Dolly Parton picks out her most “signature” song: “My favourite”
Dolly Parton has lived a thousand lives, and through it all, she somehow mastered the art of staying humble.
It’s one of the things that most people notice about her, fans or otherwise. Parton knows how to stay grounded, even after earning a name for herself as one of the biggest and most important musical artists in history. That, more than anything else, is the defining aspect of her legacy. Even better, Parton knows this about herself more than anybody else in the world.
As she recently told singer-songwriter Zac Brown, “I just try to stay down home. I try to remember that little girl who was singing on the front porch in a tin can. I refer to her more than you might think, because I remember what I wanted and how much I wanted it.”
If you were to ask Parton the secret to staying humble, it’s right there. She gets it from her upbringing, her memories, and everything that family means to her. She remembers how much she wanted this path, and how much she’s had to work hard to get there. She recognises, as she admitted in the same interview, that there are people out there who are far more talented, but her effort and commitment are what make her stand apart.
It’s also a major reason why her music withstands the test of time. In country music especially, it’s difficult to create material that resonates deeply enough to become timeless, and yet Parton managed to achieve just that by singing from the heart about the things that mean the most to her. Mainly, this meant channelling her values growing up without much money or other means, and being honest when it came to other matters of the heart, no matter how much it hurt at the time.
This rings true if you think of any of her most popular tracks. ‘I Will Always Love You’, for instance, was written as a goodbye and a thank you for her previous collaborator and mentor, Porter Wagoner, as a way of letting him know that, even though she appreciated everything that he did for her, she had to move on to pursue other creative endeavours. It’s also the reason why she found it difficult to let anybody else take it on as a cover, because it was like giving away a little piece of her heart.
The same goes for ‘Coat of Many Colors’. Arguably Parton’s most confessional and intimate song of her entire discography, ‘Coat of Many Colors’ taps into several defining themes of Parton’s offering, like her familial values, experiences growing up, and how learning to appreciate and cherish very little – a patchwork coat, in this instance – helped her exercise gratitude and stay humble later in life.
It’s also, as she once claimed, her signature song. “Well, my very favourite song,” she confessed on Colbert’s Late Show, “From a very personal level, is the ‘Coat of Many Colors’. It’s kinda a little signature song of mine.”
She also explained its meaning, saying, “It’s about my mom, it’s about family. It’s about acceptance – tolerance. And even speaks to bullying – how the kids made fun of me in school. They even teach out of it in some of the grammar schools in Tennessee. They use that little song [to say] it’s OK to be different, and we should love and accept one another.”
Elsewhere, Parton also recalled the experience of channelling the message into the song, saying that, at the time, she wondered why she had to go through such a challenging time, but that she eventually realised that the “suffering” was there for a reason, so that she could write a song about it all those years later, and cherish it as a part of who she was before all the noise.
