Texas Monthly Talks
Tanya Tucker
Tanya Tucker on life on the road and her new album.
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Hell, no! If you put all those managers in a big, big pile, I would take him over them any day. What was hard was being a kid trying to tell my house band how to play, then going down the road in a Chrysler station wagon, and later on a bus, with the whole family aboard and my brother driving. It wasn’t like Gretchen Wilson, who had one record, Redneck Woman, and she’s got four semis and a hair and makeup person and she’s making a hundred grand a night. I still don’t have a hair and makeup person. So it was very difficult. We played a lot of bars. I would play the Flamingo hotel three shows a night, come back home at three in the morning, and go to school the next morning at eight.
How hard that must have been.
It was horrible. And we had no money. At that point, when things first start happening, you don’t get money right away. Money doesn’t come until much later. So you start building your reputation and looking for pennies to keep things together. One guy offered my dad $50,000 [to quit as my manager] when my dad didn’t have $20 in his pocket, but he looked at the guy, tore the check up right in front of him, and said, “No, thank you.”
Did you feel treated unfairly or cheated in some way when “Delta Dawn” became such a hit for Helen Reddy? Your version came out in the spring of 1972 and went to only number six on the country charts, but then a year later her recording went to number one on the pop charts. It’s her version that people remember.
At that time I wasn’t upset, but [venerated producer] Billy Sherrill was really angry. He had told those guys at Columbia Records that he had a girl who was a big killer and cut this great song. Basically he made the record on his own, because they didn’t have much faith in me. And they didn’t listen. They didn’t come through with their end of the deal, which was to promote it. There was no promotion, no nothing. When Helen Reddy came out with her version, which was a carbon copy, Billy just went ballistic.
At least you didn’t go away. You went on to have your first number one hit, “What’s Your Mama’s Name,” in the spring of 1973, and two other number ones quickly followed. As the seventies went on, you became a big star.
We kept going by the seat of our pants. We were hoofing it. My dad didn’t know anything about managing, you know? He did a great job, but we had no outside support.
And here I thought that as soon as you have a number one hit, there are angels and cherubs hovering around you.
That’s how it is now, but it wasn’t like that then. Then it was just another day at the office. We were still playing small clubs and two or three shows a night, and we were still traveling in a bus with the band and my family. We were selling albums off the bandstand.
Was it possible to have a normal life?
It wouldn’t have been normal for anyone else, but it was normal for me. We’d go through Lake Tahoe and I’d learn how to ski real quick. If I wanted to have fun, I’d have fun and then we went on. But I had my family there, and that was the best support I could have had. Throughout my whole career, it’s been the best. I was taught from an early age that nobody cares for you like your family does.
Tell me about your decision to leave Columbia Records for MCA.
When my dad went to New York to renegotiate my contract with Columbia, he had a lot of number one records under his belt. They told him that the amount he was asking for was way out in left field, that they weren’t going to give me that kind of money to re-sign.
How much was he asking for?
A million and a half.
Seemed like a lot of money back then.
It was. But then when they turned him down, he just went up a million and he crossed the street. He said he was gonna go talk to those people with the little dog; he was talking about RCA, but he meant MCA. And MCA immediately said, “Yes, we’ll take it.”
Do you remember what you eventually got in that deal?
I think it was $2.6 million, but I left all that up to my dad. They handed me a check for $400,000 that day, October 10, 1975, which was the day I turned seventeen.
Not long after that, people perceived you as moving away from country and into rock. What happened?
In 1978 we got with some people in California—this is probably my biggest regret. They were rock and roll. I told them, “Listen, I’m eighteen. I feel like country music needs to go to another level. We’re in the dark ages here. The performances could be better, and the production could be better. I think there are kids out there who would love country music, but no one’s really given them a shot at it. I’d really like to put a little more pizzazz in my music.” These guys acted like they knew what I was talking about, but in reality, they didn’t. They were just in it for the money and the hype. We started working on the album, and it cost me about $500,000 to make. That was ridiculous at the time—even at this time it’s ridiculous. They got me a big airplane, and they put a lot of effort into promotion. Unfortunately the promotion was better than the record, and it all backfired on me.
How did you make it all right?
We had a contract that said if the record didn’t go gold by January 1, 1979, I had the option of leaving them. The last show of my tour was in Dallas, and after I got done with my last song, they called me back onstage and said, “We have a big surprise for you.” And they presented me with a gold record. My dad got to looking at it after the show, and it was an Elton John album spray-painted gold. They tried to trick me into staying another four years with them.
What a bunch of creeps.
Oh, you can’t even imagine. They sued me, of course. I won the lawsuit, but I lost because I had to fight them. But I went back to Nashville and started my run with [producer] Jerry Crutchfield, and we did thirteen albums together. And I think my best years were with Jerry. I think we should maybe work together again. He really knows my voice and what I can do and how much he can push it.
Let me ask you, finally, about the way country music has changed. I think about you coming along when you did, and I think about, say, LeAnn Rimes coming along when she did. It’s a very different experience now.
Totally different. It’s a new day. People now are hungry for young acts—they go around looking for them, and they know what to do with them. They didn’t know what the hell to do with me.
Do you like the country you hear today?
Oh, yeah. I think there’s a lot of great stuff out there, a lot of talent. Someone like Carrie Underwood—they have the polisher on, and they have people around her making sure she’s doing the right things and being seen at the right places and meeting with the right people. There’s a lot more grooming of artists than when I was starting out.
You seem to be having a pretty good go of it yourself.
I know more about what I want, and I don’t let people run over me. From the very beginning, I’ve never changed my ideas about what music should be.
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