Tucker's Daughter
"Tucker's Daughter" is a song by Australian rock singer and guitarist Ian Moss. It was released as his debut solo single in November 1988, almost five years after his group, Cold Chisel, had disbanded for the first time. It was co-written by Moss and Don Walker. The song was the lead single from Moss' debut studio album, Matchbook.
Background and lyrics
The lyrics of "Tucker's Daughter" tell the story of a farm labourer who finds himself the attention of his employer's daughter, but he does not return her affections. Moss had initially written the music to the song less than a fortnight before recording on his debut album was about to commence. He said, "I was pretty confident I had a good hit here. I was literally running around the house going 'yahoo!', jumping up and clicking my heels."Walker described in 2005 how Moss had sent him pieces of music including certain phrases that he wanted included in places within the song, "Ian sent "Tucker's Daughter" on a cassette express airmail from Los Angeles where he was, and he had the melody but the only lyric he had was, 'Hey there, motherfucker.' Right through the rest of the song. I couldn't use that, but I recognized that it had a certain percussive force".
In September 2007, Moss told a reporter at The Herald Sun newspaper that he was dissatisfied with his entry at Wikipedia: "About 95 per cent of the stories I read say Don Walker wrote it, but I wrote it too. I wrote the music and the punch line. 'Build me up, tear me down'. I'm not sure how to edit Wikipedia, but I will get on to that and change it."