SHE SAILED AWAY, PROMISED SHE'LL RETURN ONE DAY...

Dear Dolly,

I had the opportunity to see you perform live in 1993 at the Circus Maximus Theater in Atlantic City. I had visited the city drawn by Bruce Springsteen's song, only to encounter the goddess of country music.

As a huge fan of folk music -and by extension, country music- I have always followed and enjoyed your work, alongside that of Tammy, Shania, and Emmylou. Tammy left us some years ago, and today you have decided to join her.

Artists possess the greatness of never truly dying, for your works endure through time. While the vast majority of people will likely remember you for "Jolene" or as the original songwriter of "I Will Always Love You" -a song Whitney later covered with the kind of breathtaking excellence only she could achieve- for me, the song that has always moved me the most is "Coat of Many Colors." It is a masterpiece with incredibly powerful lyrics and chords as simple as your voice; for that is what your voice was: simple, powerful, honest, transparent, and sensitive.

We are currently sailing the Mediterranean, and our small tribute to you is "Sail Away." We know you won't be coming back, but we also know that one day we, too, will arrive at the place where you must now be singing and bringing happiness to others.

We will always love you. Thank you so much for your music, your commitment to children's education, and your love of literature.

It's my tears that fill this ocean
And my sorrow rocks these waves
'Cause my true love took the notion
To take my heart and sail away

Sail away, he sailed away
Promised he'd be back one day
Left me crying in his wake
Sailors, they sail away
He sailed away, he sailed away

Mothers warn your sweet young daughters
Pure of heart and fair of face
Sparkling eyes like sun on water
Tell them "Sailors sail away"

Sail away, they sail away
Promise they'll return one day
Some will do just as they say
But mostly they just sail away
They sail away, they sail away
Sailors they sail away

A sailor's true love is the sea
They give what's left to you and me
And yet we love them anyway
Knowing they
Will sail away
Sailors they just sail away

Sail away, they sail away
They sail away, they sail away
They sail away, they sail away
They sail away, they sail away

More information: Dolly Parton

Songwriting is my way of channeling 
my feelings and my thoughts. 
Not just mine, but the things I see, 
the people I care about. 
My head would explode 
if I didn't get some of that stuff out.

Dolly Parton

DOLLY PARTON & THE STONES, 'COAT OF MANY COLORS'

Today, The Stones and The Grandma has received a new surprise in Las Vegas. Dolly Parton, the American singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, record producer, actress, author, businesswoman, and humanitarian, known primarily for her work in country music, has visited the family and has sung especially for them. The family has wanted to thank Dolly Parton and her foundation, which is working very hard to find a new vaccine against COVID19. The Grandma loves Dolly Parton's music, and she has been very happy when Dolly has sung her favourite song, Coat of Many Colors.

Coat of Many Colors is a song written and recorded by American country music singer Dolly Parton, which has been described on a number of occasions as her favourite song she has written. It was released in September 1971 as the second single and title track from the album Coat of Many Colors.

She composed the song in 1969, while travelling with Porter Wagoner on a tour bus. She explained in her 1994 memoir, My Life and Other Unfinished Business, because she could find no paper, as the song came to her, she wrote it on the back of a dry cleaning receipt from one of Wagoner's suits; when the song became a hit, Wagoner had the receipt framed. She recorded the song in April 1971, making it the title song for her Coat of Many Colors album. The song reached #4 on the U.S. country singles charts.

The song tells of how Parton's mother stitched together a coat for her daughter out of rags given to the family. As she sewed, she told her child the biblical story of Joseph and his Coat of Many Colors. The excited child, with patches on my britches and holes in both my shoes, rushed to school, just to find the others laughing and making fun of me for wearing a coat made of rags.

More information: Dolly R. Parton, Country Music from Tennessee

And oh I did not understand it, for I felt I was rich
And I told them of the love my momma sewed in every stitch
And I told 'em all the story momma told me while she sewedAnd how my coat of many colors was worth more than all their clothes

The song concludes with Parton singing the moral of her story:

But they didn't understand it, and I tried to make them see
One is only poor, only if they choose to be
Now I know we had no money, but I was rich as I could be
In my coat of many colors my momma made for me

On the original LP release of the 1975 compilation Best of Dolly Parton, the printed lyrics to the song appeared in the inner gatefold of the album, including a final verse that has never been included on any of Parton's recordings of the song:

Through life I've remained happy and good luck is on my side.I have everything that anyone could ever want from life.
But nothing is as precious as my mama's memory,
and my coat of many colors that mama made for me.

