Goodbye, Dolly - From A Faraway Distance, And A Recent Admirer

I honestly can't say I have much of a relationship with Dolly Parton's music, of which I have only heard a song here or there. I of course knew the ridiculous image of Dolly - big hair, big boobs, big voice nd attitude. But I didn't listen much to her music and I didn't know much about her. That chnaged a couple of months ago, when - while zapping aimlessly with the wife in tow, yes, some people still watch TV! - we fell on a music documentary whose subject I don't recall, might have been Bowie. Right after, however, we segued straight into a documentary on Dolly Parton, and I increased my knowledge, not to mention my appreciation of here, manyfold. 

Talk about a self-made millionaire or going from rags to riches. These are often used as metaphors, but rarely have they applied to somebody as well as Dolly Parton. Born in a wooden shack to dirt-poor parents and part of a family counting a dozen children, Dolly's upbringing was clearly the stuff normally reserved for screenplays. The way she managed to hold herself in  male-dominated business in the 60's, the way she looked for more freedom away from Porter Wagoner, all this stuff - just impressive as hell. And that is before you take into account her charity work, and the sense that she just had kind words for everyone, even those that didn't have any for her. That list of 'big somethings' I did in the paragraph above? It's fair to say that 'big heart' needs to be added and underlined a couple of times. In bright, trashy pink, if Dolly had her way. 

The wife and I stayed glued to that documentary, and then - somehow transfixed by the country mood watched half of a concert by the Highwaymen that followed the Parton doc, until at about 1.15 A.M. I told my wife that it would probably wise to pack it in. I had put 'check out more Dolly Parton' on the imaginaryt to do-list, as I was mostly familiar with her as part of the Trio albums with Emmylou Harris and Linda Ronstadt. And then I never really got around to do that, with so much other music and other things taking precedence. So Dolly's death two days ago, at age 80, doesn't strike me really on a personal level, and i won't pretend that it does. But it's fair to say that our world just got a good bit poorer without Dolly in it. 

The One Buck Album of the day, Coat Of Many Colors, is a classic by Dolly Parton, including the title song that Dolly herself considered her favorite, from among the hundreds and hundreds of songs she wrote. It also came out at an impressively active time for Parton, being her third album of 1971 after The Golden Streets Of Glory and Joshua. This is the 2007 remaster with four bonus tracks. The cover still looks kind of weird (and makes Dolly somewhat look like anboy), but hey, that can't do any harm to the fab content. Just a fine little album to remember this giant of country music by. 

R.I.P. Dolly Rebecca Parton, 1946-2026