For most of my life, I was only aware of Dolly as the cultural icon - the hit songs, 9-to-5, and of course her philanthropy work as our greatest living American. I knew she was immensely talented (and wrote hits for other people), but I was largely unaware of her early work. While writing the music for Lowcountry (my 2023 Guggenheim Fellowship album featuring the songs and oral histories of Gullah Elders), I was up late on Youtube listening to tambourine solos by singer Bessie Jones when I spotted a suggested video of Dolly performing her song “The Bridge.” 

 

In the video Porter Wagoner introduces a very young Dolly, “well now we’re going to bring up Miss Dolly Parton to sing just about the prettiest song you’ve ever heard.” Dolly, performing solo with only her guitar, sings a song about a woman falling in love, with the major moments of the affair all occurring on a bridge. The final verse turns as she reveals that she’s now alone on the bridge with her unborn child, left by her lover. She sings the final line: “My feet are moving slowly, closer to the edge. Here is where it started, and here is where I’ll end it.”

 

This “pretty little song” was sung live on television in the mid 1960’s. 

 

Dolly was strumming a 3-3-2 rhythm on her guitar - the ground rhythm from Africa, found in the ring shout, and still clapped and stomped in “shouting songs” in Gullah communities right here in South Carolina. As a musician in the American South, a focus of my academic work has been examining the connections in southern folk traditions. The banjo is an African instrument. Appalachian musical traditions are connected more to spirituals and shouting songs than people realize. 

 

I went on a deep dive of Dolly’s early albums and reached out to vocalist Liz Kelley, one of my favorite musicians and former students. I asked if she would be into the concept of deconstructing and reimagining Dolly’s songs. We came up with a song list and a set of rules: we would keep the vocal melodies and lyrics the same, we’d keep Dolly’s original keys, and all of her modulations. Everything else was open to change. With the guidelines in place, I got to work and wrote all the arrangements of this album in about two weeks.  

 

At the time, I was writing some original music for organ quintet and I was interested in the timbral qualities of the organ and how unlike a bass or piano, it can have unlimited sustain. A few weeks before the session, I bought a cornet on a whim and decided to play cornet on the project as I thought it might have different potential to blend with voice, guitar, and the organ. 

 

The music sat unplayed and unrecorded for about a year until I received a South Carolina Arts Commission Project Grant to partially fund the recording, so I got to work scheduling the session. Later that year I was also selected as South Carolina’s Music Composition Fellow.

 

The band is a blend of people that have come into my life since moving to South Carolina as students/collaborators and coworkers who have become musical colleagues. Demetrius Doctor (organ) is a former student all the way back to my Nashville days, and brings not only brilliance as a jazz musician, but is well-versed and comfortable in virtually every musical setting. Tim Fischer (guitar) is one of my best friends and former colleague at my last teaching gig. Because he’s such a great friend, I can torment him with really difficult guitar parts! Colleen Clark (drums) is my current colleague at USC and one of the most thoughtful and prepared musicians I’ve ever met. Cynthia Kelley (Liz’s sister) is also a former student and a brilliant engineer (not to mention guitarist, vocalist, and composer), so she both recorded and mixed the album.

 

We recorded the project in two days in Myrtle Beach, using the studio of my mentor, bassist Steve Bailey. We recorded on vintage gear with only Liz and Colleen isolated, and never more than 3-4 takes per song (often less). It was a joyful session and with the band staying at a nearby beach house, a great hang. 

 

Down from Dover:

 

First recorded on Dolly’s “The Fairest of them All” in 1971. Dolly weaves a narrative of a young woman who is pregnant, was sent away from home and is waiting for the father to come down to Dover. One of the big picture ideas in putting together these arrangements was finding a way to have the arrangement evolve to match the lyric narrative. Every verse/chorus is divided by a break that is based on the opening guitar rift (modulating in minor thirds) and each section has a different harmonic and groove treatment. One of the major challenges of deconstructing these songs was finding the natural way to insert solo sections within the narrative. In this case, I opted for the line “I’ll have no name to give it…” 

 

My Blue Tears:

 

Dolly’s originals have all these little quirks in phrasing and form that I felt would work well to develop in the arrangements. In this case, I extended Dolly’s opening phrases on the verse to make irregular phrase lengths that we matched with ambiguous harmony to add to the melancholic lyrics. One element I experimented with is creating musical hooks (in this case, the guitar line in the intro which reappears throughout) and the combination of using both the guitar and organ as single line instruments and in a comping role. Liz slays the outro. 

 

9 to 5: 

 

I wanted something on the album that was straight-ahead and would serve as an instrumental interlude. Although 9 to 5 isn’t really an “early” Dolly song, I thought it would be fun if we set up the tune as though we were going to play it and never actually play the chorus, instead playing free. I sketched this out the night before the session and the three short versions on the album are the first and only takes. After Demetrius’ church inspired verse, we set up the chorus and played time-no-changes instead. Every version goes to a different key center, with a different soloist.

 

The Bridge:

 

This is the first song that I arranged for the project, and I think it captures all of the elements that I tried to disperse throughout the other arrangements. Like Dolly’s performance, we use the “shouting rhythm” (3+3+2) from the Gullah tradition in the pedal bass. I opted to orchestrate the guitar solo at the “high point” of the relationship, building until Liz comes back in for the band to break on “alone” and we shift to a much more menacing feel, moving from B major to B minor (Dolly doesn’t do this in the original). I wanted the tension to continue building here so we layered these bach-esque lines and overdubs of a choir of Liz’s singing high harmonies. 

 

The Carroll County Accident:

 

This is the only song on the album that wasn’t written by Dolly, but I love her version and I felt the narrative and “twist” fit with the other selections on the album. This was the one song I felt wouldn’t work with a solo section interrupting the narrative, so instead I tried to write for the ensemble like a chamber group - weaving guitar and cornet lines together and opting less for traditional chords and pads to accompany Liz’s vocals.

 

Jolene:

 

This is the last song I arranged for the project. Again, Dolly’s songs have these little quirks, like Jolene’s 9 bar phrases with the hold on “Jolene…” This is probably the most “tune-ish” of the arrangements, where the changes are a reharmonization, an added vamp section with a bar of 7, and some angular lines in the guitar and cornet. I love Colleen’s solo on the out vamp on this. 

 

Little Bird:

 

Liz and I joked that most of the songs we selected for this project were about “awful men and birds.” We kept the cool banjo line from the original (which includes a bar of 3/4 followed by 5/8), and experimented with shifting between a waltz and 12/8 feel in solos. The extended interplay between the cornet and guitar at the end was my 2-part invention impression of the penny lane piccolo trumpet solo. I should’ve written something easier!

 

I am first and foremost a teacher. For me the greatest sign of love for music or a music maker is the time invested to listen to the music and the inquisitiveness to pick it apart and understand it. Digging into Dolly’s music was a rewarding, learning experience. Deconstructing and reconstructing it while respecting the essence of the originals was the driving force in this whole process. I hope you enjoy the album as much as we enjoyed making it.