Dolly Parton - Those Were The Days - Music & Performance - CD

A year in the making, the album of era-defining songs from the 1960s and 1970s is an astonishing collection of indispensable classics, performed in Dolly Parton's signature style with a top-notch list of friends. Parton, who produced the album, invited several of the artists who wrote or made these songs famous to sing with her. Renowned musicians Roger McGuinn (of the Byrds), Kris Kristofferson, Judy Collins, and Tommy James make appearances on Those Were the Days. She also asked recent chart-topping artists Norah Jones, Keith Urban, Nickel Creek, Lee Ann Womack, Rhonda Vincent, Joe Nichols, and Alison Krauss to join her in the studio. Sugar Hill. 2005.

Ever since signing with Sugar Hill in 1999, Dolly Parton has been on a hot streak, putting out a steady stream of rootsy albums that found her creatively re-energized. It all started with the all-bluegrass Grass Is Blue, which won a Grammy in 2000, and she worked a similar territory on the subsequent Little Sparrow (2001) and started to branch out a bit with Halos & Horns (2002), which remained in the acoustic realm but wasn't as strictly bluegrass. Now, with Those Were the Days, she breaks free of bluegrass in the strictest sense by recording an album of her favorite songs from the '60s and '70s. While this isn't traditional bluegrass by any means, it's still rootsy acoustic music, due to both the instrumentation and choice of songs, which are, with the exceptions of Tommy James' "Crimson and Clover" and John Lennon's "Imagine," firmly within the folk and folk-rock tradition of the '60s. Parton has also styled Those Were the Days as a duet album, inviting the original singers or songwriters when they were available, and bringing in newer singers when they were not (like Nickel Creek providing harmonies on Bob Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind," Norah Jones and Lee Ann Womack for "Where Have All the Flowers Gone," and Keith Urban for "Twelfth of Never"). The arrangements are at once tasteful, imaginative, and relatively unsurprising -- there are no left hooks, no electric sitars, or wah-wah guitars (although there is the trademark electric guitar tremolo on "Crimson and Clover"), just vivid, successful, slight reworkings of familiar songs that make them sound fresh again. Since Parton has been making strong acoustic records for six years now, this doesn't have the same impact as Grass Is Blue, but that doesn't mean that Those Were the Days is a bad record. Far from it, actually -- it's yet another very good album, one with no weak spots, from a revitalized Dolly Parton, who has turned into one of the more reliable country music veterans of the 2000s. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide

Performer	Dolly Parton
Music genre	Country
Music subgenre	CD - COUNTRY
Music release type	Release
Media format	CD
Original release date	2005
Edition	Standard
Number of tracks	12
Has parental advisory label	N
Number of discs	1
Series title	Dolly Parton - Those Were The Days [COMPACT DISCS] Asia - Import
Track listing	Those Were the Days, Blowin' in the Wind, Where Have All the Flowers Gone, Twelfth of Never, Where Do the Children Play, Me and Bobby McGee, Crimson and Clover, The Cruel War, Turn, Turn, Turn, If I Were a Carpenter, Both Sides Now, Imagine
Record label	Sugar Hill
Music producer	Dolly Parton
Track name	Those Were the Days (feat. Mary Hopkin, Porter Wagoner, The Moscow Circus & the Opry Gang), Blowin' in the Wind (feat. Nickel Creek), Where Have All the Flowers Gone? (feat. Norah Jones & Lee Ann Womack), The Twelfth of Never (feat. Keith Urban), Where Do the Children Play? (feat. ...), Me and Bobby McGee (feat. Kris Kristofferson), Crimson and Clover (feat. Tommy James), The Cruel War (feat. Alison Krauss, Mindy Smith & Dan Tyminski), Turn, Turn (feat. Roger McGuinn), If I Were a Carpenter (feat. Joe Nichols), Both Sides Now (feat. Rhonda Vincent & Judy Collins), Imagine (feat. David Foster), Those Were The Days, Blowin' In The Wind, Where Have All The Flowers Gone, Twelfth Of Never, Where Do The Children Play, Me And Bobby McGee, Crimson And Clover, The Cruel War, If I Were A Carpenter, Both Sides Now, Imagine
Digital audio file format	CD
Music media format	CD
Is edited	N
Is enhanced	N