Coat of Many Colors

Coat of Many Colors is the eighth solo studio album by Dolly Parton, released in 1971 by RCA Records. The title song, which Parton has described as her favourite of all the songs she's ever written, deals with the poverty of her childhood. It reached #4 on the U.S. country singles charts.

Contents

• Track listing
• Personnel
• References

Over the years, Parton would re-record a number of the songs from the album. She redid "Traveling Man" (not to be confused with the Ricky Nelson song of the same name), a song that involved an unusual love triangle between a travelling salesman, a woman, and her mother, for inclusion on her 1973 album Bubbling Over. She would also re-record her composition "My Blue Tears", an "old-timey" folk-influenced song, with Emmylou Harris and Linda Ronstadt in the mid-1970s, for an ill-fated Trio album project. (The recording would eventually surface on Ronstadt's 1982 album Get Closer). Parton cut the song for a third time in 2001, including it on her Little Sparrow album. "Early Morning Breeze" later appeared on her 1974 Jolene album, as well as her 2014 album, Blue Smoke for which she re-recorded it for the Walmart bonus tracks.

"A Better Place to Live" was a song very much of its time, dealing with living in a utopian, peaceful world where people love one another, and was very much in the same vein as Jackie DeShannon's recent hit "Put a Little Love in Your Heart" (which Parton herself would later cover in 1993).

In 2001, the album was released on CD in 2001 as Joshua & Coat Of Many Colors, attached to Joshua on one disc.

In January 2016, the album was ranked number 301 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. It subsequently made Time Magazine's 100 Greatest Albums of All Time in 2006.

A re-issue released in 2007, in conjunction with Parton's 2007 European Tour, featured previously unreleased songs.

In 2010, Sony Music reissued the 2007 CD Coat of Many Colors in a triple-feature CD set with My Tennessee Mountain Home and Jolene.