At some point, after a successful career and a comeback or two, certain singer/writers like Dolly Parton become artists above and beyond criticism. If her past work in pop and country hadn’t accomplished this for her, her recent string of roots albums on Sugar Hill certified her status as a senior statesperson of American music. Interestingly, reaching this exalted position also has a retroactive effect, bestowing the word “classic” on one’s earlier work. My Tennessee Mountain Home was originally released in 1973, and unlike 1971′s Coat of Many Colors, it follows a theme and feels like a real album. After reading a letter she wrote home in 1964 after she’d first arrived in Nashville, Parton sets the tone of the album with “I Remember”: My Tennessee Mountain Home will serve as a memory theater, recalling and lifting up the ideal of a modest, simple life in the country. This simplicity is evoked in small everyday details, like the “Old Black Kettle” and “Daddy’s Working Boots,” while the underlying values of hard work, God, and family are declared over and over. While one would never call Parton or most ’70s country artists postmodernists, the music here is very self-conscious of its rural roots and how the principles it sets forth are both different and at odds with the outside world. Parton has written all the material, and producer Bob Ferguson has done a much better job integrating songs and arrangements than on the previous Coat of Many Colors. And while there are a number of impure additions — cheesy background singing being the most annoying — acoustic guitars and Dobros play a prominent role. The 2007 reissue of My Tennessee Mountain Home is skimpy on bonus material. The sole extra, “Sacred Memories,” was originally issued on Love Is Like a Butterfly, and even with this one addition, the album is not quite 35 minutes long. Still, the album qualifies as classic Dolly Parton, and it’s nice to have it on CD. – Ronnie D. Lankford, Jr.
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