ally pay attention to who was opening until we got there. But we sat out front and listened to them. They just knocked us out from the beginning. It was a sound that was totally unique to my ears, and to the other guys in the band as well. It had a lot of the elements that we were into-good Southern music, good rock and roll. But there were so many things that set them apart from the others. The first thing we noticed was the two brothers. Of course, we had two brothers in Wet


Willie. My brother played bass. So, we noticed that right away. There was an innocence there. They came from a rural area of the South, and their music really echoed that. But to see a couple of brothers who had a musical kinship- and when I talk about the innocence, and the purity of it-their technique wasn't po- litically or musically correct, if you want to call it that. When you see these guys up there, playing with their thumbs, the first thing that comes to mind is, that's the way they learned to play it, and that's how they got their sound. It was untainted. In other words, nobody tried to change it, and they didn't want to change it. It was the purity of that that said something to me. The bottom line was, there was something different. We could hear it, I could hear it, in just that one night. And we let them know, Toy and Tommy, 'Gosh, you guys are something else. Y’all are real special. We had our breaks and our opportunity to record for Capricorn Records in Macon, Geor- gia, and we think they'd be real interested in hearing you guys.' At that point, we invited them to


Macon to hang out. We arranged a gig for them in Macon at Grants Lounge. And we got the people from the label to come down and hear them. It happened pretty fast after that. All the label had to do was hear them that one night. Phil Walden and Frank Fenter, who's no longer with us on this earth, but one of the staff at Capricorn, they came down, and were really impressed by what they heard. They felt the same way we did. They said, 'You guys


were right on. These guys are great, and we want to sign them.' I will say this, the guys have always been gracious in telling that story of how it happened, and giving me credit. I could just see the talent. That's the way I am about it. I've had people help me along in my career, and if I can help someone else, I'm gonna try my best to do it, because that's the way you do it. You pass it around." The band went into Mark V studios in


Greenville and cut a demo. They took the tape down to Macon, and Walden signed them on the spot. Apparently, Capricorn didn't like the name Toy Factory. They just didn't feel like it was commercial sounding. The band was re- hearsing on Spring Street, when they found the name tag that belonged to the former ten- ant, a local piano tuner, now living in Colum- bia, S.C., named Marshall Tucker. Toy told Greenville's Rock 101 about finding the tag in a radio interview back in 1989. "It was no big deal," said Toy. "We said,


hmmm...Marshall Tucker. How's that for a band name? Everybody shook their heads yes, and somebody said "Good. Let's go eat." "There was resistance all over the South when we started. We got thrown out of clubs left and right for playing our own music," says George McCorkle. "We'd play a set and the club owner would raise hell because we weren't playing something by someone else. But we weren't gonna do it! We thought we had something, and we knew the only way we were ever gonna find out was to stick with it." When their debut Capricorn LP, The Marshall Tucker Band came out in the fall of 1973, the band began playing anywhere and every- where. Their overall philosophy was 'what- ever it takes,' and they always delivered, one-hundred percent. It was this kind of de- votion to their craft that yielded a fan follow- ing that even today still speaks with quiet reverence concerning the original Tucker Band.


Having an album out was by no means the answer to all of the guys problems. The


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