The Greatest Oldies Music

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Tanya Tucker’s comeback was already underway when she entered the Betty Ford Center in 1988. Her records were reaching country radio again, but rebuilding her life required more than another hit. Fame had arrived at thirteen with “Delta Dawn.” By her mid-twenties, she had experienced Los Angeles nightlife, a turbulent relationship with Glen Campbell, and a career decline that left her without a record deal at twenty-five. Stories about her private life increasingly competed with the music. Tucker later acknowledged the damage caused by cocaine, drinking and destructive relationships. What had once surrounded the party was beginning to consume the life she had built around singing. Seeking treatment meant confronting those costs. In 1989, she gave birth to her first child, Presley. Motherhood brought another responsibility to recovery: her choices would help shape someone else’s childhood. Meanwhile, Capitol Records had offered her a fresh opportunity. Through the late 1980s and early 1990s, songs including “Just Another Love,” “If It Don’t Come Easy” and “Strong Enough to Bend” returned her to the top of the country charts. The singer who had seemed in danger of becoming better known for her troubles was building a substantial second chapter. Then, in 1991, professional recognition and family life met in an unexpected setting. Tucker learned she had won CMA Female Vocalist of the Year while in a hospital bed, having given birth to her son, Beau, earlier that day. The award recognized the voice and work behind her return. Its timing made the occasion especially personal. Once a teenage star trying to navigate an adult world, Tucker was now an established singer welcoming her second child—with a career restored and new responsibilities waiting beyond the stage.

TANYA TUCKER ENTERED REHAB AFTER FAME NEARLY SWALLOWED HER—THEN MOTHERHOOD CHANGED WHAT RECOVERY MEANT

By twenty-five, Tanya Tucker already knew what it felt like to be famous, fall apart and wonder whether  country music still wanted her back.

She had been a star since thirteen.

“Delta Dawn” had made her a teenage phenomenon, but years of Los Angeles nightlife, cocaine, drinking, tabloid attention and a turbulent relationship with Glen Campbell gradually pushed the music itself into the background.

Eventually, Tanya was living with the humiliation of remembering exactly how successful she had once been.

Fame Had Arrived Before Adulthood

Tucker never had an ordinary transition into adult life.

She entered the  country business while still a child, then spent her teenage years surrounded by people, money and freedoms usually given to adults.

By her twenties, the rebellious image that had once made her exciting was beginning to carry consequences.

Her records lost momentum.

Her personal life increasingly became the story.

And for a period, she found herself without a record deal.

The singer who had once seemed almost impossible to stop suddenly had to convince Nashville she still belonged.

In 1988, She Finally Went for Treatment

Tucker later acknowledged that cocaine, alcohol and destructive relationships had taken a real toll.

In 1988, she entered the Betty Ford Center for substance-abuse treatment.

For the first time, recovery required more than another comeback record or a promise that the next tour would be different.

Then her life changed again.

In 1989, Tanya gave birth to her first child, daughter Presley.

Sobriety was no longer only about saving Tanya Tucker’s career.

It was now tied to the kind of childhood her daughter would have.

Nashville Had Already Given Her Another Chance

Capitol Records had signed Tucker before treatment and helped begin one of country music’s strongest career revivals.

“Just Another Love” reached No. 1.

Then came records such as “Strong Enough to Bend” and “If It Don’t Come Easy.”

The comeback mattered because Tanya was no longer surviving on nostalgia for the girl who had sung “Delta Dawn.”

She was making hits again as an adult.

Then Came One Perfectly Strange Day in 1991

On October 2, 1991, Tucker gave birth to her second child, Beau.

That same day, the Country Music Association named her Female Vocalist of the Year.

She learned about the award from a hospital bed.

Few images could have captured the transformation more clearly.

Years earlier, Tanya Tucker had been famous partly because she seemed capable of surviving almost anything.

Now one of country music’s biggest honors had reached her while she was lying beside a newborn child.

The Second Act Had Different Stakes

Tanya never completely abandoned the tough, rebellious personality that had defined her.

That was part of who she was.

But the meaning of survival had changed.

The young star who once measured life by another night out, another headline or another chance to keep the party moving now had children who would live with whatever happened next.

And on the day country music officially welcomed her back as its Female Vocalist of the Year, Tanya Tucker was not standing beneath stage lights.

She was in a hospital bed with her newborn son beside her.

For perhaps the first time in her career, the most important thing she had to protect was not the career at all.

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There’s a grin behind Toby Keith’s “How Do You Like Me Now?!” that makes its wounded pride even more entertaining. Co-written with Chuck Cannon and released in November 1999, it spent five weeks atop Billboard’s country chart and became the biggest country hit of 2000. I’ve always enjoyed the satisfaction in its story: the small-town boy dismissed in high school finally gets his chance to be heard. Toby gives him plenty of swagger, but you can still hear how much the rejection stung. That lingering hurt makes the boast work. He’s successful now—and he wants someone who doubted him to notice.

Toby Keith had a gift for telling a ridiculous barroom story as though it had happened to someone you knew. In “The Size I Wear,” co-written with Rivers Rutherford for his 2012 album *Hope on the Rocks*, two friends settle in for beers before a group of secretaries gives the evening a new direction. What I enjoy most is the mischief in his delivery. He lets the situation get out of hand without sounding remotely surprised. A few drinks, a little misplaced confidence, and suddenly there’s a story somebody will have to explain the next morning. Toby knew exactly how to land that kind of joke.

