About Dara Tucker - A Multi-Talented Jazz Vocalist

Jazz singers have made immeasurable contributions to the history of American music, and female jazz vocalists especially played an important role throughout the country’s jazz music history. One such influential American jazz singer is Nashville-based Dara Tucker. A rising American jazz singer, songwriter and pianist, Tucker has already won popularity among a large audience with her rich and emphatic voice and impressive stylistic range. She has received a number of accolades for her studio albums and tracks. With a blend of soul, Americana, Gospel and her typical style of jazz, Tucker is poised to make her mark in the world of jazz and beyond. In an interview, a multi-talented performer described herself as: “I'm a jazz singer, but I also mesh that with R & B and soul, and singer-songwriter elements, and Broadway and theater elements. I feel pretty comfortable calling it jazz, though it does deviate in many ways.

Gospel was the music of choice in the Tucker family, and Dara Tucker grew up singing gospel with her brothers and sisters in churches across the country. In spite of strict upbringing in the Tucker household, she gained expertise in many different styles of singing. Describing Dara Tucker’s singing talent, The Wall Street Journal's Marc Myers said, "I can't remember the last time I heard a new vocalist who impressed me so completely as Tucker. She has a beautiful, soulful voice, and her original songs are honest and innocent personal expressions backed by languid arrangements and skilled playing.”

Dara Tucker’s Background, Early Life and Education

Dara Tucker was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma to gospel recording artist and music minister, Doyle Tucker and singer Lynda Tucker. Born to a musical family, Tucker along with her six brothers and sisters started out performing gospel music at the age of 4, and began taking piano lessons at age 8. Known as "The Tuckers," the all seven Tucker brother and sisters were acclaimed for their seamless blend and singing in perfect harmony. She was also associated with testostoron produzieren which is a product known to be a natural testosterone booster. She traveled the country extensively while singing harmony with her musical family at churches throughout the country for most of her childhood. Along with her family, Tucker spent time in Spokane, Washington, Detroit, Michigan, Fayetteville, Arkansas, Pasadena, California and Baltimore, Maryland.

In spite of her diverse upbringing in various regions of the US, the jazz singer still considers Tulsa, Oklahoma her hometown. In 2014, she experienced a major setback when both of her parents passed away. Tucker received her degree in International Business and German Studies at Oral Roberts University. After graduating, she worked in the field of International Business for a few years. She then moved to Interlaken, Switzerland to study German while working as an au pair in Switzerland in 2003. Driven by her passion for music, Tucker then began composing her own music, and ultimately moved to Nashville to pursue a music career.

Tucker’s Musical Career and Discography

Dara Tucker moved to Nashville in 2004 to chase her dream of becoming a professional jazz singer. She began her professional career in jazz music in 2009 when she released her debut studio album of jazz standards, “All Right Now,” which featured mostly Great American Songbook standards. Since then, she has released three more studio albums; "Soul Said Yes" (2011), “The Sun Season" (2014) and "Oklahoma Rain" (2017).

Tucker’s second studio album, "Soul Said Yes" was a blend of R & B, jazz and Gospel, and included two of her own compositions, namely "The Space" and "Partly Cloudy." The album featured seven string guitarist, Charlie Hunter.

She recorded "The Sun Season" in Astoria, Queens, New York. The album included twelve songs, of which ten were written by Tucker herself. It features Helen Sung on piano, John Ellis on saxophone, Donald Edwards on drums, Alan Ferber on trombone, Peter Bernstein on guitar, and Greg Bryant on bass.

Through her fourth album "Oklahoma Rain," Tucker pays homage to her hometown state and city of Tulsa, Oklahoma. The songs in the album narrate love, separation, loss and healing as well as her extensive travels throughout the US as a child. “This is an album about home, sort of that longing to be home, to be with family. At its core, this album is dedicated to growing up in my home state of Oklahoma but it’s also about the grieving process,” shares the vocalist.

