“Most personal to me”: The one song Dolly Parton will always be proud of
It’s impossible for someone to go into the studio and walk out with their proudest achievement. It’s one thing to make something that holds up to the passage of time, but anyone who claims to have God’s fist to music in their possession whenever they walk out with a new album is tempting fate half the time. And while Dolly Parton has been around long enough to have different musical periods throughout her life, she knows that there are some special moments that are going to be a part of her life forever after she recorded them.
But in the context of the country music world, Parton was one of the most badass figures anyone could have asked for. While it wasn’t out of the question for people like Loretta Lynne and Emmylou Harris to make songs with a softer take on country music, Parton never lost her integrity along the way. Some tunes may have been a bit more silly than others, but she was proud to be that same little girl who was more than happy to have been given a shot to play the Grand Ole Opry back in the day.
Going through her catalogue, though, there aren’t very many times when she has completely struck out. Even when she’s in the background of some songs on the Trio albums with Linda Ronstadt and Harris, you can tell it’s her voice coming in within the first few syllables, always comforting when the time comes for it and willing to lay down the law when she needed to as well.
And even though Parton has known a life of stardom for over half of her life at this point, she knew never to take any part of her career for granted. She had come from nothing and suddenly blossomed into one of the greatest songwriters of her generation, so if she was going to be a star, she wanted to make sure that the little girl that she was back in the day was still able to look her in the eye over all these years.
Songs like ‘Jolene’ and ‘I Will Always Love You’ might have a more storied history, but Parton knew that Coat of Many Colors was a far more personal album than anything she had ever made. That child of the cover had officially grown into one of the most important figures in country music, but if she wanted to keep her momentum going, she wanted to do so with a song that was about where she came from.
After all, country music is always about finding the humanity behind every tune, and Parton was always proud to have a song that celebrated her humble beginnings, saying, “I’m proud of all of them. I think the one that’s most personal to me is ‘Coat of Many Colors,’ because it talks about my mom, my parents, and kind of gives you an insight. It also covers bullying, acceptance and all that.”
Out of all the pieces of this story, though, the bullying angle is the one that always hits the hardest. Not all of the kids were receptive to this coat that her mother made her, but Parton knew from when she was a child that she wanted to respect where she came from rather than cower to what every other kid wanted her to be.
Which is probably why the song works for people of every generation as well. Not everyone knows what it’s like to have their mother sew their clothes for them before they go to school, but everyone knows what it’s like to be different and critiqued for it, and Parton knew better than anyone that those differences are far from a disability. If anything, it’s what makes us who we are.
