![]() The platinum albums, the Billboard hits-the Marshall Tucker Band were as successful as they were hardworking. It was painful, but for roughly a decade-from the mid-1970s to mid-1980s-some of that pain was assuaged by the pride the city took in a few good ole boys made good. Known as “Hub City” for the intersecting railroad lines, it was a textile town until the mills left, departures that hit the city hard, shearing away both jobs and a collective identity. I grew up ninety minutes west in Walhalla, and while Greenville was the place you went-it had a shopping mall and a minor league baseball team-Spartanburg was not. But like so much of the South, it’s a complicated joy.įew groups are as associated with a particular place as the Marshall Tucker Band is with Spartanburg, South Carolina. To listen to “Can’t You See” or “Heard It in a Love Song” is to encounter a certain elemental joy: it sounds good, it feels good. It’s music for the campfire, music for the banks of the Chattooga on a Friday night. That bluesy guitar sound-half Allman Brothers, half John Lee Hooker, with an eerie flute that now and then floats by-may well be the best music ever to come out of upstate South Carolina where I was born and raised. Hen the Marshall Tucker Band played my hometown, I didn’t go. ![]()
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