eMusic Review
Fresh out of Spartanburg, South Carolina, and, in a couple cases, not long out of Vietnam, the blue-collar boys in the Marshall Tucker Band audaciously open their Top 30 1973 debut album with two beautifully swinging six-minute rambles — the first, “Take the Highway,” pomped high with Jethro Tull style flutes; the second, FM radio staple “Can't You See,” a lonely lament about riding the train to the end of the line and committing suicide off a mountaintop. For Southern rock, the music doesn't feel redneck at all: more like old cowhands from the Rio Grande.
The album has its pleasantly mellow holding patterns — two or three ballads dead-set on Grateful Dead. But more often, this sextet focus on setting America's great wide yonder to 20th century dance rhythms. In “Hillbilly Band,” old-timey fiddles and jugs ride a Diddley beat for a foot-stomping swamp funk; trumpets and saxes in “Ramblin'” conjure a late ’20s riverboat jazz band.
There's folk and (on this reissue, in a 12-minute-plus live bonus cut) blues as well. But where Marshall Tucker truly perfect their sound might be “My Jesus Told Me So”: calm and spacious, like you're up before dawn driving the last leg of your… read more »
