Doug Gray doesn’t know the word retirement. The 68-year-old has been the lead singer for The Marshall Tucker Band since its formation 45 years ago in Spartanburg, SC.
Gray was faced with a decision in 1983 when original members, Toy Caldwell, George McCorkle, and Paul Riddle, along with Franklin Wilkie – who replaced Tommy Caldwell – decided they had enough of life on the road. However, Gray and Jerry Eubanks still had the passion and continued on. Then in 1996, Eubanks retired, leaving Gray as the only founding member.
“I look at all these platinum records in my house,” Gray said. “I don’t sit and bask in them, but I look at all that stuff, and how would you ever give up the fact that people love you that much and love that song? How could you ever give that up?”
The band’s current lineup consists of Gray on vocals, keyboard player and flautist Marcus James Henderson, guitarist Rick Willis, bassist Pat Elwood, and drummer B.B. Borden.
“Marshall Tucker Band is nothing but a name for a group of guys that pour their hearts out every night for you,” Gray said.
Gray, who resides in Myrtle Beach, goes out on the road to make people happy but makes time to see his daughters and grandkids. He spoke by cellphone to discuss the past and present of the band’s southern rock legacy.
What keeps you going, performing live and going on tour?
First of all I don’t know how to do anything else except pump gas. I just have to take advantage of this gift of being able to entertain people. I don’t call it singing anymore, I just call it entertainment. You just do, what you do best. I was born with it and I just try to continue it. We didn’t really think it would last this long. All we wanted to do was go out and play a show and buy beer for the weekend. That is really a true story. After Vietnam, we started getting shows from different parts of the country. Capricorn records decided they wanted to do something with us and they put us out on the road with the Allman Brothers Band for 4 years. That was a life learning experience with Jaimoe riding our bus and some of the older guys. Greg coming up to me after a show; and saying, “How are we going to go out and follow that?” And I said, “All you got to do is go out and play.”
I’m waiting right now for the next show. We do about 140 shows. Having that ability – having my health – that’s a wonderful thing. I’m really blessed with that part of it. Whether it’s a Kid Rock show or a Zac Brown show or a regular show, people always come up to me and say, ‘Man you look great, how do you do it? You’re 68 years old’ I tell them I follow the Rolling Stones advice: “Go out and do it every night and see how good you look.”
Is there a regimen you follow to stay in shape and keep your vocals where they should be?
I did have a problem for while but that’s because I was training way too hard, the wrong way. It made it tough. Then I realized, if I dropped a whole bunch of weight it would help me a whole lot. The fact is you never stop moving. Don’t stop your thumb form moving, don’t stop your back from moving and always keep your mind occupied with music or something.
Tell me about the current lineup that you tour with to keep the MTB legacy alive?
These guys are dedicated. We call it the new band, even though they’ve been together for 25 years. We haven’t been at the top of our game. We had our ups and downs two or three times. We kind of proven ourselves again. You always have to prove yourself in this business. We’ve proved it by having sellout crowds everywhere we go. Over 90 percent of our rate is sellout crowds, whether it’s a large place or not. Some of these larger companies want us to be on these particular shows because they help us and we help them by being an older band. They call it legendary but I really hate to look at myself like that because it puts me in an older group. As I look at people, I wonder what makes them give up on their body, give up on their thoughts, their dreams. I have never given up on mine and I cannot wait when I walk off stage this weekend. I want people to say, “That was so good – it took me back 35 years.” That’s what I do and that’s what gives me the ability to do this.
Have the songs changed over time?
I give everyone the opportunity when they join the band, I say, “Play it the way we played it originally, and then when it’s time, we’ll click in and go into the jam portion of the band.” What changes the song is the way the band feels at the time. We do it the original way but we expand it and they call that jamband; and it’s been around with us for so many years.
What about lyrically, have the songs taken on new meaning?
“Desert Skies” is a song that we just put back into the show. That was a song we hadn’t played for 25 or 30 years. We put it back in and the audience couldn’t believe what they were hearing. The Marshall Tucker Band has created a lot of memories of being sad and happy. Having a dog named named Marshall or Tucker or having a son named Tucker, and some of these people have lost these people. We’ve given a part of our lives away to all these people that have appreciated us so much. These people come up and hug you; or they’ll tell you, ‘I still remember the first time you played “Desert Sky,” and you played it better tonight and you gave me such good memories.”
Is this current lineup going to go into the studio and record an album?
I’ve got 15 to 16 songs our band can do and I think we should do a double-type record or a triple record – CD style. Put it out there let there be some old stuff and some new stuff, and see if the public likes it.
Are these new songs; songs the band has written together?
The new songs would involve my nephew Clay Cook from Zac Brown Band. And that we’re not just living on the past, but moving toward the future with a real plan. The whole band has a bunch of songs that we’ve recorded 15 or 16 and it’s just not enough yet. Clay will be a part of it. It’s hard to get away from my nephew.
A couple years back you released, a concert from Englishtown, NJ, are there plans to release more old shows?
Oh yes, straight ahead. We’ve got 3,500 of them. We recorded almost all of our shows the first 8 years. We had all these taper guys – some of them sounded like crap and some of them didn’t. You realize that once I put myself back in the studio with a young engineer, who’s 25 years younger than me and he says with Pro Tools I can take that bad note out and I look at him like he’s a punk because why go back and try to make something better that people originally loved. I’m a real believer in making music real. We all make mistakes. If you put something out, that bad part doesn’t stick out in their head. All the good parts do.
