. All those people who come out to see ya, that’s a weird feeling sometimes. Look at me! What the hell do they want to see me for?”
While Marshall Tucker worked on their latest album in Macon, Capricorn threw a party for the band, giving them gold copies of their first album, “The Marshall Tucker Band,” recorded three years ago. And on the basis of their grassroots appeal, two other albums have gone gold within the last six months, “Where We All Belong” and
“Searchin’ fora Rainbow.”
Four years out of being just another club band from Spartanburg, S.C.,
Tucker still comprises its six original members, with Caldwell on lead, McCorkle on rhythm guitar, Gray on vocals, Tommy Caldwell (Toy’s brother) on bass, Jerry Eubanks on alto sax and flute and Paul Riddle on drums.
Toy Caldwell and McCorkle played together in high school in Spartanburg, then in the early Seventies Caldwell formed a band with Gray and Eubanks called The Toy Factory. In 1972 they joined
McCorkle, Riddle and Tommy Caldwell and changed their name to the Marshall Tucker Band, after the owner of their rehearsal hall in Spartanhurg.
In May of that year Tucker played with Wet Willie, a Capricorn Records group, at the Ruins, a club in Spartanburg. “They heard our stuff.” recalls Toy, and told us to take it to Phil Walden (President of Capricornt. Hell, I never heard of the cat. Still, we drove down to Macon and dropped a tape off.” They were booked into Grant’s Lounge in Macon. “I went by there one night,” recalls Capricorn’s executive vice president Frank Fenter, and they sounded entirely different than anything we had on the label. Surprisingly, though, people compare them to the Allman Brothers.
Marshall Tucker’s first album was released in March 1973, and that year they toured as the opening act for the Allman Brothers, before being added to tours with Lynyrd Skynyrd and the Eagles. And, as the Tucker band developed into a strong touring band Capricorn’s natural temptation to do a heavy hype on them waned. “It’s easy for me to sit here, with three gold records,” reflects Jerry Eubanks, “and say, ‘No, I’d never sell out.’ But there have been many times when you’re broke and starving when you’d do about anything. Capricorn had the sense not to come to us and say, ‘You be that kind of band,’ or put us into the position of trying to fill large halls when we weren’t ready for it.”
Doug Gray is less analytical. “You could never imagine me coming out on roller skates; I’d probably trip over my hair. We kid each other and say, ‘Hey, I’m gonna dress up in tights tonight.’ But we laugh at people who have to do that stuff in order to sell a record. If they want to do it, fine, but not anybody in our band. Hell, what would your friends think?”
Toy Caldwell turned to the new album, set for release in June. “The tunes — eight of them — are there. The pickin’s there and the sound is crisp.” The album demonstrates Marshall Tucker’s amazing versatility, with a mixture of slow — and fast-paced luncs, heavily overlaid with country, rock and jazz influences. In this latest album, they’re not just another Southern band. “The country is ready for Marshall Tucker.” Phil Walden immodestly proclaims. “Groups like the Eagles have paved the way… and the Eagles don’t say ‘ain’t’ like Marshall Tucker says ‘aint.’

MARSHALL TUCKER BAND DISCOGRAPHY:
1973 The Marshall Tucker Band
1974 A New Life
1974 Where we All Belong
1975 Searchin’ For A Rainbow
1976 Long Hard Ride
1977 Carolina Dreams
1978 Together Forever
1979 Runnin’ Like The Wind
1980 Tenth
1981 Dedicated
1982 Tuckerized
1983 Just Us
1983 Greetings From South Carolina
2003 Stompin’ Room Only (1976 Live)
2006 Live on Long Island 4-18-80
2008 Carolina Dreams Tour 1977

TOY CALDWELL DISCOGRAPHY:
1992 Toy Caldwell
1998 Can’t You See (Live)
2000 Son of the South

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“MARSHALL TUCKER BAND IS PROGRESSIVE”
by MARTHA HUME
SPARTANBURG, South Carolina (KFS)
The Record-Eagle, Traverse City, Michigan
Friday, July 22, 1977

