Tucker, Anita
True And Real
Somewhere along that well travelled road, she crossed paths with Gerard Akueson, a Togolese musician and record producer and founder of the first African music label, in Paris in 1962, Akue. Tucker released a couple of singles with Akue in 1966; she performed often in Paris in clubs like the Cabana Rhythm and the Parisienne and also appeared on French TV. It appears that she used Paris as a base for her work throughout parts of Europe and the world. These singles seem to be her last two recordings, firstly Lonesome Road b/w try a Little Tenderness, followed by I Cried For You b/w Youre Nobody Till Somebody Loves You. The tracks were big band Jazzy, Rhythm & Blues and Blues. Anita displays confident control of the material and there are shades of Dinah Washington in the tone and phrasing. Listening to this body of work from Anita Tucker, one word springs to mind: "underrated". She was a singer with power, a range of colour to her voice and the ability to convey Soul, Blues and passion. Though she enjoyed a long and varied career as a singer, actress, and model, she never achieved the success of some of the other female R&B singers of the 1950s, which was maybe the material, possibly support or just plain old luck. She stayed true to the music she loved, to her the songs were: ".real blues -earthy, sometimes dirty. But even when they were dirty, they were real.Everything about them was true and real".