Darius Rucker Says Late Mom Was A “Better Singer” Than Him, Could Have Been “The Fourth Supreme”

“Anytime I get a little big-headed, I remind myself, ‘You don't sound like your mama, though.’”

Darius Rucker gets it from his mama.

In the newest episode of Southern Living’s Biscuits & Jam podcast, Rucker candidly discusses everything from the meteoric rise of Hootie & The Blowfish to writing his new memoir, and even growing up believing that his mom was “the fourth Supreme.”

In his book, Life’s Too Short, out now, Rucker recalls being raised by a single mom in Charleston, South Carolina, with his six brothers and sisters. Though his mother Carolyn worked as a nurse, Rucker admitted to growing up thinking she was a member of The Supremes because she was always singing along to their music. And according to the Grammy winner, she had the pipes to do it.

“My mom was special. One of the things that always kept me so humble about my voice was my mom and my dad were both better singers than [me],” he told editor-in-chief Sid Evans. “They were both just stupidly great singers. And so, anytime I get a little big-headed, I remind myself, ‘You don't sound like your mama, though.’”

Rucker’s mom Carolyn died of a heart attack in 1992. Hootie & The Blowfish wouldn’t make it big until two years later.

The crooner recalled how she came to visit him in Columbia just a few days before she died. Rucker called the spur-of-the-moment trip “one of the greatest days of his life.”

“She had never once said, ‘I'm gonna come see you.’ And just out of the blue, she said, ‘I'm gonna come see you.’ And it's like fate. It's like God saying, ‘Look, you need to go handle what you need to handle,’” Rucker said. “And she came, she saw me, and it was one of the greatest days of my life. And I got to say everything to her I ever wanted to say. And that was special to me.”

A photo of his mom, who never got to witness his success, dons the cover of his latest album, Carolyn’s Boy.

“I love that picture so much,” Rucker said. “It's my family's favorite picture of her. Everybody's got it. That was her at 25 graduating nursing school. I wanted that to be the cover.”

“I’m sure she would have loved that,” Evans noted.

“Oh, she would have,” Rucker agreed.

Download and listen to this episode of Biscuits & Jam with Darius Rucker on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or everywhere podcasts are available.

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Read the original article on Southern Living.