Song of the Day 1/15: Dolly Parton, “Here You Come Again”

Fans have been worried about Dolly Parton’s health since October, when her sister put out a public appeal for prayers, a couple of weeks after the country music diva missed a scheduled event at her theme park, Dollywood. Despite reassurances that the situation was nothing serious, she hasn’t appeared in public since, and this week announced she won’t attend her planned 80th birthday celebration and tribute concert Saturday at the Grand Ole Opry.

Maybe I’m too skeptical, but Brigitte Bardot’s hospital visit last November was described as a minor procedure and she was dead two months later. Parton’s had a lot of work done so she doesn’t show her age, but she’s entering her ninth decade, when there’s no such thing as a minor health issue. She’s also still coping with the death of her husband in March. Given all this, fans have ample reason to fret.

You have to be pretty old yourself to remember that Dolly was a purely country star before she crossed over into the mainstream. She had five No. 1 country hits, the first in 1970, before the title track to her 1977 album topped the country chart and reached No. 3 on the Hot 100.

That wasn’t an accident. Many country artists were going mainstream throughout the ’70s, causing one of the genre’s periodic crises over what constituted “real” country music. Though Parton wrote most of her hits herself, she wanted something likely to appeal to a pop audience.

“Here You Come Again” was a Barry Mann-Cynthia Weil composition, intended as a comeback vehicle for Brenda Lee. When Lee declined, B.J. Thomas recorded a version that Parton’s producer liked. She insisted, though, that he add a steel guitar to the arrangement – she wanted to sound at least a little bit country.

This video catches her when she still presented in a country manner. Three years later she starred in “9 to 5,” and she adopted the flashier make-up they gave her in that hit movie as her look thereafter.