Heartsongs 9/27/1994, Yahoo! Music, Brian Mansfield
Parton, who is a breathtaking live performer, recorded this album over two days at her Dollywood theme park. Heartsongs features a top-notch backing band with special guests...
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By the early '90s, Dolly Parton's credibility as an authentic country singer was severely waning, thanks to an overabundance of pop crossover singles, flash-in-the-pan...
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Two of a Kind is an earlier anthology of the material covered by The Essential Porter Wagoner and Dolly Parton. Both anthologies have 20 tracks, exactly half of which...
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This set kicked off RCA's long-overdue "essential" reissue series with a package by country's best-known ambassador, Dolly Parton. The volume one imprint on the album...
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Why Parton chose to revisit three of her most famous songs--"Jolene," "The Seeker" and "I Will Always Love You" (as a duet with Vince Gill)--is a mystery, since they don't...
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Something Special is something of a mixed bag from Dolly Parton, featuring a selection of new songs and re-recorded old material. While the newer songs are fine, they pale...
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Released after Whitney Houston made "I Will Always Love You" into a record-shattering smash hit, I Will Always Love You and Other Greatest Hits is designed for pop fans that...
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The Essential Dolly Parton, Vol. 2 doesn't cover the late-'60s and early-'70s pure country hits that were also ignored by its predecessor, choosing to concentrate on her...
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Hungry Again 8/25/1998, Yahoo! Music, Billy Altman
"Why don't more women sing honky-tonk songs?" Dolly Parton asks on her new album, which the country diva recorded in the basement studio of her cousin (and this...
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Dolly Parton has long held her place in country music with a style of class and dignity. A tangible physical presence, her songwriting and singing sometimes tend to be...
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Back in 1994, Emmylou Harris, Linda Ronstadt, and Dolly Parton went into the studio to record a follow-up to 1987's Grammy-winning, platinum-certified collaborative album,...
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Widely agreed upon as technically perfect, this five-year-in-the-making collaboration among these Oprytown divas should be a diamond -- or three diamonds: a Trio II tiara....
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This album surrounds the title track, her only pop number one as a performer, with other songs about work, including "But You Know I Love You," "The House Of The Rising Sun"...
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Dolly Parton has never been an albums artist, and RCA has always been adept at shoving poorly organized products onto the market (look how they've treated Elvis Presley)....
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"Just because I'm blonde, don't think I'm dumb," Parton sings on her first top 40 hit, which is included on this 12-track compilation of her '60s recordings for Monument...
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More recordings from Parton's Monument days. Parton's voice and Parton's songwriting style are still developing, and, despite arrangements that occasionally include...
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World of Dolly Parton, Vol. 2 contains the remaining 12 songs from Parton's days at Monument Records, including "Daddy Won't Be Home Anymore," "This Boy Has Been Hurt," "I'm...
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The long-overdue box set turns out to be a cursory two-CD set that cheats on her better early years in favor of latter-day hits. Still, it's the best retrospective...
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After the disastrous Rainbow, Parton got back to basics (more or less), working with Ricky Skaggs. Of course, "back to basics" for Parton means things like throwing a dobro...
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Parton moved to Columbia in the late 80s and started paying more attention to her recordings, the best of which is this album. It's produced by Ricky Skaggs, who brought in...
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Parton's creative spirit dominates this trio album, which makes sense, since she's the one of the three singers who's had the most creative control over her music. There's...
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Legend is a hefty title to carry, especially if you're still kicking. The standards are high, the expectations immense. Dolly Parton, Loretta Lynn, and Tammy Wynette are,...
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Parton's own best albums came from RCA, which prefers to repackage and reissue hits compilations. So, her album with Ronstadt and Harris is the place to start outside those...
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Bringing together Emmylou Harris, Dolly Parton, and Linda Ronstadt for the album Trio was a truly inspired idea, and not simply because they were three of the finest voices...
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The Best There Is is a solid, if too-brief overview of Dolly Parton's hits from the 1970s and early '80s; it includes many of her signature songs, among them the...
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She projects an admirable child-like sense of hope and positivism, which is matched to some degree by her thin, girlish vocal quality. It translates well in her...
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This is a well-programmed selection of Parton's RCA hits, among them "Jolene," "Coat of Many Colors," and "Me and Little Andy." ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music...
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Eagle When She Flies contains two of Parton's better recent hits--the title track and "Rockin' Years," a duet with Ricky Van Shelton--and is otherwise a solid album. Lorrie...
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She confirms that she's fully returned to the country fold, and is rewarded with her first million-selling album that wasn't a greatest-hits package. The title song is a...
