The song Dolly Parton hopes she is remembered for: “It talks about my mom”
Realistically, the song Dolly Parton is going to be remembered for will be something like ‘Jolene’ or ‘I Will Always Love You’.
These two looming anthems that seem to be even bigger than her now: they’re timeless classics. But the most well-known works don’t always track as the best, and popularity doesn’t always equate to pride.
It’s not that Parton isn’t proud of those songs, because she is. “Do you know that song has been recorded, somebody told me, 450 times in the last 52 years?” the singer gushed to The Guardian, beaming as she added, “I’m so proud of it.”
That pride isn’t misplaced at all because ‘Jolene’ has nuance and intrigue. It’s a feat of storytelling as Parton dives into a feeling of not-quite betrayal, but a sharp sense of betrayal. Unlike the hundreds of thousands of other songs about that complicated emotion, Parton doesn’t rage an angry attack at the other woman. Instead, ‘Jolene’ is deeply human in the normality of her feelings as she comes at the character woman-to-woman.
‘I Will Always Love You’ is the exact opposite of that, though. Parton turned the emotions up to a ten to write an all-out ballad. It’s not only that the piece is powerful and seems to remain powerful no matter who sings it, but when we’re talking about pride and legacy, the fact that Parton wrote ‘Jolene’ and ‘I Will Always Love You’ on the same day? Surely that instantly locks in her idol status.
She’s proud of them both, she loves them both, but in Parton’s eyes, if she had a say in the matter, they wouldn’t be what she’s remembered for. “Well, I’m proud of all of them,” she said, but the track she’s pick was never one of her biggest hits, but instead was a personal victory for her.
“I think the one that’s most personal to me is the lil’ ‘Coat of Many Colors’, because it talks about my mom, my parents, and kind of gives you an insight,” she said. If she had the option to personally pick the track that would memorialise her, it makes sense for it to be the one that tells her own story.
While talking about Parton’s death while she’s still alive feels wrong, there’s a sense that ‘Coat of Many Colors’ will become deeply important after she’s gone. In her twinkling costumes and with her outright joy, it’s easy to forget the truth of Parton’s origins, which was as a dirt-poor child who was one of 12 siblings in a family that struggled to get by.
But they were a happy family as in this song, Parton recalls all the things her parents did for her, in particular, she recalls a coat her mother made her from scraps, singing, “There were rags of many colors Every piece was small / And I didn’t have a coat / And it was way down in the fall / Mama sewed the rags together / Sewin’ every piece with love.”
It’s also a story of the personal hardships Parton faced as a child, as her poverty was picked on by other children, leading to her being bullied badly as a kid. As the song moves through the story, it lands in a place of acceptance as Parton says that the ultimate rich in life is love, with her homemade coat representing that as she sings, “I tried to make them see / That 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 mama made for me.”
It’s a song with a message so pure that in 1996 it was turned into a children’s book so it could be taught in schools. It’s a song that captures her story, but to her, it’s also about “a world of things” as “it teaches about bullying, about love, about acceptance, about good parents”.
