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Short of a comprehensive multi-disc box set, the best compilation album for Dolly Parton was the two-disc The Essential collection. It surveyed all of her biggest hits across her various career phases: upstart country bombshell, genius songwriter, American icon, pop crossover superstar, return to her musical roots in her late-career bluegrass phase. It’s exhaustive but comprehensive. One-disc compilations for a career as extensive as Parton’s are a fool’s errand, but RCA Country Legends does a competent job of trying.
It's nice to hear a pair of her early 60s singles make an appearance (“False Eyelashes,” “Evening Shade”), and the choices lean heavily towards her 70s output with a few appearances from her pop crossover phase (mainly “9 to 5”). A near unforgivable omission: “Coat of Many Colors,” not only one of her best, most personal songs, but one of the greatest country singles of its era, if not ever. Parton’s simple story of maternal love overcoming debilitating poverty is a hallmark of her career and the genre as whole. Without it, there’s a missing piece to illustrate her unimaginably lustrous career.
Still, country music’s greatest female genius has a plethora of great songs loaded up here: “Jolene,” “Love is Like a Butterfly,” “I Will Always Love You,” “Here You Come Again,” “Joshua.” RCA Country Legends is, I suppose, as good a single-disc retrospective as any of the myriad of others, but it could’ve been so much better. Sixteen songs are a nice primer for Parton’s musical adaptability but nowhere near enough for the complete picture.
DOWNLOAD: “Evening Shade,” “False Eyelashes,” “Daddy’s Moonshine Still”
