The original KSHE logo on the left was quite an icon in the early 1970s. As you can probably guess, Sweetmeat was a counter-culture symbol that extended beyond a radio station logo. Of course, the new Sweetmeat is a Grade A, upstanding pork product, nothing at all like it's predecessor. Still, the music remains and in the St. Louis area, we were fortunate to have the grandaddy of underground rock stations, KSHE Radio playing all the best of the southern rock tunes!
I had grown up listening to the Allman Brothers, the MTB, CDB, the Outlaws.. aahh, Green Grass and High Tides Forever! And, of course, Lynryd Skynryd. On that fateful night back in 1977, I was at CDB's Midnight Wind tour in St. Louis, the same one that Charlie wrote about in his tribute to Ronnie on the Million Mile Reflections album.
For a kid growing up listening to my father’s old Hank Williams records and watching the Grand Ole Opry, the first time I heard Charlie Daniels’ fiddle on the Orange Blossom Special, I realized that there was something bigger going on in the music, something much more bold and experimental.
It was a special time in the evolution of FM radio. On K-SHE, it wasn’t unusual to hear three Marshall Tucker songs in a row. They’d play Long Hard Ride, for example, Fire On the Mountain, and then a live cut, like Take the Highway. It was like that all the time on K-SHE.
Looking back, it seemed like the music would last forever. I saw the band for the first time at an outdoor show at Southern Illinois University, and I remember my friends and I boasting afterwards how long the band had played "24 Hours At A Time."
One great album followed another, and FM radio was there to play the songs and promote the tours. In 1978 I saw the band perform during their Together Forever tour, and not long after that, I began my first job in radio at a small Missouri station.
By the time I started playing Ramblin’ Man, Sweet Home Alabama, and Heard It In A Love Song, the music industry was changing. Fast! Album rock was being sucked away, sucked dry by disco, and it consumed everything and everybody.
I moved to our sister station KNEM, a country-format station south of Kansas City in the foothills of the Ozarks. The radio station was in an old, converted gas station just on the outskirts of town, and I arrived each day just after 5 a.m. to begin my shift. I’d turn on the transmitter, then rip and read the AP wire reports on the air.
Whenever possible, I’d try to slip in a Marshall Tucker song before the early, local newscast to get the day hummin’ along. There were so many goods songs to ease us into the quiet, summer morning in Southwest Missouri. I played some of my favorites from Carolina Dreams, including Desert Skies, and I should Have Never Started Lovin’ You. I played Bob Away My Blues, and some other tunes from Searchin’ For A Rainbow. Easy, early in the morning songs.
In 1996, during the start-up days of the internet, MTB fans searched the world wide web (as we used to call it) for anything related to the Marshall Tucker Band. On one lone site with a single photo of the band, Chuck McCorkle began the dream that so many Tucker fans have come to appreciate: A gathering site for MTB fans on the internet. Despite the tragedies and breakups of the bands, and the long absences of new material, I have never stopped listening to my favorite tunes from the MTB, and I'm hopin' you feel the same way!!