Look beyond the wigs and waistline Dolly is still queen of country, says Maddy Costa
There’s something about Dolly Parton that other old-time country stars don’t have: a very particular ability to make people wrinkle their noses.?
She represents a specific, perhaps unrivalled grade of Nashville bad taste,?which is quite an achievement considering that city’s insignia is a heap of?rhinestones. But people forget that there’s more to Dolly than flouncy?peroxide wigs, nails big as sideboards, a pinched waist and billowing?cleavage. And there’s more to her work than the lyrics to I Will Always?Love You (although she deserves to be ostracised from good society for?letting Whitney Houston have them) and the Dollywood theme park that has its?own special currency stamped with Dolly’s image. There’s a?singer-songwriter who is as passionate about guitars and fiddles and?soppy lyrics as she was when she first took the stage at the Grand ‘Ole?Opry in 1959, aged 13.
You can hear it in Bluer Pastures, a new song, halfway through her latest album, Little?Sparrow. It’s a love lament, of course, but twist the lyrics just a little?and you can read it as an allegory of Dolly’s musical career. “I was looking?for greener pastures when I left my old Kentucky home,” she begins,?”chasing after dreams … thinking only of myself and doing better.” In her quest for pop success, she diluted her traditional sound, steered it?towards the pop charts and in so doing found the fame and the money and?lost a considerable amount of respect.
But “ain’t it funny,” she muses,?”how the years will have you searching through your plunder, looking for?the treasures you gave up”. And so to the chorus: “Now I’m heading for?bluer pastures … to the bluegrass state of old Kentucky … to the haunting?sound of Monroe’s mandolin.” Going home to Bill Monroe: mission?statements don’t come much clearer than that.
That’s pretty much the trajectory Dolly travelled to 1999, when she?released the pertinently titled The Grass is Blue. Little Sparrow picks up?where that album left off: lovingly produced, once again, by Steve?Buckingham, it’s a similar selection of new Dolly numbers woven with?bluegrass-accented cover versions of the Eagles (Seven Bridges Road,?impish and spry), tracks she once recorded with her singing partner of the?1960s, Porter Wagoner (I Don’t Believe You’ve Met My Baby, fabulous in?its silliness), and her own songs from the 1970s, spare, acute takes on?My Blue Tears and Down From Dover. Her vocal on My Blue Tears quivers?then suddenly drops, the way tears tremble below your eye before?tumbling down your face. It’s schmaltzy, yes, but it makes your heart?spin.
Her most remarkable choice, if only for its cheekiness, is Cole Porter’s I?Get a Kick Out of You. Who but Dolly would transform it into a buoyant?froth of banjo, fiddle and mandolin? It doesn’t work where Ella?Fitzgerald sparkled in the song, Dolly effervesces, sounding like a?teenager who wants to be grown-up and standoffish but ends up pawing?puppyishly at the arm of her older lover. Even so, it’s an awful lot of fun ?and there’s a giggle at the end to prove it.
Her enjoyment of this homespun music is endlessly charming. There’s?another giggle at the end of Marry Me (not to mention a few yee-haws?and, believe it or not, a bout of clog-dancing), a new song so old-fashioned?it belongs to another age entirely, so that Mike Snider’s impeccable banjo?melody and Chris Thile’s radiant mandolin solo are haunted by the crackle?of 1930s vinyl. The lyrics are fantastic, a tongue-and-bubblegum-in-cheek tale of a young girl plotting future?merriment with her wide-grinned fella.
“His momma don’t like me one?little bit but you know I don’t care,” she crows. “Let her pitch her hissy?fit cos I ain’t marryin’ her.” In a sense, the idea of a woman on the verge?of her 55th birthday playing the ingenuous, nubile girl thrilled that her?boyfriend “knows a lot about love and stuff” is ludicrous. But Dolly is brazen enough to pull if off.
That engaging self-possession helps to make Little Sparrow a lovely?album. There are patches of mawkishness (the easily sickened may want?to skip the title track), times when Dolly’s voice sounds like a pillow of?icing sugar, toothache-sweet and far too fluffy, that make it all too clear?why people cringe. But when she taps confidently into the spirit of?Monroe, the Carter Family, Buell Kazee, she remains country music’s?queen.