"Songwriting is my way of channeling my feelings and my thoughts. Not just mine, but the things I see, the people I care about. My head would explode if I didn't get some of that stuff out. Not everything I write is good, but it's all good for me — like therapy." Dolly Parton (2002)
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🧵#NYTimes #DollyParton
“In ‘Coat of Many Colors,’ maybe her most beloved original, Ms. Parton plumbed childhood feelings of pride and humiliation. In this case, the coat in question — quilted from rags and originally a source of delight and the expression of a mother's love — becomes an object of ridicule when Dolly's classmates poke fun at her for wearing it to school.”
🧵#NYTimes #DollyParton
So with patches on my britches
And holes in both my shoes,
In my coat of many colors
I hurried off to school
Just to find the others laughing
And making fun of me
In my coat of many colors
My Mama made for me
🧵#NYTimes #DollyParton
"That little song is like a world of things," Ms. Parton said of "Coat of Many Colors" in "Dolly Parton, Songteller: My Life in Lyrics" (2020), written with Robert K. Oermann. "It teaches about bullying, about love, about acceptance, about good parents. That little story has even been written into a schoolbook to teach children about being different."
