Aquarium Drunkard

Picked this one up from listening to Aquarium Drunkard‘s playlists on Spotify.

Don’t know anything about Aquarium Drunkard except passed-down oral legend and intend to keep it that way but I’m not the first to discover him — the guy is brightening my life with his (?) music curating.

Sherrill initially planned to have Tucker record “The Happiest Girl In the Whole USA,” but she passed on the tune to Donna Fargo, choosing “Delta Dawn” — a song she heardBette Midler sing on The Tonight Show — instead. Released in the spring of 1972, the song became a hit, peaking at number six on the country charts and scraping the bottom of the pop charts. At first, Columbia Records tried to downplay Tucker’s age, but soon word leaked out and she became a sensation. A year later, Australian singer Helen Reddy would score a No. 1 U.S. pop hit with her version of “Delta Dawn.”

She had begun drinking in her late teens, and she explained how it started: “You send your ass out on the road doing two gigs a night and after all that adoration go back to empty hotel rooms. Loneliness got me into it.” In 1978 Tucker moved to Los Angeles, California, to try, unsuccessfully, to broaden her appeal to pop audiences, and was quickly captivated by the city’s nightlife. She also said that she “was the wildest thing out there. I could stay up longer, drink more and kick the biggest ass in town. I was on the ragged edge.”

Worth having a look at Bette’s version if only for her outfit: