The Marshall Tucker Band

Living on Seal Place, I spent a large amount of time at Richards around the corner on Monroe Drive. I didn't work there, but was sort of a family member, friends with many of the club's team. In retrospect, I might have driven them a bit crazy. The club was closed during the day. They kept a grand piano at the far left side of the stage, and sometimes I'd carry my stack of sheet music from the house over to practice my mediocre musical skills during the afternoon. A bit of Mozart, Bach, Debussy, mixed with lame attempts at Procol Harum. My apologies to anyone who had to listen, and thanks to those who indulged me. I digress.
Richards launched on February 1, 1973. February 12-16, Spartanburg SC's Marshall Tucker Band opened for Bo Diddley. When Marshall Tucker returned to the club for another week in mid-April, they were the headliners.

The Marshall Tucker Band in 1972;
(L-R) Toy Caldwell, George McCorkle, Jerry Eubanks, 
Doug Gray, Paul Riddle, Tommy Caldwell

My disjointed spiel about piano practice leads here: sometimes I was asked by day manager Diane to handle the phones as they attended to other business. The one call that has stuck in my head for these past decades is when I picked up the receiver and Doug Gray* was on the other end of the line. The Marshall Tucker Band's eponymous debut album had been released by Phil Walden's Capricorn Records only a couple of weeks prior. It was getting massive radio-play, particularly their first single "Can't You See," as well as "Take the Highway." Doug was positively giddy. He kept saying "I can't believe it!," "We worked so hard!," talking a mile a minute, and was simply blown away by their accelerating success. It remains one of the most insanely unbounded enthusiastic celebratory phone conversations I've ever experienced. We were all thrilled for them, and the band received a hero's welcome when they returned to Richards the next week. Beginning in June that same year, the band went on tour with the Allman Brothers. In 1974, MTB continued to tour, the album went platinum, and they earned top billing.
Fast-forward forty years, and Doug Gray is still humbly amazed at Marshall Tucker's success. In 2014, contestant Patrick Thomson performed "Can't You See" on NBC's The Voice. A contestant on American Idol also covered the song. Doug spoke with Billboard:

"When Toy Caldwell wrote that song, none of us knew that it was going to be as popular forty years later. We had no idea that any of us would make it past the weekend. So, to watch those guys do it, and all the emails and calls, was amazing."

In 1973, it was the wonderful circumstance of truly great things happening to truly good people (who realized their talents and knew the value of hard work.) In the many years since, Doug Gray has held the band together throughout its losses and changes. The Marshall Tucker Band continues to tour and retains a devoted fanbase while bringing their music to new generations. Good on them. As their friend Gregg sings, "the road goes on forever." Check out MarshallTucker.com for details on their history, evolution, discography, tour dates, and other information.

*Doug Gray was, and still is, founding member and lead singer of The Marshall Tucker Band.

Sources:
Billboard.com, Artists, The Marshall Tucker Band
Billboard.com, "Marshall Tucker Feels the Love on Both 'The Voice' and 'American Idol,'" by Chuck Dauphin, April 21, 2014

(Amazing) Grace

I met Grace when I moved to Seal Place. Her ex-husband, our landlord, lived in the other half of our duplex. Behind the duplex was a garage (or maybe just a very large shed) that had been converted into a printmaking studio. Grace lived with her daughters a few houses up the street. She used the studio for her artwork, mostly creating silkscreen/serigraphs at the time. I knew her first as a respected Atlanta artist. She generously encouraged me with my own work, even convincing me to exhibit in the Atlanta Arts Festival. (That's another story.) I later learned that Grace was also an accomplished actress and performed in many Atlanta theater productions. At that time she still used her married name, MacEachron.

Cast photo for Stereopticon, by playwright Jim Peck, which premiered August 1976
at the Studio Theater of Atlanta's Memorial Arts Center, renamed the Woodruff Arts Center in 1982.
(I'll write of George Ellis in another post, a beloved character unto himself.)

Grace moved from Atlanta to Los Angeles in 1979. She secured an agent there following her first significant role in a major film—Martin Ritts' Norma Rae—released earlier that year. (It won two Oscars: Best Actress for Sally Field and Best Original Song.) Grace also dropped her ex-husband's name and began going by Zabriskie, her mother's maiden surname.

Grace Zabriskie with David Lynch on the set of Twin Peaks;
personal Polaroid via twinpeaksarchive.blogspot.com.
She kept the robe, pictured, as a keepsake from the final episode. 

Many know Grace from her hilarious portrayal of George Costanza's potential mother-in-law on Seinfeld. David Lynch fans know her best as a member of his longtime troupe of actors, most indelibly in his groundbreaking 1990-91 television series Twin Peaks. She portrayed mentally-precarious Sarah Palmer, wife of Leland, mother of Laura. In a November 2014 interview, Grace confirmed being aboard for Lynch's 2017 reboot of the series for Showtime. In the meantime, she continues accumulating credits in different projects. I admire that throughout Grace's acting career she has continued to create her own artwork in various media. A portfolio that was mostly printmaking in the days of Seal Place has expanded to include photography, collage, sculpture, and extensive woodworking, even furniture. (Some of her creations are viewable at www.gracezabriskie.com.) 

