Reachin' for a little bit more (The Marshall Tucker Band) (LP 977 - 981)

The Marshall Tucker Band   Dedicated (Vinyl, Warner Bros Records, 1981) ***  

The Marshall Tucker Band  Tuckerized (Vinyl, Warner Bros Records, 1982) **  

The Marshall Tucker Band   Just Us (Vinyl, Warner Bros Records, 1983) **  

The Marshall Tucker Band   Greetings From South Carolina (Vinyl, Warner Bros Records, 1983) **  

The Marshall Tucker Band   southern spirit (CD, Polydor Records, 1990) ***   

Genre: Southern rock

Places I remember: Amoeba Records, Real Groovy Records, Slow Boat Records

Fab, and all the other pimply hyperboles: Silverado (Dedicated)

Gear costume: Ride In Peace (Dedicated)

Active compensatory factors: This is the third and final edition of albums by these titans of southern rock. They hung in there longer than most and managed to live up to the brothers of the road vibe.

And so we enter the eighties, a tricky decade for bands who established themselves in the seventies.

Dedicated is the first album after bass player Tommy Caldwell's tragic death from a car accident. The band is intact apart from that and still aiming to produce that crazy good southern country swing that they do so well.

By this stage though, they appear more interested in a tilt at the adult contemporary music market, than staying true to their roots. While Doug Gray is involved it will always sound like TMTB. So, three stars for Dedicated.

It only cost me $1.00 from San Francisco's Amoeba Records (from their clearance bin). Criminal, but good for me. I suppose that sums up where the band was at in 2016 when I bought it, but it's better than a clearance bin.

Tuckerized comes in a clearance bin style cover (all the covers from here on in have a whiff of budget about them it must be said). Sadly, it's a trend of diminishing returns from here on, as the ten year mark hit. 

Toy Caldwell only contributes one song to this one and George McCorkle only has one as well, so they become increasingly reliant on outside material from this album onwards, and therefore less recognizable as TMTB. The band remained intact throughout though with Franklin Wilkie the bass man from Dedicated onwards.

Just Us and Greetings From South Carolina are okay but the splitting of the band after the leaning towards country on Greetings looked inevitable. Gray and Eubanks recorded an album with session musicians next, so I don't really regard Still Holdin' On as a true Marshall Tucker Band album.

Southern spirit (lower case denotes certain things - just sayin') is a good attempt to return to the class band's country rock sound, so they get an extra star for this one, but Gray and Eubanks are the only original members. Absolutely dire cover, it must be said.

As I said before, when Doug Gray sings it sounds like TMTB but the band of brothers has long since headed off toward the sunset by the early nineties.

Where do they all belong? I haven't had any great desire to collect albums after southern spirit because the band is pretty much The Marshall Tucker Band in name only, even though Doug Gray and Jerry Eubanks remained for a while. If I come across them, I'll probably be tempted though.

Jerry retired in 1996. I hope he's happily retired - his flute and sax added a huge dimension to that signature Marshall Tucker Band sound. 

That's also the end of the southern rock section of my collection.