All I Can Do

It's very good to see two more original Dolly Parton albums finally available on CD. Recorded in February 1976, "All I can do" was Dolly Parton's final country music album for RCA before she crossed over into the world of mainstream pop music. Produced by herself and Porter Wagoner, this album has an overall country-rock feel to it. Dominating electric lead-guitars and rich vocal harmonies from the Lea Jane Singers lend a sound reminiscent of early recordings by The Eagles. "Preacher Tom", the Emmylou Harris-penned "Boulder To Birmingham" and the title track also have a strong gospel flavour. As usual for Dolly Parton's country music albums, most of the songs are written by herself. Aside from the title track which hit #3 in the country music singles chart, other Dolly Parton classics on the album are "Hey, Lucky Lady" and "Shattered Image" - a song written in response to derogatory allegations about her in tabloid newspapers. "All I Can Do" is a lively and thoroughly enjoyable album and the finale in a series of 16 purely country music albums which were recorded by Dolly in RCA's "Nashville Sound" studios - albums that represent the absolute cream of her music. "New Harvest...First Gathering" was Dolly Parton's first crossover album and was released in 1977. Produced by herself and co-produced by Gregg Perry, the album wasn't the huge commercial success that she had hoped for, perhaps because it simply lacks the quality of it's predecessor in the choice and arrangements of some of the songs and in it's overall production. Nevertheless, the album has it's highlights. Dolly clearly demonstrates that she hasn't abandoned her country roots with "Applejack" - a favorite with fans that she had previously performed live. Other highlights are "Light Of A Clear Blue Morning" which was released as a single, and the dreamy love-song favorite "You are" which in production quality is superior to most of the other tracks on the album. Apart from Smokey Robinson's "My Girl" and Otis Redding's "(Your Love Has Lifted Me) Higher and Higher" the songs are written by Dolly herself. Whilst "New Harvest...First Gathering" isn't one of Dolly Parton's best offerings, it does contain some nice songs which makes purchasing a copy of the album worthwhile. Dolly's ambition of broadening her appeal and bringing herself to the attention of the pop music world wasn't realised with this album but it would be later on in the same year with the international smash hit single and album "Here You Come Again".

To coincide with Dolly's European tour of 2007, there were several CD releases including yet another best of compilation and three twofers (of which this is one) 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. This particular CD features two wonderful albums although they weren't among those that I most wanted to get on CD. I'd certainly have put Love is like a butterfly, Touch your woman, Bargain store and Bubbling over ahead of them. Still, if enough people buy this and the other available Dolly albums, maybe I'll get my preferred choices one day.

The first of the two albums here was also the last Dolly solo album in which Porter Wagoner was involved. Porter was once a hugely successful country singer in his own right, with a long string of country hits in the fifties and sixties (and a few later). Porter was the first singer to have success with Green green grass of home (it was a top five country hit for him), but just as that song is now associated with Tom Jones, so Porter is mostly remembered as the man who took Dolly from obscurity to stardom. On this 1976 album, he is credited as co-producer with Dolly. Of the songs, the title track was a top three American country hit with the only other American single, Hey lucky lady, scraping into the country top twenty. In Britain, Shattered image was released as a single and received plenty of airplay but didn't chart. The song received a new lease of life when Dolly re-recorded it for a more recent album, Halos and horns, with a different arrangement.

Life's like poetry (a cover of a Merle Haggard song) first appeared on Merle's album Keep movin' on. That album (as I said in my review of the twofer that featured it) has much of interest to Dolly fans including one song (Kentucky gambler) written by Dolly and another song (Always wanting you) written by Merle about Dolly. Another song here, Boulder to Birmingham (a cover of an Emmylou song) might have been Dolly's way of returning a compliment, Emmylou having covered Coat of many colors the year before. The two were great friends and one song (To Daddy) that Dolly wrote for this album didn't make the final cut. Emmylou recorded the song even before the album was released and Dolly dropped her own version thinking that Emmylou's version was better. Emmylou's version eventually appeared on her 1978 album, Quarter moon in a ten cent town, whence it was released as a single and became a top three country hit. Dolly eventually re-recorded the song for a live album, Heartsongs, and had a top twenty country hit with that version. Dolly's original 1976 version then became available on a compilation, I will always love you - the essential Dolly Parton volume one, that featured another rarity, a Dolly solo version of Real love, her 1985 country chart topping duet with Kenny Rogers. Having heard Dolly's 1976 version of To Daddy, I can say that it is brilliant and should never have been dropped from All I can do. It's a pity that the opportunity was not taken to include it as a bonus track here.

The remaining tracks on All I can do are all Dolly originals of a very high quality, these being The fire that keeps you warm (previously recorded as a Porter and Dolly duet), When the sun goes down tomorrow, I'm a drifter, Falling out of love with me (more recently recorded by Pinmonkey with Dolly) and Preacher Tom (which I seem to remember reading was the track that replaced To Daddy). So while this album comes behind the other four that I mentioned at the top of my review, it's not far behind them and I'm very pleased to have it on CD.

I'm also pleased to have New Harvest first gathering on CD, though it was further down my list of priorities. Following the split with Porter, Dolly co-produced the album with Gregg Perry. With this album, Dolly attempted but failed to get a slice of the pop action; the album was still essentially country but caused some disquiet among country fans at the time. As we all know, time works in mysterious ways and it now seems that a lot of Dolly fans wanted this album more than any other to be made available on CD. (Having seen how internet surveys are sometimes conducted, I do wonder about the reliability of those findings.)

The one solidly country track here is Applejack, which ought to have been released as a single but wasn't because Dolly was trying to establish her credentials as a pop singer. (So why was it included on the album? As a token to country fans?) The big single here was Light of a clear blue morning (which has been covered by Glen Campbell among others), which didn't quite make the country top ten. It's interesting to note that this song appears less frequently on Dolly compilations than Applejack. The album includes covers of Higher and higher (Jackie Wilson's song that also provided Rita Coolidge with a pop hit) and My love (a gender adaptation of the Temptations classic, My girl). The remaining songs, all original, include a nice mix of up-tempo songs and ballads, two of the latter (You are, Where beauty lives in memory) being particularly noteworthy.

So here are two great Dolly albums. Buy them to encourage further releases.