Tag Archives: Country

Mandy Marie and the Cool Hand Lukes: $600 Boots

1 Reply

MandyMarie_600BootsCountry and rockabilly twang ala Wanda, Merle and Rosie

The Missouri-born Mandy Marie Luke is a country music triple threat: singer, songwriter and ace electric guitarist. Her vocal sass will remind you of Wanda Jackson’s rockabilly sides and her picking will remind you of the Buckaroos’ Don Rich, Merle Haggard’s Roy Nichols and current Telecaster-ace, Bill Kirchen. The combination of singing and picking matches up with another Jackson acolyte, Rosie Flores, and the retro honky-tonk rock and swing brings to mind Dee Lannon. Luke’s debut features ten originals and covers of Jimmie Rodgers’ “Mule Skinner Blues,” Kirsty MacCaoll’s “There’s a Guy Works Down the Chip Shop Swears He’s Elvis” (Americanized and shortened to “Thrift Shop”), and the Merle Haggard album track “Harold’s Super Service.”

The originals stick to rockabilly and throwback country sounds. Luke sings with a lot of verve, whether telling the story of a 14-year-old runaway’s renewal, detailing the precarious road run of a drug dealer, or suffering the down-and-out dilemma of Jesus or the bottle. She celebrates truckers and tattoos, and wallows on both sides of cheating mates and broken hearts. Luke picks a storm of twang from her Telecaster, and her Indianapolis-based honky-tonk band rocks each tune as if the dance floor just opened for business. Mo Foster’s upright slap bass complements the drumming of Lewis Scott Jones, and guest player Thom Woodard adds some great old-school steel. If you pine for the hardcore honky-tonk and rockabilly sounds of the ‘50s, be sure to check this out. [©2009 hyperbolium dot com]

MP3 | Leave Me Baby, Leave Me Be
Mandy Marie and the Cool Hand Lukes’ MySpace Page

Roger & The Rockets: Walking Band

2 Replies

RogerAndTheRockets_WalkingBandAmericana rock ‘n’ roll, folk and country from Sweden

Can you call it Americana when it hails from Sweden? Apparently so. Roger is lead vocalist and songwriter Roger Häggström of Örnsköldsvik, Sweden, and the Rockets are a rock ‘n’ roll band that plays rootsy grooves and country-rock sounds that will remind you of Brinsley Schwarz, Commander Cody, NRBQ, the Morells and BR5-49. Their second album features thirteen originals that include a Celtic touch in the foot-stomping title tune, the Roy Loney-styled rockabilly “Milk & Honey,” and the dobro-lined close harmony of “Crash & Burn.” There are British Invasion harmonies and chord changes in “Got to Go,” twangy baritone guitar on “Wendy,” and a Phil Ochs-styled folk protest on “One United State.” Häggström writes joyous odes to music making and blossoming love, chagrined lyrics of leaving one’s lover for the demands of a job, and inevitably broken hearts. In addition to bass, guitar and drums, the album includes banjolin, dobro, lap steel, washboard and violin. The latter, played by Björn Sohlin, is particularly effective on the cantering love song, “Maybe.” Häggström is a solid songwriter and vocalist, and the band is accomplished in both craft and range, resulting in a compelling sophomore album of folk-country-roots-rock. [©2009 hyperbolium dot com]

MP3 | Walking Band
Roger & The Rockets’ Home Page
Roger & The Rockets’ MySpace Page

Shelly West: The Very Best Of

Leave a reply

ShellyWest_TheVeryBestOfSolo sides from mid-80s country hit maker

Shelly West, the daughter of country legend Dottie West, had a run of hits from the early to mid-80s, most notably in duet with David Frizzell, but also as a solo act. Her pairings with Frizzell are anthologized on the separate collection The Very Best of David Frizzell & Shelly West, leaving this set to present her solo sides. Included are nine singles running from 1983’s “Jose Cuervo” through 1985’s “Now There’s You.” Also included is the B-side “Sexy Side” and four album tracks; missing are her last two singles from 1986, “What Would You Do” and “Love Don’t Come Any Better Than This.” These are all original recordings from the Warner/Viva label, just as listeners will remember have heard them on radio in the 1980s.

West’s voice is powerful, but producer Snuff Garrett (who’d made his name with pop acts like Gary Lewis, Bobby Vee and Cher) vacillated between styled arrangements of steel guitar, fiddle and bent-note piano, and pop productions filled with studio-tuned drums and crystalline guitars. These sounds fit easily into early ‘80s country radio playlists that featured Barbara Mandrell, Ronnie Milsap, Anne Murray and others, but in retrospect they sound overly processed and polished. West bowed out of the music industry in 1986 just as the neo-traditionalists were stripping away much of Nashville’s crossover gloss, so we’ll never really know how her huskily powerful voice would have sounded without the studio-contrived production.

There are twangy tunes in “Jose Cuervo,” “Somebody Buy This Cowgirl a Beer,” “I’ll Dance the Two Step” and “Now There’s You,” but many of the collection’s country lyrics are undermined by heavy-handed crossover arrangements whose country instrumentation is little more than ornamentation. “Flight 309 to Tennessee” is marred by flecks of power guitar chords, tuned drums and by-the-numbers strings. West is more of a crooner than a roots singer, and combined with Garrett’s production, these singles are often more adult contemporary than country. Taken on the premise that these records didn’t intend to draw heavily on country music’s roots, fans of early ‘80s country will be happy to have these original sides available on CD. [©2009 hyperbolium dot com]

Patty Loveless: Mountain Soul II

Leave a reply

PattyLoveless_MountainSoul2Second helping of acoustic mountain music

Patty Loveless is one of Nashville’s few contemporary stars who hsds always managed to infuse her hits with a helping of mountain soul. Her run through the top-40 mixed twangy steel-lined modern country production with the sounds of rockabilly, gospel, blues, and a voice that’s country to the bone. All of that adds up to great recordings, but what made great records was a selection of material that drew from the best of Nashville’s pros and a deep helping of outsider gems. In the former category are Kostas’ “Timber I’m Falling in Love” and Matraca Berg’s “You Can Feel Bad,” and in the latter category is Lucinda Williams’ “The Night’s Too Long,” Rodney Crowell’s “Loving All Night,” and Jim Lauderdale’s “You Don’t Seem to Miss Me.”

Beyond the singles charts, Loveless released albums full of quality tracks, particularly those produced by her husband Emory Gordy Jr. Midway through her tenure with the Epic label Loveless took a break from contemporary country to record Mountain Soul, an acoustic album of bluegrass and mountain music. The arrangements and material (which included a few covers amongst contemporary works) grew from an acoustic section of Loveless’ live show and highlighted the mountain roots that undergirded her more highly produced recordings. A second set of bluegrass-flavored productions was recorded for 2002’s Bluegrass and White Snow: A Mountain Christmas, and her return to more typical Nashville production on 2003’s On Your Way Home kept the roots pushed up front.

Eight years after coming out with Mountain Soul Loveless has returned again to mostly acoustic arrangements. The high, lonesome vocals and tight harmonies also return, but the material stretches further into country and gospel, and the guest list expands to include Vince Gill, Emmylou Harris, Stuart Duncan, and Del and Ronnie McCoury. Loveless sings with her typical brilliance, and the accompaniment provides support without covering up any of the emotional colors of her voice. Her held notes, bent sour and brought back to key, communicate more than the typical modern Nashville vocalist says in an entire song.

Loveless is as strong harmonizing as she is singing lead, her tenor is the perfect leavening for Del McCoury on the traditional “Working on a Building,” and she’s warmed by the Primitive Baptist Congregation gospel choir on the original “(We Are All) Childeren of Abraham.” Gordy is equally adept at crafting sympathetic backings as he is in picking spots to let Loveless sing unadorned. The traditional “Friends in Gloryland” is sung a cappella with Vince Gill and Rebecca Lynn Howard, blending their voices into thick chords that need no additional instruments.

There’s some fine picking from Rob Ickes, Bryon Sutton, and Stuart Duncan but the lasting impression of this album is its mountain vocal soul. Amid the talents of Del and Ronnie McCoury, Carl Jackson, Vince Gill, Rebecca Lynn Howard, Tim Hensley, Jon Randall and Emmylou Harris, Patty Loveless’ voice stands tall, ringing down from the mountains of her native Kentucky. Perhaps the greatest thing that’s come from Loveless’ commercial country success is the freedom it’s bought her to pursue the old-timey sounds that are near to her heart. “Country” radio may ignore this, but Loveless’ fans, and all fans of hill-bred folk and country music will enjoy this second helping. [©2009 hyperbolium dot com]

Patty Loveless’ Home Page
Saguaro Road’s Home Page

Kenny Rogers: The First 50 Years

Leave a reply

KennyRogers_TheFirst50YearsExcellent 3-CD collection divided into duets, stories and love songs

Time Life’s 3-CD, 45-song set includes most of the hits you’d expect, but presents them in an original order. Rather than dividing Rogers’ career into eras (pre-fame doo wop and jazz groups, New Christy Minstrels, First Edition, solo success), the discs each present a facet of his artistry: duets, stories and love songs. It’s an interesting way to listen to Rogers’ catalog, focusing first on the flexibility with which he partnered with a diverse range of country, pop and soul stars that include Dolly Parton, Sheena Easton, Gladys Knight and Kim Carnes. Disc two demonstrates Rogers’ talent for telling dramatic and humorous stories, bringing characters to life in well-known country and pop hits and lesser-known album tracks like Mickey Newbury’s “San Francisco Mabel Joy.”

Disc 3 looks at Rogers’ way with a love song, which typically found him singing ballads and moving from country to pop. Rogers was particularly successful in this vein in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s with hits that include “She Believes in Me,” “You Decorated My Life” and “Lady,” and also found success with mid-tempo numbers like “Love Will Turn You Around.” Most of Rogers’ biggest hits are here, stretching from the First Edition’s “Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love to Town” through his most recent #1, “Buy Me a Rose,” with Alison Krauss and Billy Dean, and his most recent chart entry, “Calling Me,” with Don Henley. There are only a few missing chart-toppers, “Daytime Friends,” “Love or Something Like It,” “Share Your Love With Me” and “Tomb of the Unknown Love.”

If you’re after the hits, you might prefer 42 Ultimate Hits, but if you want to get an overall sense of Rogers’ artistry in a very listenable program, this is an excellent package. Fans will find three new recordings here, one on each disc, including a duet with Dolly Parton, “Tell Me That You Love Me,” that’s good enough to be Rogers’ next hit, a cover of Lionel Richie’s “Goodbye,” and the love song “Loving You is a Natural Thing to Do.” The discs are packaged in a 5.5 x 10-inch cardboard folder that slips inside a sleeve. The 24-page booklet includes photos, excellent notes by Colin Escott, and chart details. This is a good buy for anyone who loves Rogers’ music but hasn’t upgraded their vinyl to CD, and would make a nice gift. [©2009 hyperbolium dot com]

Kenny Rogers’ Home Page
Time Life Records’ Home Page

Various Artists: Songs 4 Worship: Country Live

Leave a reply

Various_Songs4WorshipCountryLiveFine collection of worship, but not all country

The extensive and popular Songs 4 Worship series has included themed and Spanish-language releases as well as soul, gospel and country sets. Like 2007’s edition, this collection of live performances (recorded at the Ryman Auditorium) often strays far from country sounds. The opening track by Lenny LeBlanc is a fine song of praise, but the presence of steel guitar doesn’t keep it country. The gospel of the Palmetto State Quartet’s “Trading My Sorrows” is terrific, rousing the crowd into clapping, but again there’s really nothing country in it. Crossover artists Rebecca Lynn Howard and Bryan White are both in good voice but fail to deliver on their country roots, and even the rootsy stalwart Ricky Skaggs is softened by the stage band’s accompaniment. Where the show plants some roots is with Collin Raye, whose bluesy delivery gives a twangy front to the band’s performance. Marty Raybon also finds some country soul in the his lower register. Ironically, the album’s most countrified tracks are studio cuts borrowed from earlier albums by Randy Travis, Alison Krauss, Diamond Rio and Alabama. The live band fits nicely behind the album’s live acts, but it fails to make the country singers sound country. This is all the more obvious when compared to the studio cuts. This is a good album of worship and praise, with plenty of energy in the live performances, just note that most of the twang is in the previously released studio tracks. [©2009 hyperbolium dot com]

Ricky Skaggs: Solo – Songs My Dad Loved

Leave a reply

RickySkaggs_SoloSongsMyDadLovedWinning, low-key tribute to the songs of a star’s father

Country music tributes to one’s father seem to be in the air. Tanya Tucker’s My Turn provides a gritty set of her father’s favorites, and Rosanne Cash’s The List cherry-picks a dozen songs from a list of one hundred country essentials given to her by her father in the 1970s. In both cases the artists had to dig deeply within themselves to understand not only what the songs meant to their fathers, but also what they meant as an inheritance and how they could be co-owned by both father and child. That same conundrum faced Ricky Skaggs as he mapped out this tribute to the songs his father loved, and he took the highly personal approach of producing the album on his own.

