I feel a slight aversion to obituary-style posts here in my so called Musical Affairs, a vague sense of gratuitously piling onto the general media outpouring and thereby recognising an artist only at the moment of their passing.
After all why should loss be the trigger for celebrations of these tracks of my years?
But sometimes, inevitably, it is going to be the case and never more so than with the passing of Dolly Parton. It is huge news: the most famous woman in the world? Well, that’s probably not too far off the mark.
So here I am. Dolly is gone aged 80 and I am lost in a world of tributes, a life in pictures and in song, reaching for Spotify and her best songs, essential playlists, best recordings, most essential hit songs, best songs explained, 11 greatest, most iconic songs, best deep cuts, and so on and so forth.
I delve in. After all Dolly has been a feature of my mixtapes and burned CDs for decades.
But I have to confess that back then Dolly’s inclusion on such media was very much drawn from the guilty pleasures school of thought, for dialling up the cheese on my proprietary series of student party compilation tapes: Wine & Song, Autumn Gold, Summer Gold, whose alcohol inspired branding made it clear that these tracks were best enjoyed when accompanied by heavy drinking.
You can probably guess the tracks I enlisted to my cause: 9 to 5, Islands in the Stream, Jolene, Here You Come Again, Potential New Boyfriend, Harper Valley PTA. And the cheesiest of all to feature on my home made compilations was the hi-energy disco stomp of Baby I’m Burnin’.
I was a very early adopter of Baby I’m Burnin’ as it was not a hit in the UK and so not the camp colossus it is today. Back then I felt I had stumbled across cult Dolly, which was something I mused on when Scissor Sisters blasted the track as their entrance music when they played a warm up gig at Bristol Electric last year. Back off sisters, I got there first.
Nowadays I feel somewhat guilty for ever thinking Dolly was just about these guilty pleasures, as almost a novelty act, and for not appreciating her as this incredible pioneering songwriter and artist.
In my defence I have never been drawn to pure country and usually need more than a hint of pop crossover to get me to embark down that good ‘ol country road.
But in my post student days I did rally to a belated Dolly appreciation campaign, encouraged by the constant acclaim of such contemporary artists as The White Stripes, who produced their own rattling garage rock treatment of Jolene in 2000.
So I gravitated to Dolly’s extensive country back catalogue and gradually came to appreciate such soaring bluegrass infused classics as Joshua, Coat of Many Colours, Light of a Clear Blue Morning & Tennessee Homesick Blues. Finally I was ready for Dolly the serious country artist.
But by the time of her celebrated Glastonbury appearance in 2014 Dolly had fully embraced her legendary status and faced with a massive crowd, one of the biggest ever at the Pyramid Stage, sensibly went all Dollywood, her crowd-pleasing set list generally eschewing the slow sad country numbers and drawing more from my old compilations than her bluegrass or Appalachian country roots. I mean she even opened with Baby I’m Burnin’.
Jessica like many youngsters had come to love Dolly via Taylor Swift’s fandom and patronage and she and I watched her Glastonbury appearance together. It was just fabulous, the craziest and corniest cornball entertainment imaginable.
But for my Dolly track of my years I am not going for any of the abovenamed classics, and have plumped for an understated number that would have been far too delicate for the Glasto masses.
It is the lilting Love is Like a Butterfly, just the sweetest and simplest tune, which like its subject matter seems to flutter on the lightest of breezes.
Love is like a butterfly
As soft and gentle as a sigh
The multi-coloured moods of love are like its satin wings
Love makes your heart feel strange inside
It flutters like soft wings in flight
Love is like a butterfly, a rare and gentle thing
It was clearly one of Dolly’s favourites too as the butterfly officially became her lifelong trademark logo and branding for her Dollywood theme park.
But it is here that I have to ‘fess up to being one of the many in the UK who only got to know this track from err…..a BBC sitcom, when I was just 12 years old.
You see Love Is Like a Butterfly, whilst written and recorded by Dolly in 1974 and a big US hit, was pretty much unknown in the UK until it was used as the theme song for the popular BBC sitcom Butterflies, written by Carla Lane and which aired from 1978 to 1983.
The version that I and millions of UK television viewers heard every week was actually a cover sung by British vocalist Clare Torry, backed by a band led by BBC composer Ronnie Hazlehurst and which featured a more light orchestral arrangement than Dolly’s faster fingerpicking original.
The show was set in the middle class suburbia of Cheltenham, with Wendy Craig playing bored housewife Ria Parkinson, and was a big favourite of Mum’s.
It was played for laughs but it was pretty sad for a comedy: a marriage gone stale, dissatisfied domesticity, a woman daydreaming about adultery and a more fulfilling life. Hmmm. Perhaps it’s no surprise I remember watching it with Mum & Emma, but not with Dad. Definitely not for him.
The adultery never actually happened: Ria spent four series fighting the temptation to embark on an affair with her suitor, the smooth and wealthy businessman Leonard, who always travelled in a chauffeur-driven and luridly green top end luxury Ford Granada GL and who enjoyed “liquid lunching” in high-end French restaurants. Ria’s more modest vehicle (which she was always stalling) was a beaten up rusty Mini with a prominent Union Jack flag painted across its entire roof.
All the action (or rather lack of it) would play out in walks in the local park, to the soundtrack of this beautifully melancholic classical music, Adagio in G minor, as attributed to Tomaso Albinoni.
It is only with hindsight I realised quite why Mum identified so much with Ria in Butterflies, although unlike Ria Mum did finally act on her daydreams. Although that’s where the similarities end as Peter had a Renault 25, not a Ford Granada. Ahem.
Mum may have loved Butterflies the TV series but I never seriously considered its title theme by Dolly for her funeral, there were just too many other musical contenders.
However when the celebrant asked for some solemn music for the Reflection I knew straight away that the Albinoni piece was just perfect, stately and melancholic with an aching beauty, the very definition of musical sorrow.
And I was pretty sure no-one would get the Butterflies association, which suited me just fine, a final private little in- joke between me and Mum.
So it is farewell to Dolly then and back to playing with my playlists, there are always more tracks to add and celebrate.
I’ll even get to play some Dolly in my Mini. Or rather Mum’s Mini. No patriotic roof but it does sport rather natty Union Jack taillights.
Your laughter brings me sunshine
Every day is springtime
And I am only happy when you are by my side
How precious is this love we share
How very precious, sweet and rare
Together, we belong like daffodils and butterflies
