Teeny Tucker may not be a household name yet,
but she's one of the Columbus, Ohio, blues scene's sharpest up-and-comers.
A vocalist who recalls classic soul singers like Etta James and
Mahalia Jackson, Tucker is also the daughter of Tommy Tucker,
who wrote the oft-covered "Hi Heel Sneakers."
She's been singing publicly since 1980, though
her earliest musical stirrings go back much further: "I
can remember when 'Hi Heel Sneakers' came out in 1964, sitting
on the armrest of my dad's brand new black Cadillac and hearing
the song playing and thinking, 'Wow! I want to sing like that!'"
she tells Blues Revue.
Today, she's worked with a host of Columbus'
best players, performed at a number of European festivals, and
released an album of covers that pay tribute to the music of
her father's era. Tommy's Girl, which Tucker produced
and released on her own, includes passionate, supremely nuanced
versions of James' hit "I'd Rather Go Blind," Sam Cooke's
"A Change Is Gonna Come," and a new recording of "Hi
Heel Sneakers" presented as a duet with Chicago bluesman
Willie Pooch.
Tucker also works as a logistics operations
supervisor for the Department of Defense and holds a degree in
psychology. How does she find time for her blues career? "Sure,
I've got a lot going on," she says, "but when music
is something you love, it's not hard to do."
How did you go about choosing
which songs you wanted to record for your album?
I wanted to pay tribute to some of the great
folks that people don't really pay attention to; people my father
really liked, people like LaVern Baker and Helen Humes and all
those old-time greats. I didn't learn about some of these folks
until about 1995, and it was like, "Wow, I really like this
stuff!" I'd been performing several of the songs overseas
as part of my repertoire, too, and wanted to get them on record.
I also write my own songs; I've written all
but about two of the tunes for the next CD I'm doing, which I'm
hoping to have ready by next spring.
When you decided to record
your father's "Hi Heel Sneakers," were there any reservations
about trying to live up to the high standard he set? Was there
a feeling that, of all the songs you were singing, this one was
the most important to get exactly right?
I always knew I wanted to record that song.
I told my dad's sister Donna [Higginbotham] and her twin brother
Donald that if they couldn't play on the song, I didn't want
to do it. The intro to the song is hard for people to get, and
nobody ever gets it quite the way my dad played it. But my uncle
hits it right on the head, so I wanted him to play piano on the
intro. We went in and just did it; we didn't rehearse or anything.
I sang it with Willie Pooch; I'd been singing with Willie off
and on since my guitar player, Sean Carney, introduced us. I
would have loved to do the song as a duet with my dad, like Natalie
Cole did with "Unforgettable," but it would have been
too costly.
(continue
to part 2)
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