Carolina Dreams

We Say...

Review by Chuck Eddy

Released in 1977 — six albums into Marshall Tucker’s career, just as freeform FM radio was increasingly tightening up toward consultant-whitewashed AOR — Carolina Dreams is an easy album to be cynical about. The opening cut, for heaven’s sake, is called “Fly Like an Eagle”: just like the Steve Miller smash from a year before, not to mention the second Tucker title about eagles flying. But it takes us on a warm riverboat ride toward the early REO Speedwagon/Head East prairie-rock Midwest over a shave-and-a-haircut clavé rhythm regardless. And the band’s biggest pop hit comes next. “Heard It In a Love Song” famously features Toy Caldwell drawling about his boots needing new soles, then grabbing his duffle bag because he’s free as a bird now and he’s got the bad grammar to match: “I was born a wrangler and a rounder, and I guess I always will.”

“I Should Have Never Started Lovin’ You” unfolds its smooth-jazzed Southern soul over seven minutes; “Desert Skies” could be the Texas Playboys back in their most mellow saddle, getting along little doggie at a clippity-clopping equestrian pace until a sax solo worthy of Steely Dan enters around the 4:25 mark. Then six tracks in, things get dark.

“Never Trust a Stranger” is stormy Western movie mariachi-rock, burying “Secret Agent Man” deep in its melody above a pulse subliminally similar to Donna Summer’s ’77 “I Feel Love”; “Tell It to the Devil” feels more complacent (this was a professional ‘70s rock band, after all) but just as downtrodden. Finally, on this reissue, a 1981 live take on “Silverado” begins at Ennio Morricone then curdles toward sludge. At the turn of the ‘80s, according to the liner notes, Marshall Tucker were enduring music biz types trying to rein them in. If so, they translate those stresses into windswept, dustblown gloom.