Arts & Entertainment

Worcester County's Ricky Duran Falls Short In "The Voice" Finale

The Grafton native almost nabbed the top spot, but was beat by Jake Hoot.

(Tina Thorpe/NBC)

GRAFTON, MA — Ricky Duran made Worcester County proud with his strong presence on this season of NBC's "The Voice" singing competition, but he just missed the top spot on Tuesday night's finale.

Duran, a Grafton native, was part of celebrity coach Blake Shelton's team and sang his way into the show's Top Four. In his final performance, he wowed the audience singing "Pearl Cadillac” alongside Gary Clark Jr. The performance got a standing ovation from the panel of coaches.

The season finale was broken into two nights — Duran performed three other songs on Monday night including an original song titled "A Woman Like Her."

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He was beaten for the winning spot by Jake Hoot, a contestant on Kelly Clarkson's team.

Duran is always keen on adding a nod to Worcester into his segments of the show. During the finale a clip played showing Duran teach Shelton how to properly pronounce Worcester (not Worcestershire).

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Duran is a Berklee College of Music graduate and has several songs on Spotify and iTunes. The singer-songwriter and guitarist is well known in Worcester as a performer. Although he moved from Worcester to Austin, Texas, he performed in the city for years at venues like Atlantic Poke, Michael's Cigar Bar and Ralph's Diner.

This certainly isn't the end of Duran's music career, if anything it may just be the beginning. In an episode last month of the show, Shelton hinted that he'd received inquiries about Duran from people in the music industry. Worcester and the rest of the country will have to wait to see what comes next for Duran.

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