Some songs never get stale. They just improve with age and time. That sounds like a cliche, but it's true. Like the 1970s were a golden era for films, that was also a golden age for music of all kinds. An eternal classic by The Marshall Tucker Band, "Can't You See," was written by the band's virtuoso guitarist, Toy Caldwell, and dropped in 1973. The lyrics, images, and rhythm are so pleasantly familiar. "I'm gonna take a freight train / Down at the station, Lord / I don't care where it goes / Gonna climb a mountain...." A mellow hybrid of Southern and country rock, it is an anthem for the ages. And that lovely flute at the beginning and the end....
Videos by Wide Open Country
But getting this song off the ground was definitely another story. It hit some major snags along the way, according to Doug Gray of MTB. In an interview with the legendary Dan Rather that is available on YouTube, Gray, 77, the talented lead singer and a founding member of MTB, talked about the track's halting beginnings. Fortunately, everything worked out perfectly and we have this amazing song to enjoy forever now.
Doug Gray Balked At Singing This Song
Sometimes things initially go haywire and they eventually work out alright. That was what happened with "Can't You See." According to Gray, he liked the song well enough but did not want to be the one to sing it. As far as his opinion of Caldwell goes, Gray respected him immensely. (He died in 1993 at the age of 45.)
"He was a songwriter's dream," Gray shared with Rather. But he still adamantly wanted out of singing that tune.
As he tells it, "First of all, Toy gave that to me to sing. I said, 'Nope, I can't sing that'...I said, 'Please don't...so we didn't do it for a couple weeks. And then, Toy said, 'I'm gonna give it a try.'
Gray recalled, "It just blew the audience away. It was this outstanding song, outstanding song. It's a big song everywhere because of that."
Fans Still Really Love It
Many wrote comments about it on Gray's YouTube interview page, describing what the song still means to them. Its ripples have extended over fifty years and counting.
Wrote one person, "What a treasure Doug Gray is. Toy Caldwell was a genius."
"Can't you see, one of the best songs ever. I still listen to it on a regular basis," posted another.
"First time I ever saw the Marshal[l] Tucker Band, had never heard of them, 1974 in San Diego, went to see them at a hall of about 400 downtown. They opened for Lynyrd Skynyrd. When Toy Caldwell sang 'Can't You See,' my elbow was on the stage. A powerhouse band and Toy one of the best front men I ever saw—singing, playing, his presence, and he wrote most of those songs...."