Though technically a solo work, as Skaggs sang and played everything here, a more accurate attribution would be to the All Ricky Skaggs Band. Rather than performing as a solo singer with his guitar, Skaggs overdubbed himself singing harmonies and playing multiple instruments, including guitar, mandolin, banjo, bass and piano. Built up as acoustic one-man-band arrangements, this isn’t the hot-picked bluegrass of Kentucky Thunder, but a more relaxed approach to music making. Skagg’s explores his parental heritage, but also his own musical roots in a very personal extension of 2008’s Honoring the Fathers of Bluegrass: Tribute to 1946 and 1947.

The song list is heavy on traditional numbers, including the instrumental fiddle tunes “Colonel Prentiss” and “Calloway.” Skaggs’ own instrumental, “Pickin’ in Caroline” features banjo playing that’s gentle and introspective. One song each by Fred Rose (“Foggy River”) and Roy Acuff (“Branded Wherever I Go”) speak to the foundational importance of the Acuff-Rose publishing company, and Ralph Stanley’s “Little Maggie” links to Skaggs’ teenage membership in the legend’s bluegrass band. This is superbly selected collection of songs, many of which fall outside the standard festival repertoire.

Singing and playing on his own, without the band, without the burden of living a bluegrass legend, without anything on his mind but his father and the lasting inspiration of his music, Skaggs is freed to embrace this material with a closeness that’s harder to locate in a crowded, spot-lit setting. Fans will enjoy the opportunity to hear Skaggs close-up in this stripped-down setting, and those who love country music’s early years will doubly enjoy the songbook. [©2009 hyperbolium dot com]

Ricky Skaggs’ Home Page

Creedence Clearwater Revival: The Singles Collection

Leave a reply

CCR_TheSinglesCollectionCCR as first heard on Top-40 radio

As a band that had tremendous top-40 success during the hey-day of freeform radio, Creedence Clearwater Revival stood with one foot planted firmly in each world. Their LPs were recorded in well-produced stereo, offered extended jams, thoughtful cover songs and deep album cuts that found room on underground FM stations such as Bay Area legends KMPX and KSAN. But above ground, the band’s music was remixed into powerful mono, edited for length and unleashed via AM powerhouses. AM’s narrow frequency range added emphasis to the music’s midrange, focusing listeners on Fogerty’s vocals and stinging guitar leads, and further revealing the band’s rhythm section to be among the most rock-solid and potent of its era. Their driving rhythms are just that much more driving in mono, and the band’s pop tunes sprang easily from a single speaker in the middle of a car’s dashboard.

Fogerty wrote with the goal of placing his songs alongside the R&B hits the group had grown up loving on Oakland’s KWBR and Sacramento’s KRAK. His originals stood toe-to-toe on album, airwave and top-40 chart with covers of “Suzie Q,” “I Put a Spell on You” and “I Heard it Through the Grapevine.” Included here are the A- and B-sides of thirteen original singles, ranging from 1968’s “Porterville” (b/w “Call it Pretending”) through 1972’s “Someday Never Comes” (b/w “Tearin’ Up the Country”). Also included is the single-edit of “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” (b/w “Good Golly Miss Molly”) that was released in 1976, four years after the group disbanded, and both sides of the stereo promotion-only experiment “45 Revolutions Per Minute.” The latter, a montage of production ideas, sound effects, musical bridges and comedy bits previously appeared as bonus tracks on the 2008 reissue of Pendulum.

