Various (Dolly Parton) - A Way To Make A Living: The Dolly Parton Songbook Various (Dolly Parton)

Name any recording that you immediately associate with Country music legend Dolly Parton and there’s a better than average chance that she not only sang it, she wrote it too. Dolly has been recording regularly since the mid-60s and almost every major hit she has ever had (and quite a few minor ones too) she wrote or co-wrote.

 Somehow this important component of her overall musical skillset is all too frequently overlooked by the public at large, who know Dolly for her luminous public image and gregarious personality without necessarily realising that she is also a brilliant songwriter.

Dolly Parton wrote hit songs for other artists before she really had any hit records of her own. The ink in her pen has never gone dry and although she’s not as prolific as she once was, she still writes songs – these days mostly for herself – that other artists are happy to record.  A generous sampling of her best work from more than half a century of song-writing is collected here in Ace’s latest instalment of our long-running and highly-regarded ‘Songwriter Series’.