One of the landmarks of Dolly Parton’s career was the Trio album, her platinum-selling collaboration with Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris. It was one of the few country albums in history to receive a Grammy nomination for Album of the Year, and it won every major industry award, including the ACM for Top Album.
Just as compelling was Parton’s collaboration with Loretta Lynn and Tammy Wynette, which went gold despite zero support from country radio. After another collaboration with Ronstadt and Harris in the late nineties, there hasn’t been another collaboration of the sort from any major country artists.
I think this concept needs to be updated for the 21st Century. My vote is for a Lorrie Morgan, Pam Tillis and Carlene Carter album that fulfills the promise of their headlining 1996 tour.
Which three artists would you like to see put out a trio album?
Dolly Parton Week kicks off today with the first of two Favorite Songs by Favorite Artists entries. Mine will follow later in the week, along with Classic Country Singles, Retro Album Reviews, Six Packs, and an Ultimate Buyer’s Guide, all focusing on the legendary Hall of Famer. – Kevin
There really isn’t anything that Dolly Parton can’t do. She has a voice like an angel, but is also capable of showboating with the best of them. She plays several instruments, has written more than her share of classic songs, is an actor, owns a popular amusement park and, most importantly, is involved in many philanthropic efforts.
Starting with traditional annual viewings of A Smokey Mountain Christmas on the Disney Channel, Dolly Parton is one of those people that I loved before I even knew what music genres were, let alone country music in particular. So, while I was nervous about whittling down my favorite Dolly songs to a mere 25, I couldn’t resist the chance to participate in Dolly Parton week at Country Universe.
While this is a list of my favorite Dolly songs, I fully realize that I haven’t even begun to scratch the surface of her deep catalog with the songs that I’ve chosen.
#25
“Joshua” Joshua, 1971
This is a strange little story, but Dolly proves that she’s a great storyteller. There’s talking, singing and even a little yodeling. What more can you ask for in a song?
#24
“Jolene” Jolene, 1974
While it’s true that whenever I think of this song, I am reminded of The White Stripes’ intensely insane version that makes Parton’s version sound considerably tame, “Jolene” is still one of my favorite Dolly songs. She sings with her own quiet intensity that makes us appropriately feel for the jilted woman.
#23
“Shinola” Backwoods Barbie, 2008
I just think this song is fun. She’s calling this guy out on all of his crap and I suspect that nobody can give a dressing down quite as effectively as Dolly can.
#22
“More Where That Came From” Slow Dancing With The Moon, 1993
I was actually aware of this song before and liked it despite it being featured on recent Target commercials. She’s trying to convince her experienced man that she’s the one with whom he should settle down. After she gives him a list of things she can do to keep him happy, one can only imagine what she means by “There’s more where that came from.”
#21
“Cry, Cry, Darlin’” Sing The Songs Of Bill Monroe, 2002
For the record, this tribute album to Bill Monroe, spearheaded by Ricky Skaggs, is no doubt worth purchasing. Dolly’s contribution is one of the clear highlights on an all around stellar record.
It’s Saturday night, a good night for going out and having a good time. Don’t let the naysayers shame you into thinking such partying’s beneath you. Just heed the words and wisdom of Cal Smith:
Update: Just for the record, this video has the best crowd shot in history at 1:51.
This Sunday we’ll be kicking off Dolly Parton Week at Country Universe, the first in what will be many weekly artist spotlights. But tonight’s Recommend a Track has Parton in a supporting role, as she joins Emmylou Harris in harmonizing with Linda Ronstadt on “Hobo’s Meditation.”
It’s one of many standout tracks from their landmark Trio album, which won them several industry awards. Several readers have mentioned this song in previous comment threads, and it seems only fitting during this particular holiday weekend to think about those who aren’t so fortunate as to have a a warm home and a hot meal this Thanksgiving.
I imagine if Ronstadt’s piercing vocal had been sung on the floor of Congress instead of the set of a television show, the homeless problem would’ve been eradicated two decades ago. You can also enjoy two other tracks from the album in the clip below, as “Hobo’s Meditation” is preceded by “My Dear Companion” and followed by “Those Memories of You.”
