Dolly Parton

Dolly Parton

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Essential Albums

  • The Grass Is Blue
    The Grass Is Blue
    The Grass Is Blue

    Looking back, the idea of Dolly Parton recording an unadulterated bluegrass album seems an obvious one. Still, it took decades for the country icon to get around to fully exploring the music of her native Appalachia on The Grass Is Blue (1999). This beautifully-rendered work both reaffirms Parton’s artistic standards and stretches the boundaries of bluegrass in creative ways. Connecting profoundly with the genre’s yearning sentiments, as well as its sly humor, she applies her voice to a diverse and well-chosen batch of songs. Reworking ‘70s pop/rock tunes like Billy Joel’s “Travellin’ Prayer” and Blackfoot’s “Train, Train” proves to be a boldly successful experiment — the latter particularly works as a galloping acoustic number. The folk standard “Silver Dagger” and Johnny Cash’s “I Still Miss Someone” are equally impressive as haunting mood pieces. From the playful “Cash On The Barrelhead” to the wistful “I Wonder Where You Are Tonight,” Parton is in command (and from the sound of it, having serious fun) throughout. Sterling performances by Stan Bush, Jerry Douglas and similar top-flight pickers contribute to the album’s excellence. Some things are worth waiting for.

  • Trio (Remastered)
    Trio (Remastered)
    Trio (Remastered)

    1987

  • Once Upon a Christmas
    Once Upon a Christmas
    Once Upon a Christmas

    1984

  • 9 to 5 and Odd Jobs
    9 to 5 and Odd Jobs
    9 to 5 and Odd Jobs

    1980

  • Here You Come Again
    Here You Come Again
    Here You Come Again

    1977

  • Jolene (Bonus Track Version)
    Jolene (Bonus Track Version)
    Jolene (Bonus Track Version)

    “Jolene” certainly wasn’t country’s first cheating song, nor was it the first country song sung by a female artist to the fabled “other woman”: Loretta Lynn built her career on them (“Fist City,” “You Ain’t Woman Enough (To Take My Man)”), and subsequent generations of artists—from Barbara Mandrell to Sugarland and, more recently, Carrie Underwood and Miranda Lambert—have continued to fuel the form. What made “Jolene” different then—and what remains haunting about it now—is Parton’s empathy: Instead of anger or bitterness, we hear about Jolene’s auburn hair and breath like spring; instead of seeing her as an adversary or abstraction, we see her as a human being with her own desires and complications. In “Jolene,” the other woman finally got a name. Most of the songs here remained anchored by the presence (or absence) of men: “Lonely Comin’ Down,” “When Someone Wants To Leave,” “Highlight of My Life,” and so on. But the purity of Parton’s delivery made even ordinary romance sound ethereal, almost timeless. Two years earlier, she’d written “My Tennessee Mountain Home,” a song that imagined her rural upbringing as a state of almost Edenic bliss. Between the joys and sorrows of Jolene’s love songs were persistent metaphors for nature: rivers of happiness, the union of sea and tide (“It Must Be You”), the freedom of butterflies perched on flower petals (“Early Morning Breeze”). The cumulative impression is that our earthly troubles—the other woman, the wayward men—will always exist. But shed yourself of your self-pity and woes, and you can see a state of nature open up where even heartache becomes beautiful and necessary. So if you haven’t heard “I Will Always Love You” in a while, you may be surprised to realize that it’s a breakup song. And if you want to know what kind of roll Dolly Parton was on in the mid-1970s, consider that she wrote it and “Jolene” on the same day.

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About Dolly Parton

A powerful singer-songwriter and electric performer, Dolly Parton is one of country music’s most beloved figures. Born to an impoverished family in Tennessee in 1946 (in humble upbringings that would inspire such songs as “Coat of Many Colors”), she started singing in church, received a guitar at age eight, and performed on regional radio programs as a kid. She moved to Nashville the day after her high school graduation in 1964 and quickly signed with Monument Records. Her first charting single, 1966’s “Dumb Blonde,” introduced her as a fun-loving but independent woman confident enough to flout stereotypes and command her own destiny. In the late ’60s, Parton enjoyed huge success as a regular on Porter Wagoner’s weekly TV show and through a long string of collaborative hits. But she became even more popular as a solo artist, particularly with a pair of 1974 hits: the aching “I Will Always Love You”—which Parton wrote about needing to strike out on her own without Wagoner—and the timeless “Jolene,” with its poignant minor-key mode and emotional intensity. In 1981, Parton landed her first pop No. 1 hit, the blue-collar anthem “9 to 5,” and co-starred in the comedy film of the same name. She then had the biggest smash of her career in 1983 with “Islands In the Stream,” an easygoing romantic duet with Kenny Rogers. Further collaborations—like her albums with Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris, plus cameos on songs by Kesha and Miley Cyrus (her goddaughter)—expanded Parton’s legacy through the end of the 20th century and well into the 21st. Over time, she became involved in endeavors like her namesake Dollywood theme park, a 9 to 5 Broadway musical, and the literacy-focused Imagination Library. But Parton’s latter-day work—including a series of stripped-down bluegrass albums and her A-list-studded 2023 album, Rockstar, a rock ’n’ roll album released upon her Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction—shows that her musical gifts contain multitudes.

HOMETOWN
Locust Ridge, TN, United States
BORN
January 19, 1946
GENRE
Country

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