{"id":241238,"date":"2026-01-19T19:01:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-19T19:01:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/241238\/"},"modified":"2026-01-19T19:01:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-19T19:01:08","slug":"dolly-parton-on-coat-of-many-colors-people-relate-to-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/241238\/","title":{"rendered":"Dolly Parton on ‘Coat of Many Colors’: ‘People Relate to It’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tDolly Parton<\/a> turns 80 years old today, but somehow she continues to possess all the vitality she had when she first arrived in Nashville from her native Sevierville, Tennessee, back in the Sixties. In honor of her milestone birthday, we publish \u2014 for the very first time \u2014\u00a0this interview about the making of her 1971 album Coat of Many Colors, which gave the Country Music<\/a> Hall of Fame member her signature autobiographical song. This story was originally presented as part of Rolling Stone\u2018s \u201c500 Greatest Albums\u201d podcast<\/a> series.<\/p>\n

\n\tDolly Parton has a number of songs that could be considered her signature: the warning \u201cJolene,\u201d the tireless \u201c9 to 5,\u201d and the royal ballad \u201cI Will Always Love You.\u201d But none come close to \u201cCoat of Many Colors,\u201d <\/a>her 1971 autobiographical tale about growing up in Appalachian poverty and the hand-sewn clothes that Parton and her siblings would wear to school. To this day, it summons visceral emotion, both in the woman who sang it and in the country music fans who hear it.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut the song also represents Parton\u2019s emergence as an all-around star: not just as a singer, but as a songwriter.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI was always trying to progress and try to do more, try to grow, and try to express myself musically as much as I could in every album that we did, but still stay true to myself,\u201d Parton tells Rolling Stone. \u201cI always take myself more seriously as a songwriter than I even do as a singer.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBy the time Parton walked into RCA Studio B in 1971 to record Coat of Many Colors, she had already been living in Music City for seven years. She moved to the city intending to be a songwriter, not a singer, but it would take a while for Nashville to recognize Parton as a great writer.<\/p>\n

\n\tOnce in Music City, Parton met a figure who\u2019d play a pivotal role in her life, Porter Wagoner<\/a>, a veteran country hitmaker who had his own TV variety show. Wagoner gave Parton her big break by casting her on his show, and the pair became frequent duet partners. They released 13 duet albums and won the Country Music Association Award for Vocal Duo of the Year three times. Wagoner even helped Parton pick which songs to record and was a looming presence in the studio.<\/p>\n

\t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cPorter was always involved in the production and working with the engineers and working with the musicians, making sure that they got it the way that that he wanted,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\n\tParton ended her musical partnership with Wagoner in 1974, writing him a heartfelt goodbye with \u201cI Will Always Love You.\u201d But when Parton recorded Coat of Many Colors in 1971, she was already starting to break away. To fully come into her own as a solo artist and songwriter, Parton knew she had to write the bulk of the album, and it all started with the title track, a clear-cut origin story about her childhood in East Tennessee.<\/p>\n

\n\tParton grew up poor in Sevierville, Tennessee, near the Great Smoky Mountains. The memory of her one-bedroom cabin was still fresh in Parton\u2019s mind when she moved to Nashville in 1964 after graduating high school. \u201cWe didn\u2019t have anything,\u201d she says. \u201cMama used to sew all of our quilts and curtains for the windows, remake our clothes, and make clothes out of feed sacks or scraps.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn \u201cCoat of Many Colors,\u201d Parton sang in plainspoken language about her poverty. The song draws on the biblical tale of Joseph and his treasured garment, the coat of many colors.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI went to school thinking I looked like Joseph,\u201d she says, unaware that she was about to be laughed at. \u201cI was upset with my mom, and I was crying because I felt she had told me a fib. Mama said, \u2018I don\u2019t want to ever hear you say that we\u2019re poor. We are rich in kindness and love and understanding.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\tRelated Content<\/p>\n