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This is a good sampling of Parton's work in the first few years that she deliberately chased a crossover career in Hollywood. The country-pop stuff might offend purists, but...
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It might be the short length of this album that inevitably makes it feel like it just didn't quite all come together, yet there are plenty of high points, such as the catchy...
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Home For Christmas is, for Parton, a typically diverse holiday affair, calling on members of three different gospel choirs as well as small groups of acoustic musicians. The...
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Since it was recorded during the '80s, Home for Christmas sounds a bit too slick, especially for fans of her early material, but it's nevertheless a reasonably enjoyable...
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This starts off with two of Parton's best singles-- the title track, in which a woman begs the local temptress to leave her man alone, and the original version of "I Will...
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Jolene was Dolly Parton's first solo outing after officially leaving Porter Wagoner's show, so naturally many wondered if she could succeed without her old partner's...
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Dolly goes L.A. with synthesizers, drum machines, the works. It's so overblown she even messes up the gospel-based "The River Unbroken," a perfect song for her, and Smokey...
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A lot of critics would push this one aside, perhaps with good reason since she turned over much of the creative control on the project to David Malloy. But Malloy set out to...
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Parton's albums usually have a tinge of subtle, playful eroticism, but this album's first line--"You've seen me naked"--leaves an image even an album-closing gospel song...
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Slow Dancing with the Moon features a who's who of country music circa 1993; guests including Tanya Tucker, Vince Gill, Mary-Chapin Carpenter, Chet Atkins, Kathy Mattea and...
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Treasures 9/24/1996, Yahoo! Music, Brian Mansfield
Parton singing "Walking On Sunshine"? Parton doing Cat Stevens with Ladysmith Black Mambazo? This album of covers gets flat-out weird at times, but it also shows the breadth...
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If the listener senses déjà vu, it's only the idea they've heard before. Parton tried an album of covers called The Great Pretender in 1983 or so; those pop arrangements of...
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Dolly Parton had a number of hits in the late '60s as Porter Wagoner's duet partner, yet solo success eluded her until her 1971 album, Coat of Many Colors. The title track...
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Party people, listen up: the dance music album you've waited for your whole lives is here. You're going to be tempted to dismiss this as kitsch, but resist the temptation:...
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Dolly Parton found increasing success in the late '70s, and Heartbreaker showcases her increasing confidence beautifully. In 1978 Parton was the winner of the Country Music...
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Like other country music elders, Dolly Parton has found herself banished from radio stations worried about demographics, and, to her great credit, she's decided to instead...
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It was inevitable, especially considering her recent albums, that Dolly Parton would eventually go all the way back to the mountains with a bluegrass project.
A child of...
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After years of indifferent recordings, tepid movies, and talk-show bazoom jokes, Dolly Parton has begun to reconfigure herself as a latter-day bluegrass vocalist. This...
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Though Dolly Parton had been exploring her musical roots to various degrees throughout the last half of the '90s, her true return to form didn't occur until the release of...
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More angelic than devilish, Halos & Horns, the third in a series of back-to-the-roots styled acoustic albums the legendary country singer recorded for Sugar Hill label,...
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After two terrific (if not classic) roots releases, 1999's The Grass is Blue, and 2001's Little Sparrow, Dolly Parton appeared to be running out of inspiration by the time...
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Released simultaneously on CD and DVD (both feature the same program), Dolly Parton's 2002 tour, her first in a decade, is captured for posterity for the majority of her...
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Dolly Parton's volume in the RCA Country Legends series attempts to survey territory previously covered by two volumes of The Essential Dolly Parton series, still the best...
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Dolly Parton has had countless collections, including many billed as either "definitive" or "ultimate," which is the billing given BMG Heritage's 2003 release. Running 20...
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Just Because I'm a Woman was Dolly Parton's first album for RCA Victor after a few modest hits for Monument and (more importantly) becoming a regular on Porter Wagoner's...
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Once again the Australians put the Nashvilleans to shame when it comes to packaging the finest tracks of a country music artist for reissue. This three-CD collection of...
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In 2001, BMG International released Joshua/Coat of Many Colors on one compact disc, which combined a pair of Dolly Parton albums originally released in 1971 by RCA -- Joshua...
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This Dolly Parton greatest-hits collection from BMG International doesn't include anything from her early days with Porter Wagoner, instead beginning with material from...
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Two of the things Dolly Parton has utilized as an artistic muse throughout her solo recording career are her rural Appalachian upbringing and her brave split from her...
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