It's New to Me: Coat of Many Colors by Dolly Parton (1971)

Illustration from the cover of Home Arts magazine, April 1937

Lately, my special lady friend has been helping me fill in a few of my many pop-music knowledge gaps, buying me budget 5-album collections of artists like Otis Redding, the Cars, the Jackson 5, and Dolly Parton. Working my way through the Dolly Parton set, I've been surprised and delighted by things that I guess everyone has known about Parton all along - her amazing voice, her storytelling ability as a songwriter, her great sense of humor, and even her guitar-playing chops. My favorite album so far has been 1971's Coat of Many Colors, best known for its title track, which was one of Parton's earliest pop hits.

The title track is one of several excellent story-songs on the album, detailing her family's struggles with poverty when she was a child, but I enjoy the less serious "Traveling Man" just as much - it's about a girl who hides her relationship with a salesman a secret from her mom only to find that her man was boinking her mom on the side all along. The one narrative song on the album that doesn't really work for me is "If I Lose My Mind", in which a young married woman asks her mother to take her in because her husband's sexually deviant practices are threatening her sanity. I wasn't shocked to find that this song was actually by Porter Wagoner and not Parton - Parton gives Wagoner a lot of credit in helping her career, but her albums clearly demonstrate that she was a superior talent in most ways. The three Wagoner tracks on Coat of Many Colors are clearly among the weakest.

Coat of Many Colors has a couple tracks of Parton-written filler as well, but some of them are distinguishing themselves on repeated listens to the album. For instance, "Just as Good as Gone" is among the bonus tracks on the reissue I have - it was the b-side of the "Washday Blues" single, but it's quickly becoming one of my favorite Parton songs. I also really enjoy the two folky tracks on Coat of Many Colors, "My Blue Tears" and "Early Morning Breeze". The latter track is particularly affecting with its picked acoustic guitar and lilting melody - it bears a striking similarity to the songs from the Billy Bragg/Wilco Mermaid Avenue album.

"Early Morning Breeze" by Dolly Parton