Amazing. 

Sources:
"'Stereopticon' Offers Penetrating Insights," by Helen C. Smith, The Atlanta Constitution, August 20, 1976
"Stereopticon," by Stuart Culpepper, Atlanta Gazette, August 18, 1976
"SLIFF 2014 Interview: Actress Grace Zabriskie," by Tom Stockman, WeAreMovieGeeks.com, November 6, 2014
twinpeaksarchive.blogspot.com

Moe Slotin, 1950-2001

Moe Slotin was living on Seal Place when we met. He became a good friend: supportive, generous, funny, and kind. He wrote concert reviews for The Great Speckled Bird at the time, and often took me and other friends along as sidekicks, sharing his backstage passes. Sometimes he'd quote us in his write-ups. He even had me cover a show for him once or twice. I always appreciated his trust and confidence. 
During the altered-state haze of the early 70s, Moe remained grounded, our designated driver long before the title was invented. He didn't drink or smoke, much less partake of controlled substances, and he was the first vegetarian I ever knew. I'd never even heard of brown rice until Moe introduced me to his favorite vegetarian restaurant, the Morningstar Inn, near Emory.

Moe Slotin in Underground Atlanta
sharing The Bird with the Atlanta PD,
1970 photo by Carter Tomassi

On top of Moe's writing commitments, he was part of the road crew for Hydra, one of the South's top bands of the time. Moe and Hydra's bassist Orville Davis shared the duplex on Seal Place. (I joined the household, too, and minded the fort while they were on the road.) The band toured extensively and often opened for major headliners such as Mountain, Procol Harum, and Trapeze. 

Hydra opened for Blue Oyster Cult on a leg of their 1974 tour. Moe accepted a subsequent job offer from BOC, and that was the last I saw him. A life-long mutual friend kept me updated as Moe traversed two decades in music. In addition to BOC, he went on to work with The B-52s, Patti Smith, Talking Heads, Aerosmith, and many others. An accomplished sound engineer, he settled in NYC and designed for the likes of Max's Kansas City and Madison Square Garden. 
After 20 years on the road, Moe left rock-and-roll to work as a licensed journeyman Porsche mechanic. In another abrupt career turn, he returned to school to become a physical therapist, and, no surprise, graduated top of his class. He fell in love, married, and had a child. After several years of professional practice in Manhattan, the family moved to Moe's hometown of Savannah GA, where he continued his work in physical therapy and also became an instructor for Armstrong Atlantic State University in that field. 
It was a shock to learn he was taken by cancer at age 51, especially since Moe had lived such a consciously healthy life. He positively impacted so many people in such varied arenas throughout his life. He was well-loved and is well-remembered. His parents created the Morris Slotin Memorial Scholarship for Armstrong State University. It is awarded annually to an outstanding student of physical therapy who has chosen the profession as a second career. Appropriate, especially because Moe was as outstanding as they come. 

Sources:
"The Two Worlds of Moe Slotin," by Barry J. Ostrow
Armstrong University Donor's Report, Fall 2014

Bill Fibben, 1944-1999

Bill Fibben lived on Seal Place during the early 1970s. We met after I moved into a house down the street with mutual friends. Bill was a photojournalist working with The Great Speckled Bird at the time and witness to many transformative events of the era. I never saw him without a camera in reach. His photography was integral to The Bird's documentation of the period.

Bill Fibben in Piedmont Park
Photo by Carter Tomassi
(Seated behind Bill is sound engineer/musician/photographer Mike Hatchett, 
in striped shirt. He also lived in the Seal Place neighborhood.)

After several years with The Bird, Bill joined the Atlanta Gazette, another alternative city paper run by Rick Brown, who was also formerly with The Bird and lived on Seal Place, too. In the early 1980s, Bill entered Georgia's film production industry. He contributed sound recording to over forty motion pictures. In that context I would run into him during the 1990s while working in film, too. He was always kind and welcoming with his unforgettable smile, no matter how much time passed in-between. Cancer took Bill Fibben's life in 1999 when he was only 55. His body of work remains a gift for us all.

Seal Place

Seal Place is a small non-through street in midtown Atlanta that runs a short, straight line from Monroe Drive to Monroe Circle. Near Monroe Drive's intersections with Virginia Avenue, 8th and 10th Streets, it is an easy walk to Piedmont Park. In the early 1970s, the small neighborhood was home to numerous creative individuals representative of the counterculture of the time: artists, musicians, journalists, photographers, actors, architects, designers, and others. The rock club Richards was just around the corner, as was the homecooking of The Silver Grill. Arlan's, a 24-hour supermarket fronting Ponce de Leon Avenue, was easily reached via a rear cut-through off Monroe Circle at Greenwood. It was a unique place in a unique time.