Dolly Parton has written over 3,000 songs. We used to say we “made up” a song, since we didn’t write anything down, notes or lyrics. We made up our songs guitar in hand. It would take about 150 hours to play 3,000 songs, or you could play the same song on repeat for a week, which you might if you thought you had a hit. If you draw your song subjects from the lives of your intended audience, you’ll probably gather some listeners, if not reach the top 40. Dolly, born and raised in the Great Smoky Mountains, no doubt heard as a child ballads that originated in the British Isles. These ballads came from an oral tradition, told stories, the setting often changed to fit a new environment. The accompaniment might drone wearily to an exaggerated wintery fiddle pathos. On the other hand, songs of spring might jump, jig, and reel. Ballads are folk songs, and while anything can be a song subject, songs of love and hate, war and peace, life and death, faith and betrayal – those subjects are ever popular. Songs are made using all kinds of rhetorical devices. We might think of songs as meant primarily for entertainment, but songs can teach, preach, tickle, and scratch. A good musician can make a bad song sound good, and a bad musician can make a good song sound bad. The Psalms are songs. What’s good is what’s real, even if it’s bad.
I was perusing Greil Marcus’s updated “Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock ‘N’ Roll Music.” This sixth revised edition (2015) contains “Notes and Discographies” that run over 200 pages. But Dolly’s only mentioned twice, once in the original section, in the Elvis chapter: “Listen to Dolly Parton’s downtown hooker yearning for her Blue Ridge mountain boy; listen to the loss of an America you may never have known” (129), and again in the notes section under “Cameos: From Charlie Rich to ‘Louie Louie’” (360-363), where “A Real Live Dolly Parton” (1970) is said to include her song “‘Bloody Bones,’ a ditty about orphans who burn down their orphanage.” But while that Dolly album does contain a piece called “Bloody Bones,” it’s not a song but a story she tells, and it’s not about orphans but about her family growing up and how they all went to bed at the same time, and mostly in the same bed, there were 12 kids in a little country house, and they stayed in bed afraid of the boogie man and such tales their Mom shared. Well, Dolly’s not rock n roll, so maybe Marcus hurried through it. That’s likely going to be a problem for your discographers if you go around putting out 3,000 songs. The prolific Bob Dylan has only written about 600 songs. Anyway, Dolly did write a song about kids cooped up under some sort of evil matron, and they do burn the place down, sort of Matilda style. It’s titled “Evening Shade,” and it’s on the album “My Blue Ridge Mountain Boy” (1969).
So I’ll take this opportunity now to lighten the load for my future discographers and say I’ve written (made up) only around 6 songs, with lyrics, that I keep in my active repertoire, another 8 or so instrumentals.
With lyrics: “Bury My Heart in the Muddy Mississippi” (1978); “Pretty Vacant and We Don’t Care” (1985); “Goodbye, Joe” (1995); “Two Riders Were Approaching” (2021); “Down by the Bay” (2022); “I Talk to Myself” (2023). Dates I’m just guessing, plus revisions are always ongoing. There is no right or wrong but how you feel at the moment. When you get stuck, improvise your way out of it.
Instrumentals: no dates shown – been playing and improvising most of these for years, but I’ll list them in approximate order, beginning with the oldest, from around 1970, which contains a riff an Army sergeant showed me. I just title them to remind myself of the idea and where it came from: “Sergeant Oliphant’s Blues;” “Saddle Up and Go;” “Double D;” “Em Surf;” “Good to Go;” “Patio #1;” “Patio #2;” “Blues for Tommy.”
You can hear versions of my made up songs on my Live at 5 Instagram channel. Live at 5 was a Pandemic exercise that brought the extended family and friends together almost nightly for songs and comments and sharing while we were all hiding out from the virus.
The Coming of the Toads 