Tanya Tucker: 16 Biggest Hits

Album Review

This umpteenth greatest-hits collection by Tanya Tucker is different in three respects from all the others. The first is that it contains 16 tracks instead of ten or 13. Secondly, it really is a hits collection, arranged chronologically but also by actual chart position. Finally, it contains three Arista singles from 1982 in addition to the 13 Columbia string of hits that ended in 1975. No one can argue with the music here. It's all top-notch Nashville class, from "Delta Dawn" through to her version of Van McCoy's "Baby I'm Yours." In between are stops at David Allan Coe's "Would You Lay with Me (In a Field of Stone)" and "Greener Than the Grass (We Laid On)," Bobby Braddock's "I Believe the South Is Gonna Rise Again," and Curly Putman's "Old Dan Tucker's Daughter" and "Blood Red and Goin' Down." This is as good as it gets for Tucker, and a solid introduction to one of the hottest chart-makers country music had to offer in the 1970s and early '80s.