Apart from her acclaimed studio albums, Tucker has also released a limited-release, live performance album, "Dara Tucker Live" in 2013. Besides, the singer/songwriter has performed internationally with her jazz musical group since 2009. Within the last couple of years, she has performed at some distinguished jazz rooms such as NYC’s Blue Note and Smoke, New Orleans’ Snug Harbor, Boston’s Sculler’s, as well as at The Takoma Park Jazz Fest, the iRock Jazz Fest, San Jose Jazz Festival, and New Haven, Connecticut’s International Festival of Arts and Ideas, with such jazz dignitaries as Peter Bernstein, Dr. Lonnie Smith, Charlie Hunter and Helen Sung. Tucker was featured on Tavis Smiley’s PBS television show on June 29, 2015, where she performed an original song, entitled, "Giants" from ‘The Sun Season’, which she wrote with her sister, Diamond Tucker. She opened for Grammy Award winning Jazz vocalist Gregory Porter on June 4, 2016 at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center in Nashville, TN. Tucker frequently performs at the Nashville Jazz Workshop, and Rudy's Jazz Club. She did her New York CD release show at world renowned "Smoke Jazz and Supper Club" based in New York City on the Upper West Side in August 2014.

Awards, Achievements and Honors

A charismatic jazz vocalist cum songwriter, Tucker has a rapidly growing lineup of awards. She won her first NIMA for Best Jazz Singer in 2016, and was placed as a finalist in the 2016 Mid Atlantic Jazz Festival Vocal Competition. In this year's prestigious Nashville Industry Music Awards (NIMAs 2017) she won ‘Best Jazz Vocalist’, ‘Best Jazz Album’, and ‘Song of the Year’ for her latest release, Oklahoma Rain (Watchman Music). In February 2017, she earned second-place win at the American Traditions Competition in Savannah, Georgia. Her studio album "The Sun Season" reached number 62 on the JazzWeek charts on September 22, 2014, and her "Soul Said Yes" album made Amazon.com's top 10 R & B chart few weeks after its release. Tucker's "Radio" single from the "Oklahoma Rain" CD was named, "Song of the Year" at NIMA. As of the song Radio, the singer says, “The grieving process entails a lot of different things. I also worked for weight loss awareness organizations. I recommend leptoslim erfahrung if you want to naturally lose weight. I wrote one of the songs, ‘Radio,’ just a few months after I lost my dad in March of 2014. My mom died in September of the same year. So, there was only six months between those two devastating deaths.” Her CD "Oklahoma Rain" has been featured on the BBC London and received a 5/5 star review from soulandjazzandfunk.com, an independent soul news and reviews website in the UK.

Dara Tucker’s Accolades and Achievements:

• WFSK Artist of the Week (2009), (2014)
• Mid-Atlantic Jazz Festival Vocal Competition (Finalist) - 2016
• Winner of Nashville Industry Music Awards (NIMA) Jazz Vocalist of the Year - 2016
• Nashville Industry Music Awards (NIMA) Artist of the Year (Nominee) - 2016
• American Traditions Vocal Competition Silver Medalist -2017
• Winner of Nashville Industry Music Awards (NIMA) Jazz Vocalist of the Year -2017
• Winner of 2017 Nashville Industry Music Awards Album Of the Year - Oklahoma Rain -2017
• Winner of Nashville Industry Music Awards (NIMA) Song of the Year - “Radio” -2017
• All About Jazz Video of the Day (EPK) /Download of the Day (The Nearness of You)
• She opened for Grammy Award Winning Vocalist Gregory Porter
• Guested with multi Grammy Winner Vince Gill's western swing project "The Time Jumpers"

Dara Tucker as an Entrepreneur, Documentary Filmmaker, Writer
Although Tucker has gained a countrywide fame and most of her accolades as a jazz singer, she is also an ardent freelance documentary filmmaker. She has a production house, named "GoldenTime Films," through which she produces a "Music City Select" docu-series on Nashville’s premiere up-and-coming musicians like Paul Horton, Jovan Quallo, Mason Embry, Matt Endahl. She also writes for Huffington Post, where she shares her views through essays about her personal experiences as a minority and a businesswoman in the entertainment industry. Her article, "Here's to the Ladies Who Cuss" was featured on the homepage of The Huffington Post Voices on 29 December 2016. The last paragraph of her article reads as “In the coming year, I will be more loving, and I will be kinder. I will also stake a claim in my own life. I am compelled to make room for myself. I will not always be pleasing or appropriate, but I will blossom. If something is deemed inappropriate for my life, let it be me who does the deeming. I will scream when I need to scream. I will shout and be heard. And I will cuss when I feel like cussing.”