Alot To Be Said For...

America frequently goes on a nostalgia kick and rediscovers artists and acts who were popular "back in the day".  And once in a generation, it seems like for a season all attention will converge on one particular artist or act.  At the beginning of the milennium, all attention was focused on The Band, and I must have seen The Last Waltz eleventy-eight million times, between USA Network, MTV and VH1.

The latest "It" artist seems to be Dolly Parton.  We had a Holly Dolly Christmas, Dolly contributed $1,000,000 to Covid Research, Dolly turned down the Medal Of Freedom, the highest US civilian honor.  All of a sudden, Dolly Parton is everywhere -- it's like the 70's all over again!

So guess who I'm gonna talk about?  Yep, Dolly.

Of course, growing up in the 70's, with the opinion of my stepfascist being that country music was the only music worth listening to, (read: the only kind we were allowed to listen to), in our house Dolly Parton got alot of airplay.

The highest compliment I ever give to a person is "There's alot to be said for (name)."  Well, there's alot to be said for Dolly Parton.

She started out dirt-poor.  She moved to Nashville the day after she graduated from high school and quickly began succeeding as a songwriter.  Elvis wanted to record I Will Always Love You, but his manager, Colonel Tom Parker, required all songwriters to surrender half the publishing rights before Elvis would record their songs.  Dolly said no.  Can you imagine?  You are a brand-new songwriter, just cutting your teeth, and one of the most successful performers of all time wants to record your song, the only catch is doing so will result in you giving up half of your profits on that song.  Forever.  But making this deal will give you your first (huge) visibility.  Do you say no?  How much guts, how much faith in yourself and your talent do you have to have to do that?!  Brass ones on that lady!

Of course, like me, she wears those brass ones high on the chest ;)

As everyone knows, Dolly went on to soar in the stratosphere of entertainment, with dozens of hit songs on both the country and pop charts; collaborations with Kenny Rogers, Emmylou Harris, Linda Ronstadt, Loretta Lynn, Tammy Wynette (probably a slew of others I'm not remembering); eight movies, seven books and countless awards.

What brought Dolly back to my attention after all this time was a convo I had with Melissa Pedersen, she who has gotten me into some awesome Americana music lately.  Melissa noted that I seemed to "perk my head up" every time a band called The Wailin' Jennys played.  I remarked that I liked their harmonies, and Melissa enthused, "Oh, yeah?  Then you'll love this song," and proceeded to direct me to their recording of "Light Of A Clear Blue Morning", which, unbeknownst to my friend, was written and also sung by Dolly Parton back in the 70's.  I played The Jennys version.  It was pretty, rather ethereal in style.  But compare it to Dolly's tour-de-force -- starts out soft, uplifting lyrics, a little perfect vibrato, electrifying percussion, and then rockin' it out and taking it home.  What a song!  Hear for yourself:

This version was a revelation to Melissa, who otherwise was only familiar with Dolly's more pop-flavored and collaborative work -- think Islands In The Stream with Kenny Rogers, and Trio with Ronstadt and Harris -- so now while I get more into The Wailin' Jennys, Melissa is taking a backwards journey to 70's Dolly (as well as to 1999's Western Wall: The Tucson Sessions, a Ronstadt/Harris collab, which features a more eclectic sound than anything they did with Parton).

Yes, alot to be said for Dolly Parton!