various artists - A Way to Make a Living: The Dolly Parton Songbook

Name any recording that you immediately associate with Country music legend Dolly Parton and there’s a better than average chance that she not only sang it, she wrote it too. Dolly has been recording regularly since the mid-60s and almost every major hit she has ever had (and quite a few minor ones too) she wrote or co-wrote.

Somehow this important component of her overall musical skillset is all too frequently overlooked by the public at large, who know Dolly for her luminous public image and gregarious personality without necessarily realising that she is also a brilliant songwriter.

Dolly Parton wrote hit songs for other artists before she really had any hit records of her own. The ink in her pen has never gone dry and although she’s not as prolific as she once was, she still writes songs – these days mostly for herself – that other artists are happy to record.  A generous sampling of her best work from more than half a century of song-writing is collected here in Ace’s latest instalment of their long-running and highly-regarded ‘Songwriter Series’.

It would have been easy to fill this compilation with covers of her songs by Dolly’s country peers but, as can be seen from the track listing, her work has been embraced by a variety of artists – from Percy Sledge to Nana Mouskouri to Tina Turner to the Incredible String Band – and across a variety of genres. The versions used here have been selected to demonstrate the breadth of Dolly’s catalogue and to show how comfortably her songs fit any artist who chooses to cut them.

    1 9 to 5 - Dolly Parton
    2 Nickels and Dimes - Buck Owens
    3 Here I Am - Percy Sledge
    4 In the Good Old Days (When Times Were Bad) -
    5 The Everly Brothers
    6 Two Doors Down - Zella Lehr
    7 My Blue Tears - the Incredible String Band
    8 Down from Dover - Sally Timms & Jon Langford
    9 Touch Your Woman - Margie Joseph
    10 Kentucky Gambler - Merle Haggard & the Strangers
    11 Coat of Many Colors - Emmylou Harris
    12 Light of a Clear Blue Morning - Glen Campbell
    13 Don't Let It Trouble Your Mind - Rhiannon Giddens
    14 Do I Ever Cross Your Mind -
    15 Chet Atkins Featuring Dolly Parton
    16 I Will Always Love You - Linda Ronstadt
    17 I Lived So Fast and Hard - Porter Wagoner
    18 Jolene (Live 'Under Great White Northern Lights' Version) -
    19 The White Stripes
    20 My Tennessee Mountain Home - Maria Muldaur
    21 Little Sparrow - Bettye Lavette
    22 Put It Off Until Tomorrow - Bill Phillips
    23 Most of All Why - Holly Dunn
    24 I'm in No Condition - Hank Williams JR
    25 Love Is Like a Butterfly - Nana Mouskouri
    26 With Bells on - Ru Paul Featuring Michelle Visage
    27 There'll Always Be Music - Tina Turner