Live Concert Series PT 6

Taking the High Way

The Marshall Tucker Band Live

I should tell you right from the start that I once knew a kid named Sput Poe. His real name was Frank, I think, but everyone called him Sput. We played little league baseball at the same time, though not on the same team. He was a Phillie, I a Cub. We weren’t close friends, and I think he was a grade behind me. We didn’t even go to the same high school: Sput attended Bessemer Academy, and I spent my four-year sentence at Jess Lanier High.

What I’m saying is that we didn’t know each other well, except in the sense that in those adolescent/teen years, you tended to know everyone in your larger group, depending on your race. We were white kids, and that matters to the rest of this story.

By the time I finished Jess Lanier, I had seen exactly three bands who were solely or primarily African American: Earth, Wind, and Fire; Billy Preston; and Buddy Miles. Each of these was an opening or middle act, warming everyone up for the headliners: Uriah Heep (who cancelled while we were listening to E,W,&F); Eric Clapton; and Three Dog Night. They were all strong performers — even Miles whose hit song “Them Changes” we ridiculed before, during, and after the show. That he played on Band of Gypsies somehow got lost on my friends and me.

Back then, I might have gone to see Preston had he been the headliner. He was the closest thing to a Beatle that I got, have ever gotten. But my gang in those days fell on the principle that only white rock and roll bands were worthy of our time, our dollars, and our cool cache. Of course, in Birmingham, crossing over the segregated lines could get you into trouble [see Nat King Cole]. Here’s another example of how bad and wrong things were: I used to laugh with my friends when The Chi-Lites’ hit “Have You Seen Her” played through our radio dials. By myself, though, I turned the volume up and sang along, visualizing myself in Eugene Record’s beautifully-haunting images. I was afraid to let my friends know this truth about me, my own closeted life.

I don’t want to think about all I missed seeing because of fear and latent or blatant prejudice. It’s too bad, because once I could drive, I attended rock concerts almost every weekend. between Birmingham and Tuscaloosa, the quantity and quality of shows took our breath and gas money away.

On one weekend in my senior year, I rode with a friend to Tuscaloosa, some forty-five miles away, to see Emerson, Lake, and Palmer. The quadrophonic sound system made me believe, at one point, that I was being transformed or transmitted into a craft hovering above Coleman Colosseum. Of course, that was only the massive amount of pot we had smoked before and during the show speaking.

The next weekend I drove some friends, using my daddy’s car — a 1967 two-toned red and white Buick Special — to Birmingham’s Municipal (now Boutwell) Auditorium to see a three-band multi-show. In order of playing, they were Grinderswitch, The Charlie Daniels Band, and The Marshall Tucker Band.

Pretty damn white of us.

Since I was driving my daddy’s car, I vowed not to smoke, which was a sane decision, though most of me regretted it once we picked up Sput Poe. The others were Julie, Carol, and Laura, and while Laura sat up front with me, the rest sat in back where Sput proceeded to fashion what he called a “Jellyroll.” I suppose others called it that too. It was maybe four inches wide, and at least that long. It lasted from the outskirts of Bessemer, all those fifteen miles up the Bessemer Super Highway, to Birmingham. We kept the windows down on the way there and on the way back. Since this was Saturday night, my daddy wouldn’t be using the car the next day, and so I thought and hoped that by then, he wouldn’t notice the lingering aroma of pot.

Of course, my daddy didn’t really know what pot smelled like, but with his keen powers of detection, he did see all the ash dumped in the back seat floorboard, and so my days and nights of driving his Buick screeched to an ignoble end, for at least a couple of months.

Since I wasn’t stoned, my memories of the show should be clear and strong, like the AM radio waves reaching us down hundreds of highway miles at night. Sadly, my memories fall into only these:

Grinderswitch was very good, and at some point during their show, I yelled,

“Allman Brothers.”

I meant it as both a compliment and as a suggestion. No one around me paid much notice because, as they used to say in such moments, they were too busy “boogieing.” I hope the band understood.

Charlie Daniels came on next. The underground FM station I listened to introduced me to Charlie and his “Ballad of the Uneasy Rider,” a song I knew I was supposed to relate to, but couldn’t. Honestly, I don’t remember if Charlie performed that song. He sang and he fiddled and he played both “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” and “The South’s Gonna Do It Again.”

I hated both of those songs.

Still do.

Daniels can play a mean fiddle, I’ll grant that, and these tunes are also “boogieable.” And he seemed like a fairly genial character up there on the stage, with the Confederate Flags and everything.

He also played “Long Haired Country Boy” which was easy to sing to, but after studying the lyrics, I had to start wondering about my own long hair, and that of so many others. The 60’s had been fought and maybe long hair had won. I would think more about such things as the South kept spinning and creeping into a larger reality.

And then “The Tucker Boys” came on. Or rather the Caldwells and their mates. Wikipedia will tell you that the real Marshall Tucker was a blind piano tuner from Columbia, SC. They found a door key at their rehearsal space with the name/legend on it, and thus, a band name was born.

A couple of years ago, one of my students, Reese, who was also from Columbia, told me that she was kin, or at least loosely connected, to the real Marshall Tucker. It made me think.

But back to the Tucker show: what I thought was that while I loved “Can’t You See” and especially “Take the Highway,” the rest of the set was pretty much the same sound, and that sound — after almost three hours of “Southern Boogie” was running dry for me.

Laura was standing nearby, and so was Julie, but I couldn’t for the longest time find Carol and Sput Poe. Towards the end of the concert, however, I finally spied them.

They were sitting on the auditorium floor, something I do not recommend mainly because I know what happens when southern high schoolers combine much pot with either Boone’s Farm or cheap bourbon and coke. Their eyes, oh how do I describe their eyes? I can’t, and I swear, they couldn’t do so, or see, either.

I’m sure they didn’t realize much about the music and had no memory of the show, or of my leading them back to the Buick, driving them home, and then watching them stumble on their own through the carport back door of their parents’ sanctuary.

My other concert memory is that the Tucker/Caldwells brought Charlie back on stage to fiddle a tune, a tune I no longer remember. Charlie got another ovation, pulled out his red bandana, and waved to us all. It all seemed so warm and friendly. A very fuzzy moment.

Years later, I’d read Mark Kemp’s excellent memoir about Southern rock bands, Dixie Lullaby. He’d write of Daniels, particularly. Daniels had found Jesus. He also condemned people who were gay — sadly, a very southern thing to do, though of course, not all of us feel that way. We recognize, become reconciled to, or renounce our bigotries at our own sonic speed.

I’d go on to buy other Marshall Tucker records, but the first one remains the only one I ever play. The Caldwell brothers, Tommy and Toy, died decades ago, Tommy in 1980, just six years after I saw the band. Charlie Daniels died this past year, and God knows what happened to Grinderswitch.

Or Sput Poe, who was a nice guy as far as I know. I don’t know if I ever saw him after that night, but in my mind and my olfactory glands, he lives on.

Thank you to Noah Levy for bringing us together, and to the other writers at The Riff who make my morning fresh with their love of past and current music: Frank Mastropolo, If Ever You’re Listening, MDSHall, Aoife Chaney, Oliver Norris, Jessica Lee McMillan, Kathy Gerstorff, Steven Hale, Kevin Alexander, Graeme A Henderson, and Rob Janicke.

If you missed the last concert series story, here it is now: