CHAPTER 19 | SINGER-SONGWRITERS: IN SEARCH OF AUTHENTICITY 475
background; he had been the drummer in the Crickets, Buddy Holly’s band, back
in the 1950s. Fellow Texans Kris Kristofferson and Townes Van Zandt brought a
refi ned literary subtlety to their outlaw country songs of alienation and loneliness.
Common to the Austin outlaws was a disdain for what they heard as the slick
commercialism of mainstream country, a feeling they shared with the earlier
Bakersfi eld musicians and that resembled in its own way the punks’ contempt
for progressive and arena rock. Yet successful examples of the singer-songwriter
sensibility can be found right in the heart of Nashville’s mainstream. Although
she sang mostly songs by professional country songwriters, Loretta Lynn had
risen to prominence in the 1960s with songs that linked her with a spunky coun-
try feminism, a persona she expanded upon in the 1970s with her own songs
“Coal Miner’s Daughter” (1970) and “The Pill” (1975), the latter a then-shocking
song about birth control. Lynn shared her place as a leading female country art-
ist of the 1970s with Tammy Wynette and Dolly Parton.
A native of eastern Tennessee, Dolly Parton moved to Nashville in her late
teens and by the latter 1960s was fi rmly established in two niches in the Music
City industry: as a songwriter who produced material for other performers, and
as a performer herself, singing her own songs and those of other professional
song writers. First gaining public notice as a featured singer on Porter Wagoner’s
traditionalist country music television show, Parton recorded her fi rst solo hit
in 1970, a lively cover of Jimmie Rodgers’s venerable classic “Muleskinner Blues.”
She followed that hit closely with several others, including original songs such as
“Joshua,” “Jolene,” and “I Will Always Love You,” the last also a huge hit in a 1992
cover version by R&B singer W hitney Houston.
Parton’s “Coat of Many Colors” (1971; LG 19.2) blends folklike simplicity with
up-to-date recording techniques to set a nostalgic tone for an autobiographical story
song. The Carter-style guitar picking points to country music’s past, while discreetK Dolly Parton’s
traditionalist image caused
many to underestimate her
formidable musical skills,
a reaction she countered
caustically in her song
“Dumb Blonde.”LG 19.2172028_19_468-494_r3_sd.indd 475 23/01/13 11:05 AM