A longer post today. I’m sure all of you have read and watched many tributes, articles, reels and stories since Tuesday, so it’s probably wiser for me not to try to “out write” what has already been written or said about Dolly Parton. Let me rather try my own take.
Parton was clever, light, kind, loving, humble and gentle. She had a perfect, down the centre-line soprano and a wonderful sense of melody. Equally, she was a trusted collaborator, sharp businessperson and generous philanthropist who via Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library gifted over 300 million books to kids under seven to enable reading, literacy and dreams. There are stories about all of these facets of a true, one-of-a-kind person. Today, some stories and a song. The first to tell of her business acumen, the others about her sense of humour.
In 1974, Elvis Presley wanted to record I Will Always Love You. Parton was keen. However, the recording came with a condition stipulated by Elvis’s manager, Colonel Tom Parker, that if Elvis was to record the song, Parton would have to relinquish 50% of the publishing rights to the song to Elvis. Parton refused.
It was at the time her most important copyright, and although she cried all night at having lost the deal with the King, she valued her own talent and ability and wanted to hold onto 100% of the song. And it turned out to be prescient, given that Whitney Houston’s recording of the song for the soundtrack of the film, The Bodyguard, earned Parton north of $20-million in publishing royalties and continues to do so, with streaming numbers in the billions.
Dolly’s spark and skill
Then there’s the story of a famous bassist who found himself sitting next to Parton on a plane and saw that she was reading Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time. On his commenting to her that it was a “great read”, she revealed that it was only the Hawking cover, and that inside was a Harry Potter novel, which raised a good laugh from them both!
Oh, and then there’s one of Parton’s famous pet peeves, which has become Dolly lore, telling David Letterman that she was upset by “accountants not being able to understand why it costs so much to make me look so cheap”! Always able to laugh at herself, Parton was.
Parton wrote over 3,000 songs and recorded many hundred across genres, including pop, gospel and even rock. She has covered or been covered by artist as diverse as Emmylou Harris, The White Stripes, Tina Turner, Meshell Ndegeocello, Led Zeppelin, Collective Soul, Billy Joel, Vince Gill and Miley Cyrus.
Jolene and I Will Always Love You were probably written on the same, very productive day. To choose today’s song, it had to be either country Dolly, or bluegrass Dolly. The pick is the title track from my all-time favourite Parton album, the predominantly bluegrass, country-influenced and quite beautiful Little Sparrow, from the early 2000s.
‘Little Sparrow’, the album and the song
The album was pure, but relatively pared-down for Parton, and rather than deploying her famous “thumb and flick” guitar-picking technique, relied predominantly on a lineup of bluegrass royalty instrumentalists. Little Sparrow is a song about heartbreak and the pain caused by trusting the hearts of men. It was inspired by a vulnerable sparrow in a storm and encapsulates these concepts exquisitely. Equally though, it’s a song about defiance and strength.
The song begins with Parton acapella, before Alison Krauss and Dan Tyminski add harmony vocals. Stuart Duncan brings fiddle, while Jerry Douglas’s empathetic dobro accents over Bryan Sutton’s steel-string flat picking, fill out the song. There’s percussive mandolin, banjo and double bass too, on an all-round, superbly executed and produced track on an exceptional album of burning bluegrass and comforting country originals and covers.
A friend on this group wrote a short piece this week suggesting that if heaven exists, Louis Armstrong will be singing Hello Dolly to welcome her, leading a full brass band. Yes indeed! Farewell to Dolly Parton and a happy Sunday to you all!
Listen to Little Sparrow on Spotify here:
And on Apple Music here.
I started a music WhatsApp group in 2023. I send one song a week on a Friday, with links to both Apple and Spotify, and an accompanying narrative/capsule piece. If you want to engage about a song, get a playlist or just get in touch, email me on markgrosin@gmail.com.