How did you guys record your concerts back in the 70s?
Here’s what we did. We had two or three backup recorders and these guys are still out there. I just thought they were wasting their time away but thank goodness they recorded the shows. Here’s the kicker, when we rode on the buses or the in vans; we would go back and use their old equipment to listen to the 8-track recordings the next day. I think we learned from it in order to know what kind of band we were going to be. We put ourselves into the music. When I sat with the engineer to make the vinyl recording of the Englishtown show, I put myself back on stage and I wanted to sound that good.
Do you still keep in touch with the other original living members of the band: Jerry Eubanks and Paul Riddle?
I haven’t seen Paul in 15 years. When they wanted out, they wanted out. And I’ve seen Jerry once in the last 12 or 15 years. There’s no hard feelings there. Toy decided to leave because his brother had passed away a couple years before. And you probably don’t even know but Toy had a younger brother Tim who had passed away a month before Tommy. I understand the pressure that gets on somebody and I understand the reason that Toy wanted me to keep it going no matter what. We started this thing get together and I’m going to finish it and make it as good as I possibly can for the rest of those guys.
Would you ever reach out to Eubanks and Riddle and see if they want to reunite for one special evening of music?
We did a live show in Spartanburg 10-to-15 years ago and Charlie Daniels came down – it was one of those things. That was probably the last time I saw them. I don’t even know if they’re involved in music anymore.
What was the music scene like in Spartanburg, when you were an up-and-coming musican?
If you look at the history book, there was a band The Sparkle Tones with Joe Bennett and they wore black pants and black socks. These guys had a hit called “Black Slacks.” The Sparkle Tones had a TV show every Sunday mornings when I was a young man and we would all sit around and watch them. Then all of a sudden – the biggest news in the world, they were on the Ed Sullivan Show. And it pushed us a little but further than what I ever expected us to do. We didn’t look to be on Ed Sullivan but we just knew that would be we would be on something. We were on historic shows like Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert (1973) Tom Snyder (1981) and Solid Gold. But it was The Sparkle Tones that …. and we were the next band that came through and I look forward to what’s going to happen next.
Getting back to the original lineup, can you talk about the unexpected death of Tommy Caldwell on April 28, 1980.
First of all it was a shocker. We had just played Nassau Coliseum in Long island and it was sold out. All these major entertainers were there including Billy Joel and these different people and promoters. And we get home, the next morning, I go to the studio – that was my norm, and they called up the studio and said Tommy had a wreck on the way. Tommy was driving in his jeep which was fully roll-barred. He just turned over and hit his head and then few days later that was it. How do you face it? I had already been to Vietnam and seen enough stuff. But how do you face it when it’s somebody that you already turned your life over to and given your real heart, your expression, your ability to creative musically. We would let Tommy lead the road. Toy and I couldn’t care less about leading the road. And then to have the rug just pulled out from under us – it made us all weak.
When Tommy had gone into the military and came back out, Toy and I had been out for a while – we had a friend Franklin Wilkie, who was a neighbor to Toy and Tommy and played bass as well. We had Toy invite him back because we wanted Toy to be comfortable and happy; and once we did that, it was like “Let’s go.” We took a month-and-a-half off but we had a date we had to do in Summit, Texas because it was a rodeo place – it was Franklin’s first show. We already rehearsed. We knew Franklin – we had played with him a million times – we just didn’t know what to do at that point in time.
Can you talk about the late George McCorkle (2007) and Toy Caldwell (1983)
George was my friend. He and I wrote a ton of songs together – emotional ones. George was married and I got married at George’s house and stuff like that. We were close and right at the end, he wanted to go off and write by himself; and Toy just wanted to stay home, so everybody did. It wasn’t an argument – we all had the same lawyers. We kind of lost interest. I hate to say we lost interest. We lost that feeling to go out together because we would never be able to get that feeling back together.
I made phone calls to all these buyers, and they said you sing 99 percent of this songs. So I have a lot of people to thank for saying “You can’t let this stop” and so I told the lawyer to make the deal and he made the deal and Toy shook my hand and said, “Keep on going.” I did the best I could and I’m still doing the best I can. When Toy died I was in Nashville and I got a call from my banker, who knew Toy very well and he told me: “I want you to sit down and make sure someone’s around you,” because he knew how it would affect me. He told me about Toy and I have two guys working with me now who were with Toy when he passed. It’s a family – you create a family and they stick right beside you.
Just one last thing, did serving in Vietnam, shape you as a songwriter?
Only in one one song – I wrote one song that had anything to do with the strife and how we were treated when we got back and that song goes nameless right now. You’re taught when something miserable happens – you have to put that in the back of your head, so you have the ability to move forward. It wasn’t easy to do it with Tommy, it wasn’t easy to do with George – because the night before George passed he didn’t know he had cancer for very long. We had stopped to visit him at the hospital and he never woke up the next day. His wife called me the next morning and told me he had passed during the night, so luckily we had a chance to say our goodbyes. This might sound a really hokey but we really did love each other and we still do.
