winnipegsun.com - Music - Not tuckered out yet

Unlike the subject of her most famous song, Tanya Tucker is no faded rose from years gone by.

And while we'd never give away a lady's age, suffice it to say she's still decades younger than some of her country music contemporaries, even after being a presence in the industry for more than 30 years.

You could be forgiven for thinking Tucker is older than she is -- her gravelly, world-weary voice certainly gives that impression, and she's been singing about love, loss and lust since the early 1970s.

But Tucker, who plays Wednesday at the Centennial Concert Hall, was only 13 years old when she recorded signature song Delta Dawn in 1972, paving the way for later Lolitas like Leann Rimes and Britney Spears and establishing herself as a force to be reckoned with in the process.

"My daddy coached me a lot," Tucker tells the Sun in her syrupy Southern drawl. "He always said, 'You got two things against you -- One is you're a girl ... but you're also a young girl, so you're going to have to put twice as much feeling into it as anyone else.' He always said to just put it in there the same way Hank Williams put it in, so even Woodbury soap won't wash it off."
 

To say Tucker was an early bloomer would be a bit of an understatement. She began taking saxophone lessons at the age of six, picked up singing lessons two years later and, by the age of 12, had caught the attention of Billy Sherrill, then-head of A&R at CBS Records.

It was Sherrill who helped Tucker cut Delta Dawn, though he'd initially planned for her to record Donna Fargo's The Happiest Girl In the Whole USA. Luckily, someone else in the studio had caught Bette Midler singing Delta Dawn on The Tonight Show a night earlier and the rest, as they say, is history.

"I said, 'That's it. That's my song,'" Tucker recalls. "Of course, at the time, they didn't want anyone to know my age ... so they tried to keep that a secret."

Keeping the secret proved impossible, however, and a minor furor was raised over the subject matter of some of Tucker's songs -- particularly David Allen Coe's Would You Lay With Me (In a Field Of Stone), which was released when she was 15.

But the controversy didn't stop her from racking up a series of Top Ten hits throughout the 1970s, among them What's Your Mama's Name, Blood Red and Goin' Down, and San Antonio Stroll.

"I was singing songs I had never experienced," Tucker says. "And then, when I'd experience those things later in my life, I'd say, 'OK -- so that's what it's like."

Subsequent decades saw Tucker dealing with her share of tears-in-the-beer tribulations -- a stormy May-December romance with Glen Campbell, sagging record sales and a battle with booze and drugs that saw her serving a stint at the Betty Ford Clinic.

But by the early 1990s she'd bounced back, scoring a Country Music Award for female vocalist of the year in 1991 and releasing a series of increasingly personal albums -- the latest of which, last year's Live At Billy Bob's, features more "lived-in" versions of the classics Tucker belted out as a teen.

These days, she and her family are the stars of TLC's reality show Tuckerville, which Tanya laughingly describes as a country-music spin on the Osbornes, "only with a lot less bleeping."

And while she's no stranger to fame and fortune (she counts local jet-setter Peter Nygard among her friends, and hopes to hook up with him while in Winnipeg "so he can give me a new outfit!"), she's just as committed to keeping her feet on the ground.

"I still go shopping at Kroeger's and Wal-Mart and I mix and mingle with people who aren't in the music business every day," she says. "It's when you remove yourself from the people that you start forgetting what it is they need to hear."

Tanya Tucker - March 29 All grown up but still a party girl She's not the same preteen nymphet who courted controversy and country music stardom all those decades ago but Tanya Tucker has still got the goods. During her show at the Centennial Concert Hall March 29, Tucker proved she's still the same party girl who made headlines as a young star, only now living comfortably as a middle-aged mother of three. Decked in black spandex tights and a sequined top with sheer sleeves, Tucker took to the stage to the strains of the theme song from her TV show Tuckerville. She quickly broke into a spirited version of Some Kind of Trouble, employing the gravelly vocal rasp that's been her trademark since the start (but struggling more than a few times to be heard; the possible result of a recent bout of bronchitis). And sure, Tucker's dance moves were dated (lots of jazz hands, pointed toes, and sultry looks over her shoulder), but there's something oddly empowering about watching a woman-of-a-certain-age do exactly what's not expected of her, especially when she's having as much fun as Tucker appeared to be.   The singer's strongest material has always been her earliest, so it's no surprise the high point of the evening was a folksy run-through of hits from the mid-1970s. Joining her band on a set of high stools (but not before cheekily asking "Can I sit in these pants?"), Tucker ripped through four Gothic-tinged favorites -- The Jamestown Ferry; What's Your Mamma's Name, Child?; Blood Red and Goin' Down; and Would You Lay With Me (In a Field of Stone). She turned the show into a true family affair somewhere past the midway point, first dedicating the ballad Ridin' Rainbows to her three children, then hauling them onstage to meet old friend Peter Nygard, who was sitting in the front row. Tucker even handed the microphone over to eldest daughter Presley for one number but proved a true stage mom by hovering about three feet away from the teen as she belted out Whenever You Come Around. And the kids had been put to bed by the time Tanya brought the crowd to its feet with her closing number (and biggest hit), the 1972 gem Delta Dawn, which after all these years fits her as snugly as a pair of those spandex pants.