George McCorkle
GEORGE MCCORKLE
Music is George McCorkle’s passion. He has enjoyed great success with the Marshall Tucker Band, as a solo artist and through the legacy of songs that he is actively creating. “I’m not writing music and performing to try and be a major success,” George states. “I’m an artist and I’ve got something to say. And I need to say it. That’s sort of the way I look at it.”
Raised in Spartanburg, South Carolina from the time he was nearly two, George was born in nearby Chester, South Carolina. As the youngest of three brothers, he grew up poignantly aware of the long and hard hours his mother Mildred put in at the cotton mill. “We were a typical South Carolina mill family,” George remembers. “Very poor.” Through his life experiences he developed a strong and active work ethic. Although George’s greatest achievements would come through a career in music, he remembers that in the course of his lifetime he took gigs as a dental lab technician, race car driver, and car salesman, owner of both a glass company and a car lot to supplement his professional music livelihood. He believes his work ethic has its roots in his “meager beginnings” and “growing up Southern”. As a young man, George was not focused on frivolous activities. He was drafted into the navy as an 18-year-old graduate of Spartanburg High School and was stationed on the USS Little Rock at Gaeta, Italy.
Listening to music helped George pass the time while he was away from his friends and loved ones back home in Spartanburg. Music was already an integral part of his life. As a teenager George listened to his brother Chuck play guitar and his brother Tony play in bands around the Spartanburg/Greenville area. His friend Jimmy Hughes’ brother Paul was another influence as George realized that playing guitar was a meaningful way in which to express artistically himself. He borrowed Chuck’s guitar and learned to play it. He listened to radio station WLAC out of Nashville and loved the blues he heard broadcast. “The blues was like a magnet,” remembers George. “I liked to listen to B.B. King, Albert King and guys like that. Then I would try improvising their songs with my own ideas.” Other musicians such as the “funky playing” Jimmy Nolen, rhythm guitar player for James Brown, would greatly influence George’s guitar evolution. “I’d play what I felt they were playing but in my own style.” While working part-time in a drug store at the age of sixteen, George bought a Gretsch guitar paid for via “the installment plan.” He remembers his first stage appearance as playing with a band called The Originals at an American Legion hut. George’s first “major” appearance was playing with The Rants, a high school band that played English and Beach music at frat parties, teen clubs and high school events.
After his discharge from the Navy, George contemplated his future and decided to return to what he loved most in life: making music. In an effort to mature musically, George and long time friend Toy Caldwell formed The Toy Factory. The Toy Factory was highly successful, but when Toy decided that he needed to devote his energies to earning steady money George temporarily teamed up with others to play in Pax Parachute. When it’s all said and done, music is in George’s soul and playing with the Marshall Tucker Band was one of the highlights of his life. “Playing guitar with Toy Caldwell wasn’t just playing guitar, it was sharing a mind. With me at his side he had the freedom to do whatever came into his mind and I could instinctively interpret whatever that was and experiment with him. And Toy had a heart of gold.” George had the time of his life playing with the Marshall Tucker Band and contributing to such hit albums as Carolina Dreams, Searchin’ For A Rainbow, A New Life, and Where We All Belong.
As much as George enjoys playing guitar, he loves creating songs. He wrote his first song while still in high school. Although he surprisingly would never write with his dear friend Toy Caldwell, he would corroborate with others to create many memorable songs. “I love co-writing with other people,” says George. “I like to see where their influences and personalities take us.” Although he would write many memorable songs with other musicians, George has experienced some rather stellar success writing on his own. It is “Fire on the Mountain,” George’s first recorded solo songwriting effort that generated recognition and fame. The lyric sheet for this Marshall Tucker Band hit, which opens the album Searchin’ For A Rainbow, resides in the Country Music Hall of Fame and a label from that record is part of a display in the Aerospace Museum of the Smithsonian Institute. Another achievement for George is his song “Last of the Singing Cowboys” performed by the Marshall Tucker Band on the album Running Like the Wind. Country star Gary Allen recently cut “Cowboy Blues,” a song George wrote with Mike Geiger and Michael Huffman and George has high hopes for the thoughtful and highly entertaining new song “Jesus Never Had No Motorcycle.” George McCorkle is an established and prolific songwriter. He lately writes about six songs a week and has over 350 completed songs in his songwriting catalogue.
Staying at home merely reflecting on the past isn’t something that George sees himself doing. He has recently released his debut solo album American Street. “That was a dream come true,” George says. “It was a major thing for me to step out and do something like that.” Judging from the reception the album has been receiving, it won’t be the last solo effort we can expect. George keeps his musical irons in the fire in other creative ways as well. When he is not enjoying the companionship of his wife Vivienne and his children Justin and Justin's wife Beebe, and Vivienne's childern Alex, Kevin, at his rural home outside of Nashville, George is making plans to record and play some gigs with The Renegades of Southern Rock, a band which consists of George and other original members of major Southern Rock Bands.
George has traveled all over the world and performed for 12 years to over 20,000 people a night with the Marshall Tucker Band. He has played beside B.B. King, Carlos Santana, Dickie Betts, Charlie Daniels and a host of other legendary guitar players. Yet to George, his long career is not about the fame but about the music. “My greatest accomplishment is the fact that somebody wants to listen to something I wrote or played on,” says George. “As I write in one of my latest songs, “The Only Thing I Can Do Is Give It Away.”
Marley Brant
Please browse the site then sign the Petition....
Whether you are a die hard Tucker Head or not you have to agree they deserve to be inducted.