Singer Patty Loveless and songwriter Bob McDill also are 2023 inductees.
We’re offering congratulations to C&I reader favorite Tanya Tucker on the occasion of her induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame.
Her selection was announced by Vince Gill on Monday morning during a live-streamed event at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville. Tucker will be inducted into the hall’s “Veterans Era Artist” category, joining Patty Loveless (“Modern Era Artist”) and Bob McDill (“Songwriter”) in this year’s crop of honorees. The three will be formally inducted during a ceremony in the fall.
“Each of our three new inductees has left a deep and distinctive stamp on our genre,” said Kyle Young, CEO of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, while announcing the honors. “Tanya Tucker, originally from Texas, is a force of nature who has been blazing her way into our hearts since she was a teenager. Patty Loveless, who hails from the coal-mining hills of Kentucky, sings with mountain soul and makes music that blends tradition with invention. And Bob McDill from East Texas has written some of the most enduring and artful songs in our genre. They have all profoundly shaped our music, and we are honored and delighted that their achievements will now forever be enshrined in the Country Music Hall of Fame.”
Tucker said in a prepared statement: “I’m more than proud to be inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. It was wonderful to have all three of my kids beside me when I got the news. The only way it could’ve been any better is if my parents Beau and Juanita Tucker could have been there too. They are the reason and the root of all my success in music. And the fans – they are everything. When I walk in that Hall they will all be with me.”
The Hall of Fame induction is only the most recent career highlight for Tucker, who recently has been enjoying… well, she prefers not to use the term “comeback.” Instead, as she told us during an interview in 2019, “I think of this as a relaunch of my career.”
That was the year Tucker teamed with Brandi Carlile and Shooter Jennings to release her first album of original material in 17 years, While I’m Livin’. The album returned the Platinum-selling country star to the spotlight, earning her the first Grammy awards of her career, for Best Country Album and Best Country Song (“Bring My Flowers Now,” which she wrote with Carlile, Tim Hanseroth, and Phil Hanseroth). Director Kathlyn Horan documented the comeback — whoops, we mean relaunch — in her exceptional and stirring 2022 movie The Return of Tanya Tucker — Featuring Brandi Carlile, which is now available on streaming platforms.
More recently, Tucker added “Movie Star” to her lengthy resume as the lead player in A Nashville Country Christmas, a holiday-themed dramedy that premiered last December on Paramount Network. “It’s amazing that after 50 years in this business, I get to see my dreams become reality,” Tucker said shortly before the film aired. “And being part of A Nashville Country Christmas is definitely one of them. I’ve always wanted to do more acting, and it was a gift from the good Lord when this role came along.”
But don’t worry: Tucker is not ready to leave her music behind. Indeed, according to the showbiz trade paper Variety, Tucker has a second album with Carlile and Shooter Jennings due for release on the Fantasy label next summer, with the title Sweet Western Sounds. “People ask me, ‘How do you think you lasted so long?’” she told Billboard in 2022. “I won’t go away, so you’ll just have to put up with me.”
Photography: Derrek Kupish