Most of these songs are well-known to even casual listeners, as Creedence often broke both sides of their singles. The few less familiar cuts are the group’s first B-side “Call It Pretending,” Stu Cook’s “Door to Door” (an album cut from Mardi Gras and the B-side of “Sweet Hitch-Hiker”), and Doug Clifford’s “Tearin’ Up the Country” (also from Mardi Gras, and the B-side of “Someday Never Comes”). Strung end-to-end, these singles provide the AM listener’s view of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s success. While FM listeners grooved to 8:37 of “Suzie Q,” AM listeners enjoyed a concise 4:33 edit, and while album buyers sat back to enjoy album jams like “Graveyard Train,” “Keep on Chooglin’” and “Ramble Tamble,” singles buyers got another gumdrop every three or four months. The singles form an intertwined, yet separate, artistic arc that the band carved out in parallel to their albums.

Concord delivers thirty tracks on two CDs, each screened with a vintage Fantasy record label. The CDs are housed in a standard jewel case, together with a 20-page booklet that includes new liner notes by Ben Fong-Torres. Torres’ essay provides a genial trip through Creedence’s success on the radio, with quotes from 1960’s boss jocks, but it’s light on the particulars of these mono mixes and edits. A separate cardboard sleeve houses a DVD of four Creedence promotional videos: “I Heard It Through the Grapevine,” “Bootleg,” “I Put a Spell on You,” and “Lookin’ Out My Back Door.” Staged in studios and aboard a riverboat these are real treats, with the band looking youthful and happy. There are groovy dancers on “Bootleg” and psychedelic effects of “I Put a Spell On You,” and the black-and-white footage of “Lookin’ Out My Back Door” looks like it was filmed in the band’s rehearsal space. A folded poster insert reproduces many original 7” picture sleeves and completes a cardboard slip-cased package that is, in its own way, as important as the band’s original albums. [©2009 hyperbolium dot com]

David Frizzell: The Very Best Of

Leave a reply

DavidFrizzell_TheVeryBestOfFrizzell’s original hit recordings from the early ‘80s

As the baby brother of honky-tonk legend Lefty Frizzell, the thirteen-year-younger David Frizzell found his stardom in a very different era of country music. Lefty broke in as a child performer in the ‘40s and became a country star as a hardcore honky-tonker in the 1950s. He continued to have hits through the ‘60s and early ‘70s, but passed away at the age of 47 in 1975. His brother David also began performing as a child, accompanying Lefty on the road in the 1950s and ‘60s, and signing his first record deal in 1970. But even with a few minor hits, major commercial success was still a decade and a couple of label changes away. In 1981 he topped the charts with “You’re the Reason God Made Oklahoma,” a duet with Shelley West recorded for Capitol. Frizzell and West would have several more hits together, as anthologized on the companion disc, The Very Best of David Frizzell & Shelly West.

David Frizzell’s solo success came the next year with “I’m Gonna Hire a Wino to Decorate Our Home.” His voice retained a bit of his older brother’s husk, but in his early forties, he was more of a pop balladeer than the rootsy country artist his brother had been. More importantly, Nashville in the early-80s was still mired in the crossover production gloss of the late-70s, and Frizzell’s records were no exception. There are a few honky-tonk piano riffs, some steel, twangy guitar and banjo, but there are also soft strings, smooth backing vocals and warm balladry. Frizzell summoned moments of his brothers earthiness, and on hits like “I’m Gonna Hire a Wino to Decorate Our Home” and the tribute “Lefty” (the latter a duet with Merle Haggard) he quickly transcended Nashville’s by-the-books studio production.

Frizzell’s fans will be thrilled that Varese’s finally dug up the original hit recordings from the Warner/Viva label for CD release. Up to now you had to either hunt down original vinyl or make do with re-recordings. This fifteen track set collects all ten of Frizzell’s hits from 1981 (“Lefty”) through 1985 (“Country Music Love Affair”), and adds five additional period tracks: “Lone Star Lonesome,” “I Wish I Could Hurt That Way Again,” “She Wanted Me,” “We Won’t Be Hearing ‘Always Late’ Anymore,” and “Forever and Always.” The set comes with a four-panel insert that includes new liner notes by Lawrence Zwisohn, and features crisply remastered sound by Steve Massie. This is a long overdue collection for Frizzell’s many fans and a welcome period piece for those who enjoy Nashville’s soft sounds of the early-80s. [©2009 hyperbolium dot com]

David Frizzell’s Home Page

Dolly Parton: Dolly

Leave a reply

DollyParton_DollyThe 4-CD box set Dolly Parton (and her fans) deserve

Dolly Parton’s outsized personality has occasionally obscured the fact that she’s one of America’s all-time greatest songwriters and an exceptional vocalist who effortlessly crossed from country to pop and back again. Her early years as Porter Wagoner’s girl singer and duet partner, her television fame, her climb to solo country stardom, her painful split with Wagoner (brilliantly memorialized in her parting “I Will Always Love You,” a three-time hit for Parton and a worldwide chart-topper for Whitney Houston), her crossover to pop, Hollywood filmmaking and theme parks, and finally, her return to country and bluegrass roots have shown Parton to be an artist of unparalleled vision, depth and humanity.

