Customer Reviews

The Essential 3.0 The Marshall Tucker Band (Eco-Friendly Packaging)

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Nothing disappoints me more then buying a greatest hits package that does not contain all the greatest hits. To my disappointment, none of the CD releases purporting to be greatest hits of the Marshall Tucker Band have contained the "essential" hits, and by that I reference the vinyl release "Gratest Hits" on Capricorn records that contained the following 8 songs: Can't You See, Heard It a Love Song, Searchin' For a Rainbow, Ramblin', Fire On the Mountain, This Ol' Cowboy, 24 Hours at a Time and Long Hard Ride. Any CD that does not contain at least these 8 songs can not call itself a Greatest Hits Package. Oh, and by the way, substituting a live version for the original hit is cheating, and on this new Essential Marshall Tucker Band 3.0 collection, Shout records cheats twice by included two live versions of 2 of the essential basic hits I referenced above: Ramblin' and 24 Hours at a Time. With the CD format able to include more then the basic 8 songs that were found on the vinyl release, it is truly disappointing that Shout could not get this detail correct. This new release does contain a total of 27 songs, which is nice, including 5 unreleased live versions of the songs Hillbilly Band, Another Cruel Love, See You Later, I'm Gone, yet ANOTHER live version of Ramblin' and Can't You See, all recorded in Sept. 1973 at the Winterland Auditorium in San Francisco. These never before release live tracks are great historically, but for me really do not add to this Greatest Hits package. Shout could have easily included the studio versions in ADDITION to the live versions, of just release a complete live version of the hits.

I wish I had fully researched this CD before I bought it; I thought I was finally going to get a collection which included This Ol' Cowboy along with the other hits mentioned above. I know there is a good reason for Shout not to include all the original versions, but it makes for a rather mediocre collections of hits.

THE ESSENTIAL 3.0 MARSHALL TUCKER BAND is a great anthology of one of the top bands ever to come out of the South. This band was a bit jazzier than the Allman Brothers Band, who were very blues-based; Lynyrd Skynyrd, who were very hard-rock oriented; or the Outlaws, who were a hard-edged country-boogie band. Unlike the double-disc version, which included a lot of latter-day cuts (as much as I admire guitarist-singer-songwriter Chris Hicks for his tough-on-crime stance, he did seem a bit bent on trying things that didn't quite fit the Tucker style musically), this one consists entirely of recordings from the classic lineup. Even the live cuts are from, at the very latest, 1980, and everything here features the guitar and bass playing of the late, great Toy and Tommy Caldwell. The interaction between vocals, guitars, wind instruments, keyboards, and the rhythm section is great, so this anthology is a must-own even if you already own THE BEST OF THE MARSHALL TUCKER BAND: THE CAPRICORN YEARS. Besides, this one has much better sound than that 1994 collection.