One of Dolly Parton’s first country hits was 1967’s Dumb Blonde. It was hardly apt. Few performers have been so endowed with smarts than the former resident of Locust Ridge in Tennessee’s Sevier County. One of a dozen children raised by poor farmers Lee and Avie Parton, she headed for Nashville in 1964, her big break occurring three years later when she linked with country star Porter Wagoner, eventually becoming the focus of the act. When Dolly headed solo it came as no surprise. She was always a star, one not to be inhibited by accepted country music boundaries. “I don’t want to leave the country, “ she announced, “I want to take the country with me wherever I go.” She took it, shook it and then paraded it in front of an audience that continued to grow from that moment on.
Never was this writer more aware of Dolly’s total engagement with an audience than when I saw her onstage at Nashville’s Country Music Awards ceremony at the Opry in 1983. Most of Music City’s leading performers were onstage that evening, but it was Dolly’s duet with Kenny Rogers that filled the hall with something incandescent, the audience immediately rising to its feet in appreciation. Little wonder then that she’s arguably become the most successful artist to ever emerge from the country music scene. Her song output runs to over three thousand compositions, many of her creations providing glimpses of southern rural life or rooting for causes and beliefs once frowned upon in Country circles. An accomplished instrumentalist, a film actress with a penchant for scene stealing and a businesswoman who has moulded her Dollywood theme Park into the biggest ticketed tourist attraction in Tennessee, Dolly Parton has everything. Something confirmed in 2014 at Glastonbury when 200,000 attendees flocked to see her now iconic Sunday afternoon performance at the Pyramid Stage/ To mark Parton’s 78th birthday, MOJO has a assembled a list of what we feel are her essential records…
10.
The Essential Porter Wagoner & Dolly Parton
RCA/BMG, 1999
Maybe this doesn’t contain all the essential Porter and Dolly offerings - fans will be quick to point out the omission of the much-requested Jeannie’s Afraid Of The Dark - but it remains the most rewarding compilation of Parton’s era with Porter’s TV and Road Show. Arguably the premier duo in an era strewn with potent rivals – think George Jones and Tammy Wynette, Conway Twitty and Loretta Lynn, etc. – Porter and Dolly hit the Top 10 country chart with Last Thing On My Mind in 1967 and then just kept on going, notching 16 major successes, all of which are included here.
You say: “Great way to access a very important part of her career.” Steve Bernard, via e-mail
9.
Jolene
RCA, 1974
Dolly was trying to get her solo career off the ground in the wake of seven-year stint with Porter Wagoner’s show and this album, recorded in mid-1973, delivered in every detail. The title song, oddly inspired by a meeting with a red-headed 10 year-old fan, alone remains a standard, covered by The White Stripes, 10,000 Maniacs and a queue a mile long. But also aboard was I Will Always Love You, penned as an appreciation of Wagoner’s influence and aid in forwarding her career. Dolly’s original version stepped up for revaluation after Whitney Houston blasted it into space and a 14 week stay at No.1 in the US charts in 1992.
You say: “When I heard that title song, I was hooked.” Gary Riddick, via e-mail
8.
Blue Smoke
SONY, 2014
For her 42nd studio album, Dolly served a mix guaranteed to appeal to the widest audience. Wise, considering she was to embark on a World Tour and face contrasting audiences (the European leg including a headline spot at Glastonbury). So there’s something for everyone - duets with Willie Nelson and Kenny Rogers, covers of material by Dylan and Bon Jovi, the traditional Down By The Ohio, along with a array of originals offering solid proof that, at the age of 68, her talent shows no sign of diminishing. First released in Australia as a single album, Blue Smoke’s arrival in the UK found it packaged with a Greatest Hits compilation.
You say: “Proof of her continuing artistic vitality.” Wayne Schultz, via e-mail
7.
Just Because I’m A Woman
RCA, 1968
This was Dolly’s first solo album for RCA - she’d recorded an earlier offering for Monument - and it was the release that confirmed that the singer really was a performer ready to make meaningful statements. Of the twelve songs present, Dolly wrote seven, including the title track, in which she protested that a woman with a past should not be adjudged worse than a man with a similar sexual history. It also featured The Bridge, which dealt with the abandonment of a pregnant woman and her apparent suicide, and the comic marrying-for-money I’ll Oilwells Love You, a parody of I Will Always Love You six years early.
You say: “Wonderful early album… still sounds great.” Rob Novack, via e-mail
6.
New Harvest… First Gathering
RCA, 1977
The record on which Dolly really took charge, her first in the capacity of producer. She also provided the arrangements and wrote all but two of the songs. The two ‘borrowed’ items proved to be a version of Smokey’s My Girl and a workout on the Jackie Wilson hit Higher And Higher. And the ploy works because Dolly oozes rootsy, heartfelt, come-on-and-get-that church soul aplenty. Oddly though, the poster track for the album is Applejack, a Barn Party get-together that, with the presence of Kitty Wells, Chet Atkins, Roy Acuff and many others, features one of the most spectacular country legend line-ups ever assembled on record.