Parton’s commercial success has stretched over four decades, including an incredible string of hit singles (including 25 U.S. #1s) and albums (including 42 U.S. top-10s and 6 chart-toppers), and multiple live recordings, soundtracks and collaborations. She’s won gold and platinum records, Grammys, AMAs, CMAs, ACMs, and has been nominated for Oscar, Tony and Golden Globe awards. She’s a member of the Grand Ole Opry, the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, and the recipient of numerous national awards and tributes. Yet, with all the fame and honors, Parton has remained true to her rural upbringing in the hills of Tennessee, frequently returning to the hard lessons of her youth for inspiration and guidance. The values instilled by her dirt-poor upbringing have informed both her life and her art, as she frequently put stories and lessons from her childhood to song.

Among the most surprising aspects of Parton’s recording career is how spottily her catalog has been kept in print or reissued. Numerous hits collections have found issue and reissue (including the excellent Essential set in 2005), and more recently a few original albums have been reissued on CD, but much of her RCA album catalog has remained in the vault, and until now, no major career-spanning (and more importantly, label-spanning) box set had been issued. RCA Legacy solves the latter problem with this superb 4-disc, 99-song set. The collection comes with a 60-page booklet that includes an introductory essay from singer-songwriter Laura Cantrell, a 5,000-word biography by Holly George-Warren, period photos and reproductions of many of Parton’s album covers.

More importantly, the 4 CDs cover a big helping Parton’s career, including rare late-50s pre-teen sides on Goldband, early work for Mercury and Monument, a generous helping from nearly two decades on RCA, and a smattering of  tracks from her years on Columbia, ending with 1993’s “Romeo.” Missing are sides from her 1998 back-to-basics album Hungry Again, the inventive releases she cut for Sugar Hill in the ‘90s and ‘00s, and last year’s Backwoods Barbie. So while it’s not a complete portrait, the ready availability of these later albums suggests their omission made room for the rare early works, deeper album cuts and seven previously unreleased recordings, while still maintaining the core hit material one would expect of a mainstream box set.

Those who’ve hung on to their original LPs or snapped up CD reissues will duplicate a good deal of Parton’s hits, but there are many new riches here. The eleven-year-old Parton’s voice is faintly recognizable on the 1957 Goldband single “Puppy Love” and its flip, “Girl Left Alone.”  The A-side is an original rockabilly tune, co-written with her uncle Bill Owens (with whom she’d also write her first charting song, Bill Phillips’ “Put it Off Until Tomorrow,” also included); the B-side is an original country ballad, again written with Owens. Parton’s voice is juvenilely high and thin, but she was already singing with tremendous feeling. The previously unreleased “Gonna Hurry (As Slow As I Can)” is a finished ’50s-styled ballad that sounds to be from a couple years later. The pre-teen edge to Parton’s voice was giving way to the trilled edge that would come to define her singing.

Skipping forward five years to 1962, Parton cut a single for Mercury while still in high school. The A-side “It’s Sure Gonna Hurt,” co-written again by Parton and Phillips, perfectly evokes the pain of a teenager’s broken heart with the mid-tempo countrypolitan-pop sound of Brenda Lee and Connie Francis. The B-side “The Love You Gave” continues the romantic turmoil, and the unreleased session side “Nobody But You” finds Parton adding a hint of rockabilly with her upper range. By 1965 Parton was signed to Monument, who groomed her as a teen pop star. Among the highlights here are the brilliant Shangri-Las styled “Don’t Drop Out,” complete with a dramatically spoken intro, and the obscure Goffin-King composition “I’ve Known You All My Life.” None of these made the charts, but Parton sounds so convincing and at-home, you can hear why they tried.

