Dolly Parton

Dolly Parton

Latest Release

Essential Albums

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

    1999

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

    More than simply a supergroup, Trio was a reinvention and a reunion—a record that erased genre boundaries and quashed assumptions as it created a new template for women country artists to collaborate with one another. It is country music at its most traditional, but performed by some of the most recognizable voices in 20th century popular music: Dolly Parton, by then a titan of Music Row (if still an often belittled one); Linda Ronstadt, on the tail end of her titanic ’70s run as a country-pop-rock megastar; and Emmylou Harris, an outlaw and iconoclast who made a country career doing exactly as she pleased. It took more than a decade after the women first sang together to actually make the record—understandable, given the obligations of their individual careers and record deals. But they all stayed the course, addicted to the sound that they made together. “When we heard our voices, it was like injecting some kind of serum into your veins—it was a high like you’ve never felt,” Parton said later. Ronstadt and Harris had bonded early on over their love of Parton, and though all three were roughly the same age, they revered her. “Sometimes we would disagree about who would sing lead, because Emmy and I would always want Dolly to sing lead on everything,” Ronstadt said. Parton doesn’t always take lead, though; instead, the singers take turns out front of the lush harmonies, which in turn rest atop the sweet acoustic sounds of the all-star backing band. The Teddy Bears’ “To Know Him Is To Love Him” gets an entirely new life (with lead guitar by Ry Cooder) via Harris’ rangy warble, while the trio channels Appalachia on “Those Memories of You” and Parton’s composition “Wildflowers”—a modern classic—and early hillbilly music on Jimmie Rodgers’ “Hobo’s Meditation.” Their powers combine for a flawless effort, a canonical album by three superlative artists who have always refused to fall in line—this time, performing hand in hand.

  • 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.

FROM
Pittman Center, TN, United States
BORN
January 19, 1946
GENRE
Country

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