If labels were as creative and resourceful in marketing the music of their artists before they left the roster as they are once they’re gone, maybe some big names would stick around a little longer. Both Billy Ray Cyrus and Trisha Yearwood have been the subjects of several compilations since leaving their first labels, and it’s no surprise to see two more come along this year, with both artists getting their own entries in the Love Songs series.
Billy Ray Cyrus is mostly remembered for “Achy Breaky Heart” these days, but the rest of his admittedly modest string of hits were anything but novelties. He was quite the heartbreak king back in the day, playing the role of the fool left behind who is coming to terms with the mistakes that led to his loss.
His Love Songs set opens with two of the best such songs in his catalog, “In the Heart of a Woman” and “Somebody New.” There may be quite a bit of New Jersey arena rock in the mix, but at the core is hillbilly heartache. It’s the songs of loss that make the Cyrus set shine, and there’s a thrill of rediscovery hearing the forgotten hit “Somebody New”, which is brilliant in its passive-aggressiveness. Also worthy of note are lesser-known tracks like “It Won’t Be the Last” and “I am Here Now”, both of which are just waiting to be covered by a resourceful country star looking for a hit.
Country music’s modern golden age was the nineties. The artistry was compelling, while the sales numbers were staggering. There was so much great music from so many artists, both old and new, that it’s easy to forget the undercurrent of mediocrity that lurked below this sea of excellence.
The Very Best of Neal McCoy is a reminder. While even stalwarts like Alan Jackson, Vince Gill and Patty Loveless were guilty of the occasional radio filler, McCoy’s entire catalog was just that: radio filler. While a twenty-track hits collection is generous by any measure, the songs here are so generically constructed and paint-by-number produced that they blend into each other. As pleasant elevator music, “For a Change” and “That Woman of Mine” get the job done, but they’re certainly not interesting enough to hold your attention for very long.
Indeed, on those rare moments that this collection demands your attention, it’s usually because something genuinely awful has occurred. “The Shake” is as painful to listen to now as it was when it was a hit, and both “Rednecktified” and “Billy’s Got His Beer Goggles On” are wince-inducingly terrible.
The irony is that Neal McCoy is one of the era’s finest live performers, with a stage show as electrifying as his recorded music is lackluster. For those looking to cherry-pick, there are a couple of moments here that hint at McCoy’s talents, like the still-charming “Wink” and the forlorn “If I Was a Drinkin’ Man.” But aside from those tracks and the campy “Now I Pray For Rain”, there’s little here to recommend.
Few acts in modern country music have been as unfairly maligned as SHeDaisy. This trio of sisters are are often villified for their pop-drenched country, but what’s overlooked is just how well-crafted it is. Their innovative production and cleverly layered harmonies aside, what has made SHeDaisy truly distinctive is excellent songwriting, anchored by one of the sisters themselves, Kristyn Osborn.
This year’s collection The Best of SHeDaisy offers a solid introduction to the underrated vocal group. Included are all but one of their hits to date, including four from their double platinum debut, The Whole SHeBang. The hits from that set remain their biggest, if not necessarily their best. They earned a Grammy nomination for their first release, “Little Good-Byes”, and also scored high on the charts with “This Woman Needs” and “I Will…But.”
But the collection gets a lot more interesting when it moves on to selections from their later albums, most notably a pair of hits from their strongest set to date, 2002′s Knock on the Sky. “Get Over Yourself” and “Mine All Mine” are the most ambitious cuts on the collection, and are a good representation of that album’s unconventional twist on pop-country.
A trio of singles from their third album, the gold-selling Sweet Right Here, helped them reclaim some of their former glory at country radio, with the self-deprecating “Don’t Worry ‘Bout a Thing” returning them to the top ten. Even better are a pair of hits from their most recent studio set, Fortuneteller’s Melody, which featured a more organic sound than their previous work. Particularly notable is “In Terms of Love”, a post-divorce reflection that is brutally, bitingly honest.