\n\tGrammy-winning songwriter Brandy Clark<\/a> says \u201cCoat of Many Colors\u201d succeeds because it\u2019s so universal. \u201cYou\u2019ve got family, you\u2019ve got religion, you\u2019ve got honesty, and you\u2019ve got poverty, and also being made fun of,\u201d she says. \u201cI think if you haven\u2019t had one of those five things go on, you probably haven\u2019t lived.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tParton first wrote the lyrics to \u201cCoat of Many Colors\u201d on a tour bus with Wagoner. The flashy country singer had his suits with him in a dry cleaner\u2019s bag and, when inspiration struck, Parton snatched the receipt from the bag and began scribbling. \u201cI just grabbed the tag \u2026 and I started writing \u2018Coat of Many Colors\u2019 on it. I finished the song pretty much on that,\u201d she recalls.<\/p>\n

\n\tDespite honoring Wagoner\u2019s request to cut some of his songs, Coat of Many Colors is distinctly Parton\u2019s album, and you can hear her take agency of her story. Rolling Stone writer Chet Flippo described it as \u201cthe first true flowering of Dolly Parton\u2019s faltering steps to emerge as a free musical soul and a major songwriter.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAlong with the title track, she wrote \u201cTraveling Man,\u201d about a young woman who makes plans to run off with a salesman, only to have her mother steal him first. Clark recognizes clues in the song, as well as in another Coat track, \u201cShe Never Met a Man She Didn\u2019t Like.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cShe was working her way to \u2018Jolene,\u2019\u201d Clark says of the songs.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe spirit of Parton\u2019s native Smoky Mountains is woven throughout the album. It\u2019s in the lyrics of the title track, in the song \u201cEarly Morning Breeze,\u201d and in the actual music of \u201cMy Blue Tears,\u201d a bluegrassy song that uses nature as a metaphor for heartbreak.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThose kind of songs are like a tribute to my Tennessee mountain home,\u201d Parton says. \u201cI wanted to get that old world sound with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt is mountain music,\u201d Clark echoes. \u201cAnd that\u2019s another theme that runs through Dolly\u2019s catalog. I always want to listen to Dolly in the fall, because I love to go to Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge when the leaves are turning. Dolly has figured out a way to make her music feel like that part of the country.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSonically, there\u2019s one outlier on the mostly acoustic album: \u201cHere I Am\u201d is more funk-rock than country music. It\u2019s also the most aggressive example of Parton owning her art.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI wanted to do something a little more bluesy or little more rock, and I remember kind of having to fight a little bit: \u2018That\u2019s not really country enough,\u2019\u201d she recalls of the recording session. \u201cAnd I thought, \u2018Yeah, but it\u2019s soulful.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tCountry singer Carly Pearce, who considers herself a Dolly Parton superfan, says that Parton\u2019s most open secret is in the simplicity of her lyrics. \u201cShe just has a way of writing that is really to the point,\u201d Pearce says. \u201cI\u2019m reminded when I try to overcomplicate things, that these songs really have stood the test of time, and they were quite simple.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the end, the same can be said of Coat of Many Colors. It remains an essential album because it represents country music\u2019s mission statement: simple storytelling that anyone can relate to.<\/p>\n

\t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n

\n\tCoat of Many Colors peaked at Number Seven on Billboard\u2018s Country Albums chart. It also scored Parton her first Album of the Year CMA Award nomination. Looking back, Parton says the album accomplished exactly what she came to Nashville to do \u2014 be a songwriter. She\u2019s a global superstar now too, but the title track will always be a part of her story, a glimpse at who she was and who she was about to become. It\u2019s even been adopted as an anthem of gay pride, thanks to its themes of acceptance and love.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI think people just loved the song, and then there\u2019s a lot of fun, good little songs in the album,\u201d Parton says. \u201cAnd it\u2019s my early days. A lot of my newfound fans like to go back and see who I am, who I was. And that little coat, people relate to it for many different reasons.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dolly Parton turns 80 years old today, but somehow she continues to possess all the vitality she had…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":241239,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[430,32154,42007,156,111,139,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-241238","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-celebrities","9":"tag-country-music","10":"tag-dolly-parton","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-new-zealand","13":"tag-newzealand","14":"tag-nz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241238","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=241238"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241238\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/241239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=241238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=241238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=241238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}