Letter To Heaven:Songs of Faith and Inspiration
Artist: Dolly Parton
Label: RCA Nashville/Legacy
 
Per her Christianity, Dolly Parton is a strange bird. The country/pop/disco/bluegrass chanteuse known as  much for her big hair and, ah, other sizeable assets as she is for her music has made such outrageous  pronouncements as "I'm not a lesbian, but my girlfriend is," yet makes room for a Southern gospel museum at her Dollywood amusement park. The same good ole gal who remade John Lennon's atheistic "Imagine" a few years ago is nonetheless responsible for the resolutely righteous contents of Letter To Heaven.

The album is really a reissue of her 1971 Golden Streets of Glory release with seven bonus tracks of roughly the same vintage. As much as anything she released in her prime pre-crossover country '70s prime, both the original longplayer and the supplementary songs stand as a testament to Parton's songwriting and vocal strengths. 

Her Appalachian soprano can lend the slickest schlock a down home authenticity, but everythingh here is on the country up and up.  

The original LP release represents trends in country at the time. Plush countrypolitan/Nashville sound string sections and choruses ("Hold My Hand"), boogie-inclined keyboards from somewhere between Mitch Ryder and Stax/Volt Records axis ("Heaven's Just A Prayer Away"), sentimental weepers ("I See God," "I Believe" alternate with the folkier style that seems to be Parton's default setting (a goodly portion of the rest, but the original title's titular track and her  take on the Stonewall Jackson's "Wings of a Dove" may work espeicaly well).

The extra tracks add a goodly amount of context and vanity. The reissue's namesake song, taken from Parton's Joshua alb', is a tearjerker from the singer's own pen that finds the uneasy middle ground between country's sentimentalization of children and the genre's murder ballad tradition (spoiler alert?). "God's Coloring Book"  makes for a much more kid-friendly song and parallel to a renowned Petra hit. 

Parton's understanding of the parallel of ministering to others as to the Lord comes forth in the convicting "Would You now Him If You Saw Him," and her description of itinerant tent evangelism informs "Daddy Was An Old Time Preacher Mine," one of her biggies with tv show mentor/frequent duet partner Porter Wagoner (also one of the several numbers here Parton co-wrote with an aunt). Even sprightlier, in a bluegrass-meets breakbeat r&b manner, is her refashioing of Wallace and Minerva Willis' "Swing Low, Sweet, Chariot," "Comin' For To Carry Me Home." 

Fittingly, the set concludes with the latest song chronologically (released in ' 75), the biggest chart hit (#2 on Billboard's country chart/#105 pop) and arguably most artistically complex piece here, "The Seeker." Its tempered build to a rich swell and rifeness of biblical metaphor sung in a sometimes borderline-sexy tone finds La Dolly culling from soul gospel, Southern gospel and perhaps her pre-country days as a pop/rock'n'roll singer marketed to Brenda Lee and Lesley Gore fans. It's an especially deep glimpse from the days when outright Christian themes were seemingly a little more prevalent on country radio. 

If Parton isn't ever subject to a multiple CD treatment of her sacred work, as labelmate Elvis Preseley has been on at least a couple of occasions,  
this single disc speaks for her way with the Word. 

Jamie Lee Rake