Doug Gray doing fine fronting the Marshall Tucker Band

This country-rock thing’s got legs.

The Marshall Tucker Band lives outside prevailing musical trends and has lived a long time. “The Intimidator” was probably still listening to “Can’t You See,” which was only a year old when Dale Earnhardt Jr. was born in 1974.

That song was rereleased in 1977, buoyed by the band’s biggest hit, “Heard It in a Love Song” reaching No. 14 on the Top 40 that year. So both songs were still on the radio a lot when Kurt Busch was born in 1978.

If a band has only one original member, you usually want it to be the singer. That’s the case with Doug Gray still fronting the band here. What about Marshall, you ask?

Like Lynyrd Skynyrd, he was never in the band. But he’s still alive, according to a recent interview Gray did with the Toledo Blade. Tucker is a blind former choir director in his 90s. It was his name on the key to a warehouse the fledgling band rented to rehearse and his name that’s been on the famous logo — the other constant besides Gray — ever since.

Contact reporter Mike Weatherford at mweatherford@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0288.