There are enough elegies for Dolly Parton, many of them heartfelt and moving, without me adding to the pile. Suffice it to say that she gave away money to good causes almost as fast as she made it, she was kind, generous and accepting toward everyone, and she left us with some classic music.
She wasn’t the first person elected to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame who wasn’t a rock singer, but she was the first one with the integrity to call them out for it. She initially declined the honor, but after she changed her mind she released an album of rock covers in 2023 to justify it.
Nobody puts “Rockstar” on their list of Parton’s best albums, but it shows that given the right material she could have forged a career like Shania Twain’s or Taylor Swift’s. Most of the songs are duets, many with the original artists – people like Paul McCartney, John Fogerty, Elton John, Stevie Nicks and … Kid Rock? As noted, she was accepting toward everyone.
She gained fame as a singer, but her songwriting skills are even more impressive – she wrote some 3,000 songs and recorded nearly 1,000 of them. “I Will Always Love You,” a farewell ballad to mentor Porter Waggoner that let him down more easily than he deserved, was her most popular composition, especially after Whitney Houston’s showstopping rendition entered the pantheon.
But it’s a song she wrote the same day, “Jolene,” that stands as her defining statement. Her vibrato is the perfect vehicle for the raw vulnerability of the lyrics. It’s often covered, on “Rockstar” with Italian rock band Måneskin, but never equalled.
At 77, Dolly’s voice wasn’t really strong enough for the tougher numbers, but it shines on some of the tunes she tackled solo, like Billy Joel’s “The Entertainer,” which she gives a slow, rueful intro and a couple of judicious lyrical substitutions.
Perhaps the catchiest tune on the deluxe edition is one of Parton’s own compositions that sounds a lot better here than it did in the original version, a duet with Sylvester Stallone for the 1984 film “Rhinestone.” He sounded awful, but that was sort of the point – he was a New York cabbie who Dolly had to turn into a country singer to win a bet. The broad comedy flopped, so I’m glad she cut this one again. It fits perfectly into that early-80s Rhinestone Cowboy vibe.