More information: Las Vegas Sun

Dolly says the original coat was used for various other purposes, but her mother did make a new one to use on display in her Chasing Rainbows Museum at Dollywood. Wagoner also donated the framed dry cleaning receipt -on which Parton composed the song- to the museum, where it now hangs.

Shania Twain recorded a cover version of the song on the 2003 Parton tribute album Just Because I'm a Woman: Songs of Dolly Parton, with accompaniment by Alison Krauss and Union Station. This version peaked at #57 on the Billboard Hot Country Singles & Tracks chart, based only on unsolicited airplay.

Other cover versions include a 1976 recording by Emmylou Harris on her Reprise Records debut Pieces of the Sky; decades later, Harris performed the song live in 2017 for the getTV special A Nashville Christmas. A recording of the song by Eva Cassidy was released on the 2008 posthumous collection Somewhere.

Scottish comedian Billy Connolly recorded a version in 1975 on his album Get Right Intae Him (Unicorn Artists). This was a serious version unlike his comical song D.I.V.O.R.C.E. which parodied D-I-V-O-R-C-E, made popular by Tammy Wynette and also covered by Parton. Melinda Schneider and Beccy Cole covered the song on their album Great Women of Country (2014).

In 2005, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution ranked Coat of Many Colors number 10 on its list of 100 Songs of the South. A 1996 children's picture book of the song, with illustrations by Judith Sutton, was published by Harpercollins Children's Books.

In 2008, Kristy Lee Cook performed this song on American Idol during Dolly Parton Week.

In 2011, Parton's recording was added to the Library of Congress's National Recording Registry list of sound recordings that are culturally, historically, or aesthetically important, and/or inform or reflect life in the United States.

More information: Las Vegas Sun

Being a star just means that you just find your own special place,
and that you shine where you are.
To me, that's what being a star means.

Dolly Parton

DOLLY R. PARTON, COUNTRY MUSIC FROM TENNESSEE

Dolly Parton

Today, The Grandma is still at home. She wanted to go to watch a football match in the stadium but the weather is very cold and extremely windy. The authorities have declared an emergency state because of the weather and she has preferred to stay at home.

The Grandma has been listening to some country music. She likes folk music a lot and American country music has got lots of incredible artists. It is impossible to choose only one but today, The Grandma has listened to Dolly Parton's albums to commemorate her anniversary. Dolly Parton was born on a day like today in 1946 and the best way to homage her is listening to her songs and talking about her career.

Dolly Rebecca Parton (born January 19, 1946) is an American singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, record producer, actress, author, businesswoman, and humanitarian, known primarily for her work in country music. 

After achieving success as a songwriter for others, Parton made her album debut in 1967 with Hello, I'm Dolly. With steady success during the remainder of the 1960s, both as a solo artist and with a series of duet albums with Porter Wagoner, her sales and chart peak came during the 1970s and continued into the 1980s. Parton's albums in the 1990s did not sell as well, but she achieved commercial success again in the new millennium and has released albums on various independent labels since 2000, including her own label, Dolly Records.

More information: Dolly Parton

Parton's music includes 25 Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA)-certified gold, platinum and multi-platinum awards. She has had 25 songs reach No. 1 on the Billboard country music charts, a record for a female artist, tied with Reba McEntire. She has 41 career top-10 country albums, a record for any artist, and she has 110 career charted singles over the past 40 years.

She has garnered nine Grammy Awards, two Academy Award nominations, ten Country Music Association Awards, seven Academy of Country Music Awards, three American Music Awards, and is one of only seven female artists to win the Country Music Association's Entertainer of the Year Award. Parton has received 47 Grammy nominations.

In 1999, Parton was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. She has composed over 3,000 songs, including I Will Always Love You, a two-time U.S. country chart-topper, as well as an international pop hit for Whitney Houston, Jolene, Coat of Many Colors, and 9 to 5.

Dolly Parton

She is also one of the few to have received at least one nomination from the Academy Awards, Grammy Awards, Tony Awards, and Emmy Awards.

