After 30 years of speculation and rumor,
Marshall Tucker Band frontman
Doug Gray's solo album finally surfaces. Originally cut in 1981 for a solo deal he later rejected, it contains eight finished tracks from sessions starring the original members of
MTB:
Gray,
Toy Caldwell,
George McCorkle,
Jerry Eubanks, and
Paul Riddle (rhythm guitarist
Tommy Caldwell had been killed in a car accident the year before), local Spartanburg musicians (including future
MTB members
Franklin Wilkie and
Rusty Milner), and A-list Nashville studio aces
Bob Wray,
Mike Lawler, and
Terry McMillan. In fact, these eight sides represent the only previously unreleased material by
MTB. Produced and engineered by no less than all-star
Billy Sherrill, these sides were meant to present
Gray's voice in an utterly different setting than the
MTB's. They succeed. The material is pop-soul from the era, including a reading of the 1969
Spiral Staircase hit "More Today Than Yesterday."
Sherrill's idea of producing this kind of music was different from most producers of the period; he was used to working with chart-topping country artists like
George Jones and
Merle Haggard at the time.
Gray's more than up to the task vocally, and the versatility of the
MTB cats is astonishing. They rose to the material that was a universe away from the songs
Toy Caldwell wrote for the band. Very slick and smooth, the set's best tracks include opener "Let Me Be the Fool," a midtempo pop-soul bubbler with old-school Stax-styled horns;
Bobby Whitlock's "Guilty," with its spidery guitar and funky bassline, and the laid-back "Mr. Sandman." Ultimately, this will be a last piece of the puzzle for
MTB completists, but anybody who appreciates the radio-friendly pop-soul grooves of the early '80s will find something here to enjoy.
Soul of the South was a successful experiment; one can only speculate what might have transpired had
Gray signed a solo deal and released it.