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Roanoke, VA (WDBJ) – for Marshall Tucker Band When the band formed in 1972, founding member and frontman Doug Gray never imagined it would be a milestone.
“Honestly no. We don’t even know when we’re going to buy a beer. I mean, that kind of answer is there,” Gray said.
The story of this legendary band began as high school students in Spartanburg, South Carolina.
After graduation, they served in Vietnam.
When they got home, the music brought the friends back together.
“I work at a bank and I got an offer — the same day we got a recording contract, I got an offer to run a bank in Atlanta. So, see which one I get,” Gray said.
Gray didn’t become a banker, but a lifelong Southern rocker.
For five years, the Marshall Tucker Band has produced timeless hits like “Heard the Love Song” and “You Can’t See It.”
But did you know that none of them are actually named Marshall Tucker?
They discovered the name while rehearsing for a show in an old warehouse.
“He came down and said ‘I need a name.’ We said we had nothing but the keychain, which had a name on it that said Marshall Tucker,” Gray said.
That Marshall Tucker was actually a blind piano tuner.
“You know, he never played with us. Never got up to play. We just took the name off the keychain and put an ‘L’ and that was it,” Gray said.
Gray was the last active original member of the band — the man who helped create the Southern rock genre.
“It came from rhythm and blues. It came from country, and I started singing James Brown stuff,” Gray said.
“There’s room for more Southern rock. There’s going to be more Southern rock, I say with Blackberry Smoke and Zac Brown, my nephew is in Zac Brown,” Gray said.
While Gray lost a lot of friends and bandmates in the process, he said their spirit was always with him.
He was proud to carry the torch.
“I’ll never be the one to give up,” he said.
For a link to purchase tickets for the August 20th show, Click here.
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