Tony Cummings explains how he has been touched by the timeless music of DOLLY PARTON

Dolly Parton

There are few singers/songwriters who have made a greater impact on my life than Dolly Parton. I never met her in person, only once seen her perform live, and have never received any of the 291 (including studio, collaborative, live, soundtrack, extended play and compilation) albums she has released. But her uniquely poignant vocal stylistics and her winning ways with melody and lyric have ensured that she has impacted me deeply.

Memory One: Country music queen (1967)
In 1967 I was very much a soul fan. "Fan" doesn't quite do it. I was utterly obsessed with soul music. I was living in London, working in the copyright department of a big music publisher and using their photocopier and their duplicating paper to produce, dishonestly, a biweekly soul music fanzine called Shout. One of my friends who helped me get that job had moved on to a more influential music biz position with RCA Records. While there, he would regularly bring home the file copies of US RCA's numerous soul singles. My friend and I were both keen home-tapers and this was a wonderful way to catch up on some of the thousands of soul records which UK labels had never released. But my friend also brought home for taping many country music albums. I had no time for country music. The little I'd heard growing up seemed irredeemably corny - Roy Rogers singing about his "four-legged friend" - or too close to the middle of the road crooners. My teenage sensibilities told me Jimmy Reeves wasn't cool and that was it. But suddenly my friend began playing me Dolly Parton singles and albums. I was hooked. That voice, a keening, wondrous thing which drew out every intricate nuance. Those songs, amazingly written by a teenage Parton, that told stories of heartbreak and sadness. Two songs in particular - "Down From Dover" and "Jeannie's Afraid Of The Dark" - went deep within and almost produced tears. Cool critics lambasted them as melodramatic hokum. But for me they were unquestionably brilliant works of art.

Memory Two: Christian music singer (1991)
There I was in the centre of the Christian music world. The Dove Awards, at the Ryman Auditorium, Nashville. I'd gone out on a limb with a printer in Birmingham and had started a Christian music magazine called Cross Rhythms. It was a classic licence to lose money and I'd used the last of my pitifully small resources. With the help of a friendly Word UK record executive, I was able to attend the Doves. I drank in the sights and sounds of gifted musicians singing songs and giving award acceptance speeches. Sometimes the impact was excellent. I thought Bob Carlisle's vocal over the Allies' crunching guitar riffs was great; sometimes it was bemusing, Michael W. Smith being introduced on stage to the sound of shrieking girls - did CCM really make teeny pop fantasy idols? Sometimes it was, for me, simply jaw-dropping. I hadn't even glanced at the programme and until her name was announced I had no idea that the Dove organisers had persuaded Dolly Parton to come and sing a song between two of the award spots. Dolly Parton? My thoughts raced. Was she a Christian? Or was she one of those country stars who would occasionally release an album of hymns and gospel oldies because the wiley Nashville suits knew that such albums would catch sales because of the undeniable the fact that a large part of the country music market was made up of churchgoers and they wanted their favourites singing "Amazing Grace" or "In The Garden". When Dolly walked on stage, with her came a large choir. And when she started to sing all doubts about the genuineness of Dolly's faith were forever banished. Here was Dolly singing "He's Alive". I first heard this song within a few months of my Christian conversion. It had been the big breakthrough hit for its composer, country tinged gospeler Don Francisco - and here was a version that took the storytelling narrative of the lyrics, how disciple Peter makes the staggering discovery that his Lord and king had come back from the dead, to a new level of intensity and worship. Many in that audience wept. I know I did.

Memory Three: Remix guest vocalist (2020)
My years of full-time employment at Cross Rhythms had been intensely satisfying. I'd listened to thousands of albums, been to many festivals and concerts, talked to hundreds of musicians and even made friends with some. Most important of all, I had continued to find that gospel and Christian music sometimes brought me closer to the Lord himself and whether it was through a contemporary worship song or a thrash metal riff or the words of wisdom created by a master lyricist, music was the vehicle that often expressed the reality that Jesus was the centre of my life. And so it came to pass that one of the last interviews I conducted before leaving full-time Cross Rhythms service was with For King & Country. The Smallwood brothers told me about their forthcoming project. They were in the middle of recording an album to be called 'Burn The Ships'. The COVID 19 pandemic caused the delay of the production and release of the album and by the time I got to hear some of the tracks, through Cross Rhythms radio of course, I'd left CR. But Christian music wouldn't leave me alone. When I learned that a special edition album with bonus tracks was released I went out and bought a copy. I'm so glad I did. Dolly Parton's vocal on parts of "God Only Knows" added a heartbreaking aura to a beautiful song which is surely one of the greatest musical portrayals of human need for understanding and healing ever written. Its lyric goes:

Wide awake while the world is sound asleepin'
Too afraid of what might show up while you're dreamin'
Nobody, nobody, nobody sees you
Nobody, nobody would believe you

Every day you try to pick up all the pieces
All the memories, they somehow never leave you
Nobody, nobody, nobody sees you
Nobody, nobody would believe you

God only knows what you've been through
God only knows what they say about you
God only knows how it's killing you
But there's a kind of love that God only knows
God only knows what you've been through
God only knows what they say about you
But God only knows the real you
'Cause there's a kind of love that God only knows
There's a kind of love that
There's a kind of love.
.that God only knows

I feel certain that there are people whose lives have been transformed by Dolly's renditions of "God Only Knows" and "He's Alive". I would suggest that such a thing means much, much more than the mountain of awards and the great wealth that Dolly's God-given talent brought her.