When the Marshall Tucker Band’s Tommy Caldwell Died
Tommy Caldwell's death after an April 1980 car accident didn't end the Marshall Tucker Band, but it changed things forever – in particular for his older brother Toy Caldwell.
The pair had been playing music together since Tommy was 7 and Toy was 9. The Toy Factory, led by the elder Caldwell, became the southern-rocking Marshall Tucker Band when Tommy joined as bassist in 1972. They took their name from a hometown piano tuner in the cotton-mill city of Spartanburg, S.C., and set about recording five gold-selling albums (including four in a row starting in 1973) and the platinum smash Carolina Dreams before the end of the '70s.
Then tragedy struck. The Marshall Tucker Band had just returned home from a concert they recorded for broadcast on the King Biscuit Flower Hour when Tommy Caldwell's Land Cruiser clipped a parked 1965 Ford Galaxy on April 22, 1980, in Spartanburg. Tommy's Jeep, modified for off-road driving with oversized tires, flipped onto its side – and Caldwell suffered a head injury that would ultimately prove fatal. "It was just a freak accident," Moon Mullins, a crew member for the band, said later.
The owner of the Galaxy, who was in the car but uninjured when Caldwell struck him, was charged with improper parking the next day. Caldwell died on April 28, 1980, after lingering in critical condition at Spartanburg General Hospital for almost a week.
Franklin Wilkie, a former bassist in Toy Caldwell's pre-Marshall Tucker group, took over for Tommy – but the band never regained its commercial momentum. Tenth, the final album to feature Tommy Caldwell, was their last Top 40 album.
Toy Caldwell was hit particularly hard, having endured another brother's death in a traffic accident just one month before Tommy's. By 1984, he'd left the Marshall Tucker Band, creating a huge hole as the group lost its lead guitarist, vocalist on "Can't You See" and principal songwriter. Toy Caldwell died in 1993, after too much cocaine stopped his heart.
"Since Tommy's death, he was there in body only," Toy Caldwell's wife Abbie said in 1998. "In hindsight, Toy kept an awful lot inside of him. I cannot imagine the pain he was in after his brothers’ deaths. ... Toy put up a good front for the others, but now I know he had to be torn apart inside."
Doug Gray, who sang the group's No. 14 hit "Heard It in a Love Song," carries on with the Marshall Tucker Band these days. Rhythm guitarist George McCorkle died in 2007, leaving Gray as the only member from the classic era defined by the Caldwells.
Tommy Caldwell spoke to that lasting bond, as musicians and as brothers, in 1978. "You won't find me in another band when this one's over," Tommy said after the release of the aptly titled Together Forever. "You'll find me back in the country in South Carolina. Me and my brother have been playing together forever and, when that's over, we're going home. If you heard it, then you were fortunate enough to catch it. If you didn't? Well, there won't be another one, man."