By Theresa Timmons

For The Herald Bulletin

ANDERSON — In the 1960s, Gary Puckett’s baritone begged, “Woman, woman, have you got cheating on your mind?”

Then, he made an anguished appeal to a girl who was clearly off limits, “Young girl, get out of my mind. My love for you is way out of line. Better run girl, you’re much too young girl.”

Puckett, a native of Hibbing, Minn., sold more than 4 million records back then with the Union Gap — the backing band that dressed on an album cover in Civil War outfits. He disbanded the group in 1971 and performs solo, as he will today at Hoosier Park Racing & Casino in Anderson.

Puckett, 67, lives in Clearwater, Fla., with his wife/manager, Lorrie. He talked with The Herald Bulletin recently in a phone interview.

Q: Was it always your goal to be a musician. Did you come from a musical family?

Puckett: It was not really my goal to become a musician, it was my family’s. I’m very fortunate because my parents were musical, my dad was a sax player and he had a very beautiful singing voice. My mother was a piano player. She had a very beautiful voice.

I have a big family, I have two brothers and two sisters, and everybody was required to take a lesson. They sat me in front of the piano and said, “You will play the piano.” Me, being a typical 6-year-old, I wanted to be out chasing garter snakes. But I studied piano about four years.

The guitar was always my favorite, because I found one of those in my grandmother’s attic when I was about 15. By that time, rock ‘n’ roll had come along. Bill Haley and the Comets, the Everly Brothers, Elvis Presley.

Q: Those names, did they influence you in the music you made later?

Puckett: I’m sure that they did, in structure, in form, simplicities, melodic values. Yet I never wanted to be “like” anybody.

Now, lately I do find that I study people, like certain guitar players I would like to be like because they have the tone, talent, and depth that I admire. Robben Ford, Larry Carlton, Joe Bonamassa.