He brought the song to Helen Reddy, the Australian newcomer who’d hit #1 with “ I Am Woman” less than a year earlier. So Catalano had this expensive instrumental version of “Delta Dawn” and nobody to sing on it. But Streisand didn’t like the song, so she shot it down. Catalano was working with Barbra Streisand, and he wanted her to record it. Catalano recorded an instrumental track of “Delta Dawn” replicating Sherrill’s arrangement as closely as he could. The pop producer Tom Catalano saw how “Delta Dawn” did as a country song, and he figured it could work as a pop song, too. Tucker absolutely sinks her teeth into that chorus, and the song becomes a big, operatic blues-weeper in her hands. (Tanya Tucker has had a legendary decades-long country career, but she’s never crossed over her highest-charting single on the Hot 100, 1973’s “Would You Lay With Me (In A Field Of Stone),” only made it up to #46.) Tucker’s 1972 version of “Delta Dawn,” her debut single, was a country hit. Sherrill had just started working with the singer Tanya Tucker, a 13-year-old country prodigy, and he and Tucker recorded a version of it. The veteran country producer Billy Sherrill saw Midler sing the song on The Tonight Show, and he loved it, too. (Barry Manilow, who will also show up in this column, would accompany her on piano.) Midler worked “Delta Dawn” into her set, and when she first appeared on The Tonight Show in 1972, she sang the song. Midler held down a residency at the Continental Baths, a New York gay club. ![]() At the time, Midler, who will eventually show up in this column, hadn’t yet started her recording career she was a Broadway actress and a nightclub performer. Bette Midler was in the audience that night, and she loved the song. Not long after that, Mother Earth covered “Delta Dawn” when they were playing a show at the Bottom Line in New York. One of the backup singers on Harvey’s version of the song was Tracy Nelson, the singer for the blues-rock band Mother Earth.
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