Carolina Dreams, released in 1977, was The Marshall Tucker Band's sixth album and an ode to the band's home state, South Carolina, USA.

The Carolina landscape seems to lend itself to dreaming; it’s no wonder that James Taylor wrote in one of his most famous songs that “I’m goin’ to Carolina in my mind.” This two-state region, with its rich and fertile soil, its mild year-round climate, its courteous people and rich culture, is a singularly lovely place in which to sit back and dream. For that reason, it seems appropriate that the Marshall Tucker Band gave their fine 1977 album the evocative title of “Carolina Dreams.”

The Marshall Tucker Band came out of Spartanburg, South Carolina – a center (with nearby Greenville) of the Upstate region, and a city with a mill-town heritage that, by 1977, was already in decline. Spartanburg and its environs are worlds away from the coastal gentility of Charleston; Pat Conroy, in one of his books, described “the upcountry of South Carolina” as a place that combines “the Bible Belt, sand-lot baseball, knife fights under the bleachers.” But it was also a place where the musical heritage of the American South – including both African-American blues and Anglo-Appalachian country music – had long helped the people of the region through lives of hard work and hard times; and the Marshall Tucker Band’s work on this album is steeped in a sensibility that combines blues and country in a musically fruitful manner.

The album begins with “Fly Like an Eagle” -- *not* the Steve Miller Band hit from 1976, but rather, for my money, a much better song. It is a crunchy, bluesy, riff-based rocker with high clear vocals from Doug Gray, and a soaring quality that characterizes many of the songs on this album. The song that follows, “Heard It in a Love Song,” was deservedly a big hit (#14 here in the U.S.A., #5 in Canada), and to this day it makes its way onto just about every Southern rock compilation that one can find. What gives this song that lyrical quality that sent it racing up the North American charts? To my way of thinking, it’s Jerry Eubanks’s flute solo. With a few exceptions (Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull, Ray Thomas of the Moody Blues, Peter Gabriel in Genesis’ early years), the flute has not had much of a presence in rock music; but here, Eubanks’s flute combines seamlessly with flat-picking, Carl Perkins-style guitar, a lovely piano solo, and effective use of organ in a supporting role. The lyrics are fairly typical – a rambling, roaming rocker really loves the girl he’s with, but tells her he needs to move on – but musically, the song is so well-composed and so well-played that I’m not disposed to quibble.