Marty Robbins’s tribute to his wife reached record stores on January 23, 1970. Four days later, he underwent triple bypass surgery at Nashville’s St. Thomas Hospital. He had gone in expecting a checkup and permission to race that spring. Although he had suffered a heart attack while touring Ohio the previous August, he told reporters he had felt well since. The tests revealed two blocked arteries and a third that was 75 percent obstructed. “I came and took them and found out nothing was all right,” he said. The January 27 operation was the first triple bypass performed at St. Thomas, at a time when the procedure was still uncommon. One doctor described Marty as having entered surgery hanging by a thread. Meanwhile, listeners were discovering “My Woman, My Woman, My Wife,” written for Marizona. They had met at an ice cream parlor in Glendale, Arizona. She wanted to marry a singing cowboy; he was singing in Phoenix clubs and struggling to make a living. They married on September 27, 1948, the day after his twenty-third birthday. Marizona was eighteen. By the spring of 1970, the song had reached No. 1. “My wife is everything I said in the song,” Marty explained. “It’s a true song.” Recovery brought him back to racing that fall. His appetite for it survived the surgery: at Charlotte in 1974, he drove into a wall at roughly 160 miles an hour to avoid Richard Childress’s stalled car. He needed 37 stitches in his face. On December 8, 1982, another heart attack and emergency surgery ended differently. Marty died at St. Thomas at 57, with Marizona and their children at the hospital. They had been married for 34 years. The young singer she had met in Arizona had become a country star, and among the records he left behind was his own account of what she had meant to him.

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There’s a grin behind Toby Keith’s “How Do You Like Me Now?!” that makes its wounded pride even more entertaining. Co-written with Chuck Cannon and released in November 1999, it spent five weeks atop Billboard’s country chart and became the biggest country hit of 2000. I’ve always enjoyed the satisfaction in its story: the small-town boy dismissed in high school finally gets his chance to be heard. Toby gives him plenty of swagger, but you can still hear how much the rejection stung. That lingering hurt makes the boast work. He’s successful now—and he wants someone who doubted him to notice.

Country

Toby Keith had a gift for telling a ridiculous barroom story as though it had happened to someone you knew. In “The Size I Wear,” co-written with Rivers Rutherford for his 2012 album *Hope on the Rocks*, two friends settle in for beers before a group of secretaries gives the evening a new direction. What I enjoy most is the mischief in his delivery. He lets the situation get out of hand without sounding remotely surprised. A few drinks, a little misplaced confidence, and suddenly there’s a story somebody will have to explain the next morning. Toby knew exactly how to land that kind of joke.

Country

Marty Robbins’s tribute to his wife reached record stores on January 23, 1970. Four days later, he underwent triple bypass surgery at Nashville’s St. Thomas Hospital. He had gone in expecting a checkup and permission to race that spring. Although he had suffered a heart attack while touring Ohio the previous August, he told reporters he had felt well since. The tests revealed two blocked arteries and a third that was 75 percent obstructed. “I came and took them and found out nothing was all right,” he said. The January 27 operation was the first triple bypass performed at St. Thomas, at a time when the procedure was still uncommon. One doctor described Marty as having entered surgery hanging by a thread. Meanwhile, listeners were discovering “My Woman, My Woman, My Wife,” written for Marizona. They had met at an ice cream parlor in Glendale, Arizona. She wanted to marry a singing cowboy; he was singing in Phoenix clubs and struggling to make a living. They married on September 27, 1948, the day after his twenty-third birthday. Marizona was eighteen. By the spring of 1970, the song had reached No. 1. “My wife is everything I said in the song,” Marty explained. “It’s a true song.” Recovery brought him back to racing that fall. His appetite for it survived the surgery: at Charlotte in 1974, he drove into a wall at roughly 160 miles an hour to avoid Richard Childress’s stalled car. He needed 37 stitches in his face. On December 8, 1982, another heart attack and emergency surgery ended differently. Marty died at St. Thomas at 57, with Marizona and their children at the hospital. They had been married for 34 years. The young singer she had met in Arizona had become a country star, and among the records he left behind was his own account of what she had meant to him.

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Waylon Jennings had plenty of songs that could rouse a crowd. When he named his favorite recording on an Austin stage nearly a decade later, he chose the tender “Dreaming My Dreams with You.” He recorded it in 1975, during the years that established his outlaw reputation. Fans knew the black hat, the leather-covered Telecaster, and a voice with enough grit to make defiance sound effortless. Here, that voice carried resignation. Waylon sang slowly, letting the hurt emerge without pushing it. The man in the song understood that love might end while the longing remained. There was little anger in his delivery. He left room for affection, regret, and the possibility that someone could leave his life without ever leaving his dreams. The single reached No. 10 on the country chart. Its place in Waylon’s own affections was clearer when he introduced it years later: “I guess this is my favorite song I ever recorded.” For a singer so closely associated with independence, it was a revealing choice—a performance in which he allowed himself to sound completely unable to let go.