As an actress, she has starred in films such as 9 to 5 (1980) and The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (1982), for which she earned Golden Globe nominations for Best Actress, as well as Rhinestone (1984), Steel Magnolias (1989), Straight Talk (1992) and Joyful Noise (2012).

Dolly Rebecca Parton was born January 19, 1946, in a one-room cabin on the banks of the Little Pigeon River in Pittman Center; a very small community in Sevier County in the Great Smoky Mountains of East Tennessee. She is the fourth of 12 children born to Avie Lee Caroline (1923–2003) and Robert Lee Parton Sr. (1921–2000). Her father, known as Lee, worked in the mountains of East Tennessee, first as a sharecropper and later tending his own small tobacco farm and acreage. He also worked construction jobs to supplement the farm's small income.

Mr. Parton was illiterlate but Dolly Parton often says despite that fact, he was one of the smartest people she's known in regards to business and making a profit. Avie Lee was homemaker for the large family. Her 11 pregnancies, the tenth being twins, in 20 years made her a mother of 12 by age 35. Often in poor health, she still managed to keep house and entertain her children with songs and tales of mountain folklore. Avie Lee's father, Jake Owens, was a Pentecostal preacher, so Parton and her siblings all attended church regularly. 

Parton has long credited her father for her business savvy, and her mother's family for her musical abilities. While Dolly Parton was still very young, her family moved to a farm on nearby Locust Ridge. Most of her cherished memories of youth happened there, and it is the place about which she wrote the song My Tennessee Mountain Home in the 1970s. Parton bought back the Locust Ridge property in the 1980s. Two of her siblings are no longer living; Larry died shortly after birth in 1955, and Floyd died in 2018.

More information: Dollywood Foundation

Dolly Parton's middle name comes from her maternal great-great-grandmother Rebecca Dunn Whitted. She has described her family as dirt poor. Parton's father paid the doctor who helped deliver her with a bag of cornmeal. She outlined her family's poverty in her early songs Coat of Many Colors and In the Good Old Days (When Times Were Bad).

They lived in a rustic, one-bedroom cabin in Locust Ridge, just north of the Greenbrier Valley of the Great Smoky Mountains, a predominantly Pentecostal area. Music played an important role in her early life. She was brought up in the Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee), the church her grandfather, Jake Robert Owens, pastored. Her earliest public performances were in the church, beginning at age six. At seven, she started playing a homemade guitar. When she was eight, her uncle bought her first real guitar.

Parton began performing as a child, singing on local radio and television programs in the East Tennessee area. By ten, she was appearing on The Cas Walker Show on both WIVK Radio and WBIR-TV in Knoxville, Tennessee. At 13, she was recording the single Puppy Love on a small Louisiana label, Goldband Records, and appeared at the Grand Ole Opry, where she first met Johnny Cash, who encouraged her to follow her own instincts regarding her career.

Dolly Parton

After graduating from Sevier County High School in 1964, Parton moved to Nashville the next day. Her initial success came as a songwriter, having signed with Combine Publishing shortly after her arrival; with her frequent songwriting partner, her uncle Bill Owens, she wrote several charting singles during this time, including two top-10 hits: Bill Phillips's Put It Off Until Tomorrow (1966) and Skeeter Davis's Fuel to the Flame (1967).

Her songs were recorded by many other artists during this period, including Kitty Wells and Hank Williams Jr. She signed with Monument Records in 1965, at age 19; she initially was pitched as a bubblegum pop singer. She released a string of singles, but the only one that charted, Happy, Happy Birthday Baby, did not crack the Billboard Hot 100. Although she expressed a desire to record country material, Monument resisted, thinking her unique voice with its strong vibrato was not suited to the genre.

After her composition Put It Off Until Tomorrow, as recorded by Bill Phillips with Parton, uncredited, on harmony, went to number six on the country chart in 1966, the label relented and allowed her to record country.

Her first country single, Dumb Blonde, composed by Curly Putman, one of the few songs during this era that she recorded but did not write, reached number 24 on the country chart in 1967, followed by Something Fishy, which went to number 17. The two songs appeared on her first full-length album, Hello, I'm Dolly.

