Rating:
Genre:
Rock
Release Date: 11/04/2003
Twenty seven years after it was compiled, the apocryphal
Stompin' Room Only is finally released. The album, which suffers only from being the seam album between
Marshall Tucker's tenures at
Capricorn and
Warner Bros, was recorded during the European tour in support of
Carolina Dreams. Here are 11 tracks by the original band -- with guests on a few -- with two cuts from a Milwaukee 1974 show tacked on for good measure. This is
Marshall Tucker as they have never been heard on record. Like
the Allmans,
the Tuckers were all about seamlessly expanding from one musical form into another. Whereas studio versions of
"Can't You See," "Take the Highway," "Ramblin'," and
"24 Hours at a time," would weave elements of
jazz,
blues,
honky tonk,
gospel, and
Appalachian folk music into the body of a song, on these extended jamming excursions they fully indulged their passions, winding in and out of genres without seams or sudden shifts. On an elongated cover of
B.B. King's signature tune,
"The Thrill Is Gone," with a number of guests including
Dickey Betts and
Charlie Daniels (making for a four-guitar front line!) as well as
Jimmy Hall and
Chuck Leavell,
Chicago blues,
jazz, and
country are all enmeshed simultaneously, as the hidden nuances in the song come to the fore. On the gloriously long
"24 Hours at a Time," Tom Caldwell's bass moves through the various
jazz eras as
Daniels fiddles his ass off to keep time with
Toy Caldwell's knotty, razor-wire leads. And for those fans of the
Marshal Tucker Band whose gauge is the song,
"Can't You See," there isn't a better one on record or bootleg that's better than this one. With its shuffling, funky backbeat, and
Toy Caldwell's impassioned vocal leading the charge to his burning solos, it literally send chills up the spine. This is one of the few cases where a found "lost" recording lives up its legend.
~Thom Jurek, All Music Guide
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