Song Of The Day 8/25/2014: Marshall Tucker Band - "24 Hours At A Time"

Southern Rock Week: Well, you know, it's getting towards the end of summer, and I'm reflecting on my Southern roots and the dog days of August. We used to take the flatbed and an ice chest full of reasonably priced beer, cram the D batteries into the boom box, find ourselves a patch on the shores of Lake Oconee, take off our shirts and just marinate in the dusty sun. Then we'd get out our Enfield 1853 muskets, gently wipe the barrels with pipe cleaners and salve, look at each other's moustaches lovingly, and then dropped our Moon Pies and fell into a warm embrace that society refused to underst... Oh! Damn, I'm sorry, that wasn't my life. That's some old file from NatNoWriMo I accidentally opened. Could never figure out where to go after that. Oh, well, let's have a few days of Southern rock anyway.

You remember the Marshall Tucker Band, one of the very few bands that were professionally licensed to have a flautist (Jerry Eubanks) and didn't abuse the privilege. Their big hit was "Heard It In A Love Song," a 1977 rewrite of the Allman's "Ramblin' Man" that's not quite as heavy on the Southern philosophy. Marshall Tucker wasn't actually in the Marshall Tucker Band. He was a blind piano tuner in their hometown of Spartanburg, SC who used to occupy the band's rehearsal space. No confirmation of how he felt about being the moniker of one of the premier Southern rock bands of the '70s, but they continue unabated with his name intact. MTB started out on Capricorn Records, the label with the closest ties to Southern rock and a name I'll be tossing out several times this week. "24 Hours At a Time" is a great traveling song from their second album A New Life, driven by a rolling piano, with impeccable and presumably vision-enabled tuning. Though now that I think of it, vision's perhaps the first sensory opt-out you could afford with piano tuning. Never mind. Have I shown you my Enfield 1853 yet?