This week Dolly Parton's new record debuted on iTunes and hit the #1 spot on Great Britain's country charts.
Wait a minute. You didn't know Dolly had a new album? You must have been sick this week with Grammy flu.
By my count, Live from London is Parton's fourth concert album, following A Real Live Dolly (1970), the excellent Heartsongs: Life from Home (1994), and Live and Well (2004); and it's the first one she recorded overseas. Set in London's famous O2 Arena, where she performed two sold-out shows, this record confirms perhaps better than any before that Parton is a bona-fide international treasure.
As expected, Parton appears in a sparkly, low-chested and somewhat tacky costume. This one is turquoise, with silver gems, and it looks a bit like a cocktail version of the famous gown the fairies stitch for Disney's Sleeping Beauty. The outfit, the neckline, the wig, the fingernails, the plastic surgery — all fundamental pieces of the lady's persona, all on full display in the concert DVD. In "Backwoods Barbie", one of her finer newer compositions, Parton insists, "see me as I am / the way I look is just a country girl's idea of glam".
"Backwoods Barbie" is followed by another tune about Parton's schoolgirl sense of "glam" — the classic "Coat of Many Colors", the autobiographical tale of the winter jacket her mother stitched for her when she was a child, out of rags. A concert staple, "Coat of Many Colors" is the only track that appears on all four of Parton's live records. In London, she introduces it with stories about her father, a share-cropper and construction worker, who would take soapy water to the pigeon droppings on her statue in downtown Sevierville, Tenn., and her mother, the kind of woman "who could tell you anything and make it sound good, cook you anything and make it taste good". The tune has always been a heart-wrencher, but the older Parton grows, the more poignancy she invests in her performance, and now it just aches. The way the best country music does.
Of the concert's fifteen tracks, five come from the Backwoods Barbie (2008) album, two from her recent and acclaimed "roots" albums, and eight from her 1970s and 80s RCA heyday. A nearly even split between the old and the new — between the chart-toppers ("9 to 5") and the singles contemporary radio stations ignore ("Shinola"). Interestingly, the new compositions match or even surpass the originality and ambition of the older classics.
Article comments
1 - Suzie
Low chested? Describing a dress, you wrote LOW CHESTED? That is just ignorant. A dress is low cut. Not LOW CHESTED you clod.
2 - Suzie
LOW CHESTED is not how you describe such a garment. It is low cut. Please learn something about how to describe a woman's clothing if you intend to do so.
3 - Dusty Hixenbaugh
Thanks, Suzie, for your advice. I'll confess I typed the phrase quickly and didn't put much thought into it. I'll confess also that "low cut" seems less specific, to me, than "low chested", which at least identifies where said cut is low. In any case, you're correct: I'm no expert in costume design. And I appreciate your kind and thoughtful correction of my error.