“Jaimoe” Johanny Johanson, drummer for Sea Level and formerly for the Allman Brothers Band, wore a modified killer-bee outfit to the recent Marshall Tucker Band homecoming. Oddly enough, Jaimoe’s black-and-yellow striped B.V.D.’s, black tights, one yellow sock, one green sock and tasseled loafers didn’t look out of place.
It’s hard to compete with a backstage crowd consisting of: Potentates of the Hejaz Shrine Temple, 80-year-old grandmothers dressed in their Sunday best, South Carolina State troopers, Dolly Parton blondes in dangerously low-cut dresses, and two stray professional wrestlers in skimpy briefs. Even Jaimoe’s name couldn’t compete —?’ the wrestlers were Tiger Conway and Pino Bravo.
The New South was out in all its kinky glory, and somehow the Shriners, the wrestlers, the musicians, the grannies, “and the troopers fit right in. They’d all come to hear Spartanburg’s very own
claim to fame (next to peaches and textiles), the Marshall Tucker Band. As far as Spartanburg is concerned, the six member MTB, none of whom is named Marshall Tucker, has conquered the world.
Their boys play “southern music?”, and although the music itself is much more complicated, the phrase is a rallying cry that seems to have united the South’s social classes and age groups, just as “outlaw music” brought rednecks and hippies together in Texas.
The Marshall Tucker Band — Toy and Tommy Caldwell, Jerry Eubanks, Doug Gray, George McCorkle and Paul Riddle — is among the must successful of the new southern bands. MTB has had four gold albums since Capricorn Records signed them in 1972. “Heard It
In A Love Song,” the single from the “Carolina Dreams” album, is now Top Ten. Still, the band hasn’t had the kind of critical acceptance they’d like, perhaps because they’ve been saddled with the “southern music” label.
“This ‘southern music” thing is kindly gettin’ just a little out of hand,” says Toy Caldwell, the band’s lead guitarist, “We’re all from the South and we all play music, but I don’t know what “southern music” is. The Allman Brothers played it, if there ever was such a thing, but there’ll never be nobody like that any more. We came up behind ‘em, our music is country influenced and everything, but we’re not playin’ anything new. So I guess to me ‘southern music’ is just a band from the South playin’music”…
If anything unites Southern bands it is their common debt to the Allman Brothers. Nonetheless, Marshall Tucker’s music is quite different from the Allmans’, whose music is based in southern blues; MTB’s music begins in country music and takes off from there..
“We play progressive country music,” says Tommy Caldwell, Toy’s brother and the band’s bassist. “It’s just a three-chord country song that’s played different every night. But you can’t stretch out in a three-chord country song, so we take it and set it up to where we can.”
“If you listen to it, you can hear a lot of different sounds,” says rhythm
guitarist George McCorkle. “Paul (Riddle, drummer) is really jazz influenced. Jerry (Eubanks, flute & sax , he’s rhythm & blues. I got a lot of blues influence, and Toy and Tommy was raised playin’ country. It all comes together in that country feel that everybody has.”
“Capricorn to me has always been a family,” says McCorkle. “You could tell it ’cause we all go onstage together. If Jimmy Hall (of Wet Wilie) was ever around, he would be onstage before the night was up. Same thing with Chuck Leavell or Jaimoe. You don’t have to be asked. We’re just friends.”

When the Marshall Tucker Band took the stage in Spartanburg to benefit the Greenville Unit of the Shriners’ Crippled Children’s Hospital, Jaimoe was there playing congas and Charlie Daniels played fiddle. Marshall Tucker plays hard, and the audience knows it. The Spartanburg crowd brought the band back for five encores. Of course, much of the audience seemed to be family — a look at the Spartanburg County telephone directory shows 86 Caldwells, 68 Grays, 36 Eubanks, 35 Riddles, 2 McCorkles..

MARSHALL TUCKER BAND DISCOGRAPHY:
1973 The Marshall Tucker Band
1974 A New Life
1974 Where we All Belong
1975 Searchin’ For A Rainbow
1976 Long Hard Ride
1977 Carolina Dreams
1978 Together Forever
1979 Runnin’ Like The Wind
1980 Tenth
1981 Dedicated
1982 Tuckerized
1983 Just Us
1983 Greetings From South Carolina
2003 Stompin’ Room Only (1976 Live)
2006 Live on Long Island 4-18-80
2008 Carolina Dreams Tour 1977

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