Dolly Parton: Hear 15 Essential Songs
New York Times · LC · trust 30/100
The singer-songwriter rose from poverty to become a chart-topping performer whose earnest character allowed her to span genres.
Share full article 6 Dolly Parton’s vast catalog contains no fewer than 49 studio albums which, together, generated 25 No. 1 singles on Billboard’s Country chart. Credit... Richard E. Aaron/Redferns, via Getty Images By Jim Farber
The certitude of Parton’s character allowed her to sing and write in styles far beyond the mainstream country category she’s most often associated with. Over a seven-decade career, Parton, who died on Tuesday at age 80 , embraced pop, rock, gospel, bluegrass, dance music and more. “I don’t know if my style has a description,” she told the Songwriter Hall of Fame newsletter in 2023. “Except that it’s me.”
Parton’s vast catalog contains no fewer than 49 studio albums which, together, generated 25 No. 1 singles on Billboard’s Country chart. She has been credited with writing over 3,000 songs, some of which have been covered often enough to be considered standards, including the wise “Coat of Many Colors,” the worried “Jolene” and the stalwart “I Will Always Love You,” which became even better known through Whitney Houston’s batten-down-the-hatches blowout from 1992.
Parton’s tandem role as a vocalist and writer, dating back to 1967, made her a seldom acknowledged forerunner of the 1970s singer-songwriter movement that swept to fame stars like Joni Mitchell, Carole King and James Taylor. That role was especially rare for women at the time. In fact, Parton’s debut album appeared six months before Mitchell’s and three full years before King’s.
Here are 15 songs that capture the span and depth of Parton’s recorded work.
On her sprightly debut, “Hello, I’m Dolly,” she wrote, or co-wrote, 10 of the 12 tracks. The first single, a cover of Curly Putman’s “Dumb Blonde,” may have proclaimed that she was far from it but it was another, self-penned song on the set, “Something Fishy,” that made the point undeniable. With a sassy wit, the main character calls out her husband for cheating when he’s supposed to be fishing. “I guess some largemouth bass left that lipstick on your shirt,” she sings. “I don’t think you’re a fisherman, honey, I think you’re a flirt.” Parton’s vocal in the song is as big as her hair, delivered in broad sarcastic arcs that delighted enough listeners to result in her first Top 20 Country score.
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A key motif in Parton’s lyrics was challenging the sexual double standards of women and men, a subject she approached with as much humor as resolve. In the first single from her second solo album, “Just Because I’m a Woman,” she highlighted the hypocrisy of a boyfriend who demands that she be pure even though his past is far from pristine. “Now I know that I’m no angel/if that’s what you thought you’d found,” Parton sings. “My mistakes are no worse than yours/just because I’m a woman.” For nuance, she delivered the lyric with a cry of hurt that never obscured the righteousness of her viewpoint.
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