The Flowers Came Late But For Once They Came While She Was Still There To Hold Them
Tanya Tucker became a country star at 13 and she had to wait until 61 to hear her name called for a Grammy
Bring the flowers now not after the funeral
By the time Brandi Carlile approached Tanya Tucker about making another record Tanya had already lived several versions of a country career and Delta Dawn had made her famous at thirteen and before adulthood she was already collecting No. 1 records
Then came decades of touring and tabloid stories and relationships and career dips and comebacks and Tanya kept singing but by the 2010s she had gone nearly twenty years without releasing an album of original material
Carlile did not hear a finished career and she heard a voice that had finally lived long enough to sing certain songs differently and with Shooter Jennings she persuaded Tanya back into the studio for While Iβm Livinβ
They did not try to recreate the teenager from Delta Dawn and the songs dealt with age and family and regret and the uncomfortable fact that there are things people often wait too long to say
Brandi Carlile Heard The Woman Not The Old Image
One afternoon Tanya sat at a piano with Carlile and twins Phil and Tim Hanseroth and worked on Bring My Flowers Now and the idea had been with her for years that if you love someone tell them while they are still here
They finished the song and recorded the vocal of Tanya almost immediately and later Tanya wanted another pass and Carlile said no and she wanted the first one with the cracks and the age and the places where the voice of Tanya sounded like it had actually lived the words
The Grammy Came After Nearly Half A Century
While Iβm Livinβ was released in 2019 and then on January 26 2020 Tanya Tucker walked into the Grammy Awards with a career that stretched back nearly half a century and a long history of nominations without a win
Bring My Flowers Now won Best Country Song and Tanya had her first Grammy and then While Iβm Livinβ won Best Country Album and she had two
Three years later Tanya was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame and by then Brandi Carlile was no longer simply the younger singer who had talked one of her heroes back into a studio and she was standing onstage helping country music honor her
That girl had the voice and the woman had the life
Tanya had spent decades trying to survive every version of the music business and the record that finally brought her a Grammy did not ask her to sound like the girl who sang Delta Dawn and it needed the woman who had survived long enough to sing Bring My Flowers Now