The songwriter Dolly Parton called “one of the world’s greatest”
Anyone that Dolly Parton admired usually had to focus on their songs before anything else.
As much as Parton could have made countless albums of her own tunes whenever she found the right melody, the best power players she knew in Nashville were always the ones who were looking to find the best musicians to bring one of her tunes to life. And while no one quite sang Parton’s songs the way that she could, she was always more than happy to put a spotlight on the kind of musicians that deserved a lot more credit than they ended up getting.
Parton knew all too well about not getting the kind of attention that she wanted to have when working with Porter Wagoner. She was forever grateful to Wagoner for giving her a chance when they sang songs together, but she was never going to be happy living in his shadow for the rest of her life. She wanted the chance to spread out, and her solo career is a lot closer to what she had always wanted to be.
But despite looking like one of the most wholesome people in the world, Parton also didn’t take shit from anyone. She wanted the opportunity to build a name for herself, and she wasn’t going to let anybody stand in her way when she was making her songs. She was proud of where she came from, and she wasn’t about to let a single person get their hands on her tunes and try to shape them in their own way.
If you look at her track record, though, some of Parton’s best performances also involved interpreting other people’s songs. Her duets with Wagoner back in the day are absolute beauties from the stone age of country music, and while there are still a few people that can’t get over the sappiness of ‘Islands in the Stream’, it’s not like she and Kenny Rogers don’t have chemistry whenever they sing together.
But as far as the best writers of all time go, Parton knew the all-time greats were the ones that not everyone saw up close. She had known what Mac Davis was capable of when he was making a name for himself back in the day, but even though he had a wealth of albums to his name, he would forever be known as the one who penned hits for other people, like giving Elvis Presley the songs ‘In the Ghetto’ and ‘A Little Less Conversation’.
And while Parton already had her ongoing issues with Presley’s people, she felt that Davis should never be forgotten for the kind of music he made, saying upon hearing of his death, “Many hearts are broken today, including my own, with the death of one of my dearest friends, Mac Davis. We lost one of the world’s greatest writers, singers, and entertainers.” Parton might not have had the time to work with him as much as she could, but she definitely had the same songwriting muscle that he did.
Not every one of Davis’s songs had to be the most complicated thing in the world but when you look at his songs compared to Parton’s, they are both dwelling on the slice-of-life style songs that country was built on. They didn’t want to write about something they didn’t know about first-hand whenever they talked about falling in love for the first time or the sights that they saw when looking out their window every single day.
It’s that relatability that all great country music is built on, and while we might not know what it’s like to shoot a man in Reno like Johnny Cash did, Parton and Davis were always the kind to make the best music about everyday people. They never claimed to be all that different from their audience, and if they had a platform, they were going to sing about the simple pleasures of life.
