Consumer Guide Album

Tanya Tucker: Tanya Tucker's Greatest Hits [Columbia, 1975]
As if recalling Appalachian roots, the youngest superstar and sex symbol in country music history adds rape, murder, and bastardy to familiar themes like drunkeness, poverty, abandonment, and love-is-the-answer. Kid stuff it ain't. Her burred contralto is an American dream, some weird hybrid of Buffy Sainte-Marie, Marilyn Monroe, and Will Rogers--dirty plainsong. But though I enjoy almost everything she does as soap opera--the bloodier the better--I don't believe a word. B+