Having failed to break her as a pop star, Monument let Parton record country, releasing her first two charting singles “Dumb Blonde” and “Something Fishy,” as well as her debut album, Hello, I’m Dolly.  Parton’s songwriting emerged fully formed in songs of hurting and abandoned women, home-spun morals, and the colorful characters of rural life. She soon departed for RCA, but left enough tracks in the vault for Monument to issue a second album in 1970. Parton stayed at RCA for nearly two decades, her career initially shepherded closely by Porter Wagoner, with whom she recorded numerous duets. One listen to their chemistry on a 1967 cover of Tom Paxton’s “Last Thing on My Mind” makes it clear just how painful their separation must have been for Wagoner. The loss of her business may have stung, but the departure of such a feeling duet partner must have really hurt.

Parton’s solo sides, whether originals or pulled from Nashville songwriters, continued to make emotional strides to self-awareness (and eventually self-empowerment) as her downtrodden women took clear-eyed stock of their situations. Parton’s original, “The Bridge,” depicts a relationship’s pastoral beginnings and tragic, helpless ending, but the title track of Just Because I’m a Woman, calls out the hypocrisy with which women were treated. Her RCA catalog fills out disc one, all of discs two and three, and nearly half of disc four with hits, lower-charting singles and lesser-known but no less rewarding album tracks. This is easily the most expansive view you’ll find of her development as a songwriter and singer. The volume of quality original material and the imaginative range of her subjects are staggering, and the new fire she brings to chestnuts like Jimmie Rodgers’ “Muleskinner Blues” is just as impressive.

Even after splitting with Wagoner in 1976 the hits kept coming. Parton’s first self-produced album, New Harvest… First Gathering was recorded in Los Angeles and edged “Light of a Clear Blue Morning” onto Billboard’s Hot-100. Her next LP, Here You Come Again, sprung its title song to #2 on the adult contemporary chart and #3 on the Hot 100. Hollywood Dolly really hit her crossover peak in the early ‘80s with “9 to 5,” a cover of the First Edition’s “You Know I Love You,” “Islands in the Sun,” and a modernized remake of the Drifters’ “Save the Last Dance For Me.” In contrast to the box set’s first two discs, Parton’s crossover material is often taken from other songwriters’ pens, and doesn’t ring as heartfelt or close-to-the-bone as her earlier works. Still, even among the mainstream pop she dropped the home-spun “Applejack” and “Old Flames Can’t Hold a Candle to You,” the gospel-tinged “Do I Ever Cross Your Mind,” and the superb “Tennessee Homesick Blues” from the Rhinestone film soundtrack.

By the middle-80s Parton’s production had fallen into others’ hands, and they increasingly surrounded her with synthetic drums and synthesizers. Parton herself was still in fine voice, but the chill in the instrumental backings didn’t connect with or amplify her personal warmth, and the arrangements have aged poorly. A switch to Columbia in the late ‘80s returned Parton to country songwriting and more timeless pop productions. Disc four’s closing eight tracks, drawn from albums recorded between 1988 and 1993, restore Parton’s identity as a songwriter, and Ricky Skaggs’ production (which drew on some hot-picking bluegrass musicians) for White Limozeen was the most sympathetic she’d had in several years. Many of Parton’s fans will enjoy the entire tour through the first thirty-seven years of her career, but those mostly enchanted by the country sides will find themselves skipping her late-70s and early-80s pop material. Don’t miss the Columbia sides on disc four, though, as they’re superb.

Leaving off Parton’s resurgent sides for Sugar Hill keeps this box from being a complete portrait to date. Her work on Columbia shows the artistic well far from dry, and her return to basic productions and bluegrass backings in the ‘90s and ‘00s are an important chapter in her stll-lively career. Still, these four discs amply demonstrate that Parton is much more than a singer and songwriter: she’s a folklorist, cultural anthropologist, family historian, philosopher and memoirist. Her autobiography, Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business, is a good read, but can’t possibly offer the emotional richness of songs like “My Tennessee Mountain Home” or “Coat of Many Colors.” What’s really missing, and what Parton’s fans long for, are original album reissues of her entire RCA and Columbia catalogs. Bear Family, are you listening? [©2009 hyperbolium dot com]

Technical notes: All tracks stereo except 1-8, 10, and 13-14. Track 23, “Daddy,” has a mastering error at 1:06 that causes the volume to flair briefly.