T ribute to the legendary songwriter, singer, lead guitarist and founding member of The Marshall Tucker Band!
toycaldwell.com
toycaldwell.com
toycaldwell.com

The Marshall Tucker Band

A History on the Internet

The first MTB info on the internet was located on Chuck McCorkle's home page. This was back in 1995-96, and Chuck had listed a number of his interests, including references to the MTB, his brother George McCorkle, and his work as a roadie for the band back in the 1970s.

At about this same time back in 1996, Keith Donaldson began a site at North Carolina State University. At the time, Keith had the only MTB webpage and his work included some photos of the band, articles from a number of different sources, the liner notes from Capricorn's box set, and some personal comments about each of the Tucker albums and CDs in his collection. Keith contributed a lot of MTB stuff before retiring his homepage in October, 1997.

The guest book at Chuck's site was filled with Marshall Tucker fans stopping by to talk about the MTB, and at the time, it was the only Marshall Tucker Band hangout on the internet. If you go back to Chuck's site, you'll see some very familiar names but you'll also see fans who were logging on, trying to find info on the band. At that time, there wasn't any info at all on the band. Chuck's page was the first gathering spot, period. It was easy to see that everyone was eager to find a Marshall Tucker hangout!

I checked back at Chuck's site from time to time, and finally Michael B. Smith began to include some good stuff that he had researched in interviews for his book, Carolina Dreams. Michael B's influence was great in beginning an internet presence for MTB and he provided a much needed forum to chronicle the history of the band. He posted a site at Geocities to promote his band, and created a separate page for the MTB stuff.

Around this time, in March, 1997 I sat down and started my first MTB page on a little known and now defunct site called FreeWeb Page. I started by writing my own Tucker memories, and then developed a page called Cattle Drive on GeoCities. My very first website devoted to the Tucker Band was developed in March 1997 and called Searchin' For A Rainbow. I spent the week learning to write html, uploading files, and creating what I can say now were some pretty basic images. Remember, at that time, the internet was pretty basic stuff.

I was eager to produce a site that had some fun with the Tucker lyrics that I've known and sung along with for so many years. I started with Cattle Drive, a long-time favorite of many Tucker fans from the Tenth album. It's still a favorite web page among fans visiting our site for the first time so I have continued to include it on the MTB Links page.

Looking back on those early days of the Geocities site I never thought that those simple, but creative pages would one day evolve into the host site of the band! I also never thought that my involvement would continue for so long, but there's definitely a burnout factor involved in running a site. One of the biggest issues is holding it all together as different factions of band interests compete with one another. Old Tucker, new Tucker, he said, she said. It's crazy at times!

Earlier in the year, in January, 1997 the Marshall Tucker Band actually developed an official merchandise page at a site called Carolina Commerce. The site included a selection of MTB merchandise and a guestbook for fans to add their comments. The site continued for a few months, and eventually included tour dates but not really much Marshall Tucker Band info. In fact, there was one studio photo of the band, and a MTB color logo. That's it. Carolina Commerce went out of business, and the site went down in early June, 1997.

Just about a month earlier, Doug Gray emailed me with the idea of using my site as the official MTB page and constructing new pages that would include biographies and updates on the band. Needless to say, it turned out to be a great idea even though the band's management company opposed the idea from the start. It certainlly wasn't easy to create, given the limited material available at the time.

We started with a main index, tour, discography, links, and fan page, then added a guestbook. The Tucker Chat page went on line in late July when I offered Pat Webster the opportunity to become the host. Boy, that was a good idea. She had just begun a Marshall Tucker webpage with yearbook photos of the band and was interested in chat rooms, among other things. We added a Bulletin Board in August, Biographies, and Album Reviews in September.

Looking back on it all, the album reviews were the most challenging and the most fun to create. No one had ever combined to write and create an archive of Marshall Tucker album reviews and still to this day very few exist. My reviews are still on this site and include Long Hard Ride, Together Forever, Dedicated, and Just Us. In her book, Southern Rockers, Marley Brant quotes one of my reviews from Just Us, as "one of the most varied and unique albums ever released by the band." Not a bad quote, but certainly not the best. Here's a few exerpts from some of my favorites:


"Dedicated ignites in a fire with Charlie Daniels' fiddle and the locomotive percussion of Paul T. Riddle in "Rumors Are Raging," . Dedicated
"After Toy's guitar weeps through the interlude, 'I Should've Never Started Lovin' You' comes to a near-standstill as Doug testifies his sorrow in one of the best seven minutes of Marshall Tucker music ever released by the band." Carolina Dreams

"On the third track, "Am I The Kind Of Man," Hornsby's piano, McEuen's mandolin, and Gray's heartfelt vocals provide a brilliant touch, showcasing The Marshall Tucker Band's unique ability to balance the power of southern rock in a reflective ballad." Long Hard Ride

"The final song on the first side seems to bear the heavy load of continuing the Marshall Tucker legacy without brother, leader, and friend Tommy Caldwell, as Toy's lead guitar cries in frustration to the lyrics, 'Something's Missing In My Life.'" Dedicated

As an offshoot of the site we also began building an archive of MTB concert tapes from fans around the web. We added a tape traders page, a new Scrapbook, and a Jukebox page in November. Back then, it wasn't very easy to find audio but we pulled together an agreement with a group called Gigmasters, sent them casettes and had the music transferred onto streaming audio.

To kick off 1998, I developed a Toy Caldwell Tribute page that eventually evolved to become toycaldwell.com. 1998 also saw the beginning of new contests on the site. We gave away autographed CDs in a Chat Page contest. The absence of BB Borden photos on the site prompted Chris Walker to ask, Where's BB? So we turned it into a contest.

The takeover of the original MTB site began in the Summer of 2000 when the band's management company attempted a new website at marshalltucker.net. A number of new southern and MTB sites were going on line at the time including hotgrits.com, gritz.net, mtbfanclub.com and southernmusiccentral.com. I had been running the site since '97 and it seemed clear to me that a number of folks wanted to take it over. By this time, Rainey had secured a web presence for his other bands and he was eager to get the MTB site too.

At first, the pressure to transfer the webpages was very subtle. For legal purposes, it would be best to protect everyone by having the site under the corporation name, I was told. Of course, I could still run the site if I wanted, but ownership transfer would have to occur. No thanks. The main issue would be my eventual successor and I wasn't interested in having the site run by an infatuated groupie or worse yet, an out-of-touch corporate office. Eventually, the site was transferred in November, 2001 and Craig Cumberland was asked to provide web content for the new site under the band's managment company. Although Craig's official run with the band ended less than a year-and-a-half later, he has carried the torch and his work at a new site, tuckerhead.com.

MTB Fans now have a variety of sites and new territory to roam on the internet. A special thanks to Craig Cumberland, and Randy West. Craig has always done his best to keep the Tucker music alive and the atmosphere positive. Randy is the MTB tape archive man who's a behind-the-scenes hero to a lot of Tucker fans longing for quality, hard-to-find MTB tapes. Also, thanks to Melissa Yon, Randy Davis, Michael B. Smith, Kathy Holt, Abbie Caldwell, and Doug Gray for all their efforts in keeping the MTB Spirit alive.


Thanks to everyone who helped in their own way to promote the positive vibes and peaceful message of Toy Caldwell and The Marshall Tucker Band. It's a long hard ride, but we'll get there one day.


scubadog.geo@yahoo.com