While the collection is augmented with their contribution to the Desperate Housewives soundtrack “God Bless the American Housewife” and excludes only one of their singles (“Still Holding Out For You”), the thirteen tracks go by a little to quickly. The set would have benefited from a choice selection of album cuts, or perhaps a tune or two from their stunningly good Christmas set, Brand New Year. But as is, The Best of SHeDaisy is a solid and representative introduction to a band that is far better than they’re usually given credit for.
Universal Music Group continues to lay claim to the strongest single-disc reissue series in country music, as Terri Clark’s The Definitive Collection plays to all of the strengths of this particular series.
The approach is simple: fit all of the definitive hits of a significant artist on one CD. For legends like Loretta Lynn and Conway Twitty, you get the cream of the crop. For artists like Sammy Kershaw and Billy Ray Cyrus, you get all of the hits from their career, all on one disc. Terri Clark’s hit run fits her neatly into the second category, as she scored more than a dozen hits from the time she arrived on the scene in the mid-nineties until the end of her run with Mercury Records.
While her excellent Greatest Hits 1994-2004 package compiled all of her big hits, The Definitive Collection goes deeper. Thankfully, all of the twelve tracks from that package are here, including then-new single “Girls Lie Too” and “One of The Guys”, the latter of which was not released as a single. This makes her first hits collection instantly obsolete, as you can find all of her signature hits like “Better Things To Do” and “I Just Wanna Be Mad” here, alongside some should’ve been hits like “Suddenly Single” and “She Didn’t Have Time.”
The chronological arrangement of the eighteen songs help demonstrate two things. One, that Terri Clark didn’t compromise her musical sound for more than a decade, despite how much things changed around her in country music. Two, even though her fortunes rose and fell more than once at country radio, the music itself was consistently good all along.
Best of all, since she was primarily a great singles artist, you can get just about all of the Terri Clark you need with this generous hits collection. If it leaves you wanting more, her two best studio albums – Pain to Kill and Fearless – are highly recommended.
What can I say? After two helpings of Thanksgiving dinner, I’m stuffed. Bursting at the seams. I squeezed as much as I could possibly squeeze in to one meal and on to one plate.
Now it’s time for our daily discussion topic, and all I’m thinking about is all the stuffing in my system. How can you make a topic out of that?
Easy. Some artist compilations, whether they’re one disc or more, manage to squeeze in as much music as possible. You could say they’ve been thoroughly stuffed.
Two obvious examples are Dolly Parton’s Essential collections from RCA in the mid-nineties. Volume 1 contains twenty tracks from the eighties, and the superior Volume 2 contains twenty tracks from the seventies. Both are available for only ten bucks each on iTunes. They remain the most efficient way to get a handle on the deep and varied catalog of the country music legend, who ranked #1 among our 100 Greatest Women earlier this year.
But even better bang for your buck can be found in the catalog of the runner-up, #2-ranked Loretta Lynn. Far more so than Parton, Loretta Lynn was a singles artist, and there’s no deeper collection of her best work than Honky Tonk Girl, her mid-nineties box set. While Parton has yet to receive the deluxe box set treatment, Lynn’s career was perfectly encapsulated on three discs that span three decades and include seventy tracks. You can get it on iTunes for a steal at $29.99. That’s less than 43 cents a track!
What do you think are the best-stuffed country music collections?
Steve’s winning entry was about his favorite Toby Keith song, “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue”, which was also chosen by other readers as their favorite. Other popular entries included “Should’ve Been a Cowboy”, “Rock You Baby” and “He Ain’t Worth Missin’.”
Not getting quite as much love were my favorite Keith songs, specifically “As Good as I Once Was”, “Getcha Some”, “Wish I Didn’t Know Now” and “Burnin’ Moonlight.”
One of the landmarks of Dolly Parton’s career was the Trio album, her platinum-selling collaboration with Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris. It was one of the few country albums in history to receive a Grammy nomination for Album of the Year, and it won every major industry award, including the ACM for Top Album.
Congratulations to Steve from Boston, the winner of our 
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