In 1967, musician and country music entertainer Porter Wagoner invited Parton to join his organization, offering her a regular spot on his weekly syndicated television program The Porter Wagoner Show, and in his road show. As documented in her 1994 autobiography, initially, much of Wagoner's audience was unhappy that Norma Jean, the performer whom Parton had replaced, had left the show, and was reluctant to accept Parton, sometimes chanting loudly for Norma Jean from the audience. With Wagoner's assistance, however, Parton was eventually accepted. Wagoner convinced his label, RCA Victor, to sign her. 

More information: The New York Times

RCA decided to protect their investment by releasing her first single as a duet with Wagoner. That song, a remake of Tom Paxton's The Last Thing on My Mind, released in late 1967, reached the country top 10 in January 1968, launching a six-year streak of virtually uninterrupted top-10 singles for the pair.

Parton's first solo single for RCA Victor, Just Because I'm a Woman, was released in the summer of 1968 and was a moderate chart hit, reaching number 17.

In 1974, her song, I Will Always Love You, written about her professional break from Wagoner, went to number one on the country chart.

Dolly Parton

Parton had three solo singles reach number one on the country chart in 1974 (Jolene, I Will Always Love You and Love Is Like a Butterfly), as well as the duet with Porter Wagoner, Please Don't Stop Loving Me.

From 1974 to 1980, she consistently charted in the country Top 10, with eight singles reaching number one. Parton had her own syndicated television variety show, Dolly! (1976–77) During this period, many performers, including Rose Maddox, Kitty Wells, Olivia Newton-John, Emmylou Harris, and Linda Ronstadt covered her songs.

In 1978, Parton won a Grammy Award for Best Female Country Vocal Performance for her Here You Come Again album. She continued to have hits with Heartbreaker, (1978) Baby I'm Burning (1979) and You're the Only One, (1979) all of which charted in the pop Top 40 and topped the country chart.

Between 1981 and 1985, she had 12 Top-10 hits; half of them hit number one. She continued to make inroads on the pop chart as well. Her duet with Kenny Rogers, Islands in the Stream, written by the Bee Gees and produced by Barry Gibb, spent two weeks at number one in 1983.

In the mid-1980s, her record sales were still relatively strong, with Save the Last Dance for Me, Downtown, Tennessee Homesick Blues (1984), Real Love (another duet with Kenny Rogers), Don't Call It Love (1985) and Think About Love (1986).

Along with Emmylou Harris and Linda Ronstadt, she released Trio (1987) to critical acclaim. Trio won the Grammy Award for Best Country Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal and was nominated for a Grammy Award for Album of the Year.

A duet with Ricky Van Shelton, Rockin' Years (1991) reached number one, though Parton's greatest commercial fortune of the decade came when Whitney Houston recorded I Will Always Love You for the soundtrack of the feature film The Bodyguard (1992). Both the single and the album were massively successful.

More information: The Boot

Parton's soundtrack album from the 1992 film, Straight Talk, however, was less successful. But her 1993 album Slow Dancing with the Moon won critical acclaim and did well on the charts, reaching number four on the country albums chart, and number 16 on the Billboard 200 album chart.

Similar to her earlier collaborative album with Harris and Ronstadt, Parton released Honky Tonk Angels in the fall of 1993 with Loretta Lynn and Tammy Wynette. It was certified as a gold album by the Recording Industry Association of America and helped revive both Wynette and Lynn's careers.

In 1994, Parton contributed the song You Gotta Be My Baby to the AIDS benefit album Red Hot+Country produced by the Red Hot Organization

A second and more contemporary collaboration with Harris and Ronstadt, Trio II, was released in early 1999. Its cover of Neil Young's song After the Gold Rush won a Grammy Award for Best Country Collaboration with Vocals.

Parton earned her second Academy Award nomination for Best Original Song for Travelin' Thru, which she wrote specifically for the feature film Transamerica (2005). Due to the song's (and film's) acceptance of a transgender woman, Parton received death threats.

In 2013, Parton and Kenny Rogers reunited for the title song of his album You Can't Make Old Friends. For their performance, they were nominated at the 2014 Grammy Awards for Grammy Award for Best Country Duo/Group Performance.

More information: The Guardian

My songs are like my children

-I expect them to support me when I'm old.

Dolly Parton