Dolly Parton
The Essential Dolly Parton Volume 2 (RCA 66933)

The ideal introduction to Dolly Parton's music, The Essential Dolly Parton Vol. 2 offers twenty tracks from Dolly's truly classic era (1970-78). She would be a bigger star by far with her pop crossover stuff in the late 70s and early 80s, but this disc focuses on the period when Dolly was becoming one of country music's best and most beloved singer-songwriters.

Unlike Vol. 1, which presents the later stuff, on this one nearly every track was written by Dolly, and her style is so unique and immensely winning that it's hard not to be bowled over. Her down-home wisdom and poor beginnings inform lots of these songs, which rank among her most popular, including several signature songs like "Jolene," "Coat of Many Colors," and "I Will Always Love You."

Beyond those well-known Dolly classics are lesser-known but equally wonderful gems like "The Bargain Store," "Touch Your Woman," and the pure pop pleasure of cuts like "I Really Got the Feeling" (written by Billy Vera, incidentally) and "Here You Come Again," which is probably the choicest song you can ever choose if you find yourself in a karaoke bar.

The disc moves from the backwoods traditional country sound that Dolly launched her solo career with ("Mule Skinner Blues," "My Tennessee Mountain Home") and moves gradually into the pop stuff, so gradually that by the time "Here You Come Again" comes on it just sounds like a natural extension of what she'd been doing all along. The roots of her pop sound can be heard in "Touch Your Woman" (track 2) which sounds like it was recorded five years later than it was (in 1972).

Unlike most artists who find crossover success, Dolly Parton never really got labeled a sellout, because if anyone deserved success, it was Dolly. She's just the greatest. I nominate her for most likable person of all time.

The hits on here are all welcome, and the disc is filled out with gem after gem. "Love is Like a Butterfly" is as cute and affecting a song as you could want, and it's hard to think of any artist selling it more convincingly than Dolly. I can picture Roger Whittaker doing it, but he'd ham it up so much (I'd still like it, sadly enough).

A couple tracks later is the truly insane "Me and Little Andy," which has virtually the same melody as "Love is Like a Butterfly," but is much, much grabbier. It is one of the most brazenly tear-jerking songs I've ever heard, but not in a "Butterfly Kisses" sort of way. Dolly sings in two voices, her own and "Sandy," the six-or-seven-year old subject of the song, who shows up at Dolly's cabin with her dog Andy in the middle of a winter storm. She's wandering around looking for a home to stay at because her "daddy's drunk again in town" and her "mommy ran away again."

It's a vocal tour-de-force that is both hilarious and heartbreaking, as Dolly perfectly voices the little girl's innocent outlook. By the end of the song, both Sandy and Andy have died, with the ghostly child's voice returning at the end as the music turns dissonant. They TRULY do not make them like that anymore.

"We Used To" begins exactly like "Stairway to Heaven," but shows far less Tolkein influence. A great, deeply sad ballad, quite haunting. Would have made a great Elvis song. Man, these songs are all good: "Joshua," "The Seeker," "Just Because I'm a Woman," "Wings of a Dove," track after track, just pure Dolliciousness.

It's a great disc I listen to a lot, one of my favorite country CDs. Great for driving, cleaning house, doing crossword puzzles, surfing for porn, whatever it is you do.

They could have easily filled up two discs of great material from this period, as easily as Dolly can fill up … hey, you thought I was going to say "a bra," didn't you? Stupid, I was going to say "a wig."

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Review by Clean Mr. Gene