Title: Nickel dreams
First published: 1997
Description: Born into poverty, the grandchild of sharecroppers, Tanya grew up poor in a family that had come out of the Oklahoma hills in the Great Depression. Her family imbued her early on with a love of country music - and of being "Tucker tough." Also early on, Tanya decided she wanted to become a country music singer.

Her father, Beau, was determined that she and her sister La Costa, also a budding singer, would succeed. On an impulsive trip to Nashville, he buttonholed anyone who would listen, often brushing past secretaries and into executive offices brandishing a demo tape. When this expedition came to nothing he moved the family to Las Vegas, where, he figured, someone had to listen to his girls.

After singing in every honky-tonk and piano bar she could find, Tanya's first big break came when Billy Sherill signed her up at age 13 and gave her the song "Delta Dawn," which became her anthem and a huge runaway hit, topping the country charts.

Tanya talks candidly about the whirlwind of sudden celebrity, the Rolling Stone article that catapulted her to even higher fame, and having to quit school in ninth grade because the tough girls made her stand on a toilet in the bathroom and sing to them as a punishment for success. She talks about meeting The King, who once called her a "female Elvis," as well as losing her virginity on her nineteenth birthday.

When Tanya moved to L.A., where the partying and nightlife took over, she began hanging out with Don Johnson, Cher, Jan Michael Vincent, and many others. "There was a party every night, and I figured I ought to hit every one of them. Those I wasn't invited to, I'd crash," Tanya says. Eventually the life in the fast lane became too much for her, and she moved back to Nashville.

Then came the most disastrous relationship of her life. Tanya met Glen Campbell after one of his shows in Vegas, and began a horrendous spiral down into drug use and violence. There were also the wild parties, flying around on his private jet, going on shopping sprees - and cocaine binges. And there were the epic quarrels over such things as whether she was "ladylike" enough for his Hollywood chums. Tanya took a break from all this craziness to run off with Merle Haggard for a whirlwind road trip.

The final showdown then happened with Glen - a huge fight in a hotel with both the singers' families looking on. The book also details Tanya's many other relationships, with the star's "take" on Andy Gibb, Clint Eastwood, Tammy Wynette, James Garner, Travis Tritt, Clint Black, Oprah Winfrey, George Jones, Robert Duvall, Minnie Pearl, and Tom T. Hall, to name a few.

She takes us from the low point of being checked into the Betty Ford Clinic after her family held an intervention (and where, in Tanya's true style, she managed to have a romance that was strictly against the rules), to the high of being voted the Country Music Association's Female Vocalist of the Year in 1991.

Tanya tells us how she met the man, an actor, who would father her two children. Speculation ran wild when her daughter, Presley, was born, one radio host telling people to "Honk if you're the father of Tanya Tucker's baby." She describes finally telling this man that he was the father of her child, and later having a second baby with him.

From telling off the Grammy Awards people, and Dan Quayle, to the horrifying experience of being attacked by a stalker, to her torrid affair with a band member - it's all here, in Tanya's inimitable voice. Nickel Dreams is a moving, exciting book, one that fans of Tanya Tucker have waited years for.
Subjects: Country musicians, Biography, Singers, united states, Large type books, Women musicians
Places: United States
People: Tanya Tucker