Dolly Parton Album: “Very Best of Dolly Parton [BMG 2007]”

To coincide with Dolly's European tour of 2007, there were several CD releases including yet another best of compilation (this album) and three twofers featuring six albums, five of which had never been released on CD while the other had only briefly been available in the early days of CD. Three of Dolly's older albums were also released with bonus tracks although only the bonus tracks were new to CD, the main albums having already been made available on earlier releases. Despite the fact that all the tracks here have been released many times before, this compilation was hugely successful. There are still plenty of people out there who don't own any of Dolly's music and this CD provides such people with most of the tracks that they're likely to be familiar with.

Dolly's two British top ten hits (Jolene, Islands in the stream) are both here, along with the Dolly song made even more famous by Whitney Houston (I will always love you) and Dolly's major American pop hits (9 to 5, Here you come again). Another song that Brits might recognize even if they don't normally listen to Dolly's music is the theme to the old TV series Butterflies (Love is like a butterfly), although Dolly`s own version wasn`t actually used for the theme - Clare Torrey recorded a cover of it for the purpose. Dolly's cover of an old Drifters classic (Save the last dance for me) is often included on compilations of her music, as it is here, because it was successful in the American country charts, but it sounds even further removed from country music than the original.

As if these familiar songs were not enough, there are other songs here that were important to Dolly's early career and popularity including Bargain store, My Tennessee mountain home and Coat of many colors, any or all of which may be familiar to people far beyond Dolly's fan base. The compilation is certainly varied, featuring disco-styled songs (Baby I'm burning, Potential new boyfriend) and hillbilly songs (Applejack, Tennessee homesick blues). You could say there's something for everybody, but unless you have broad musical tastes, there are likely to be some tracks you don't like. Dolly has recorded many different types of music over her 40+ years in the music business, so compilations of her music inevitably reflect that unless they focus on specific periods of her career.

If you haven't got any of Dolly's music and you're looking for the obvious oldies with some of the best of the rest, this is a good one to choose. If you enjoy it enough to want more, there's also a volume 2.