You say: “her first pop-crossover album released in 1977 and also the first album she produced. Great variety (from pop rock to country).” John Hughes, MOJO Facebook
MOJO Time Machine: Dolly Parton, Carly Simon, George Benson And More Light Up New York
5.
My Tennessee Mountain Home
RCA, 1973
In early 1973, Parton opted to provide this rootsy musical autobiography, a glance back at her childhood and the poverty in which she was raised. The album begins with a reading of the first letter that the singer wrote to her parents after leaving her Sevierville, Tennessee, hometown and heading for Nashville. An 11-track affair, completely self-penned, it includes concludes with Down On Music Row, a rundown on how she finally made the grade in Nashville namechecking Chet Atkins and producer Bob Ferguson, noting, “they both told me I was on my way.” There’s fond memories, but In The Good Old Days (When Times Were Bad) injects harsh reality.
You say: “She is able to craft an entire song about something as simple as a black kettle and make it into painfully sentimental art.” George Kitchens III, MOJO Facebook
4.
The Grass Is Blue
SUGAR HILL, 1999
This time around, it was just pure bluegrass, all the way, with Dolly being vocally assisted by Claire Lynch, Alison Krause and Rhoda Vincent, while such bluegrass stalwarts as Sam Bush and Jerry Douglas ensured the instrumental licks had immaculate pedigree. If a cover of Billy Joel’s Travelin’ Prayer reworked as a bluegrass ramble raised a smidgen of doubt over genre purity, then Parton’s fragile, slow-waltz title song and versions of the Louvin Brothers’ Cash On The Barrelhead and the closing, gospel-inclined acapella I Am Ready stood testament to the fact that Dolly had made it back to the porch.
You say: “Just a perfect bluegrass album; shows her strengths as a true country/bluegrass artist.” Brad Lambert, MOJO Facebook
3.
Coat of Many Colors
RCA, 1971
Parton ranks the title song to this album is her favourite all-time composition. Totally moving and deeply personal, it details how her mother, Avie, struggling with raising twelve children in abject conditions, did actually make Dolly a patchwork coat from a box of rags (“One is only poor only if you choose to be,” she concludes). Such was the strength of songwriting on the album that Dolly would return to re-evaluate its wares time and time again, recording My Blue Tears twice more. Reissued in various guises, Coat of Many Colors appeared in Time Magazine’s 100 Greatest Albums of All Time listing during 2006.
You say: “If this doesn’t touch you then I don’t know what will.” Cathy Murphy, via e-mail
2.
Little Sparrow
SUGAR HILL, 2001
The second of Dolly’s three essential bluegrass’n’folk albums for Sugar Hill, and also the best. Old Parton classics like Down From Dover and My Blue Tears are reshuffled expertly, and if not quite matched by her new stash of originals, slot in easily alongside a banjo-driven charge through Steve Young’s Seven Bridges Road, a mildly screwball version of Cole Porter’s I Get A Kick Out Of You and an interpretation of Collective Soul’s Shine that saw Parton collecting a Grammy for Best Female Country Vocal Performance. Parton never sounded so confident, aware she was creating something to see off all usurpers to her crown.
You say: “You feel her roots in the mountains coming through that clear high lonesome sound. Lush.” Gregory Kulhanjian, MOJO Facebook
1.
9 To 5 And Odd Jobs
RCA, 1980
During the late ‘70s Parton increasingly veered away from her roots in an attempt to establish herself as a crossover artist. This album, though, it owes its birth to Dolly’s catchy theme to the film 9 To 5, and sees her once more glancing back and creating what is, vaguely, a concept affair, concerned with working-class lives. The traditional House Of The Rising Sun, decked out in an arrangement by Parton and produced Mike Post, rubs shoulders with Merle Travis’ mining song, Dark As A Dungeon, Woody Guthrie’s Deportee and Dolly’s own, name-check-filled Working Girl providing an album that topped the US pop charts for 10 straight weeks.
You say: ‘You not only get Dolly's crossover smash single, but her takes on very evocative tales like Deportee (Plane Wreck At Los Gatoes).” Timothy Parrish, MOJO Facebook
NOW DIG THIS…
The most rewarding book on Dolly Parton remains her autobiography My Life And Other Unfinished Business, published by Harper-Collins in 1994. You can hear Dolly’s Tennessee twang in every line as she details her early life and rise to fame in this from-the-heart account that appears to be transcribed directly from tape. Wanna hear how it would sound if Dolly sat herself down and actually read it to you? Well, if you’ve got just under five hours to spend, then she does that very thing on YouTube at tinyurl.com/pp4e4ke. The accompanying illustration, depicting an ultra-chic Parton in a shack decorated with newspaper-decorated walls, is also worth a peek.