Dolly Parton

Country legend returns to tour UK

Legendary American Grammy award winning country singer Dolly Parton has announced a UK tour. Dolly Parton tickets are on sale now. Dolly Parton is a hugely successful songwriter, having begun by writing country songs with strong elements of folk music in them based upon her upbringing in humble mountain surroundings.

Her songs "Coat of Many Colors" and "Jolene" have become classics in the field, as have a number of others. As a composer, she is also regarded as one of country music's most gifted storytellers, with many of her narrative songs based on persons and events from her childhood. Dolly Parton has published almost 600 songs with BMI to date and has earned 24 BMI awards for her material. Despite originally being typecast in many circles as a "Country and Western" singer, Dolly Parton later had even greater commercial success as a pop singer and actress.

Her 1977 album "Here You Come Again" was her first million-seller, and the title track became her first top-ten single on the pop charts; many of her subsequent singles charted on both pop and country charts simultaneously. Her albums during this period were developed specifically for pop/crossover success. In 1987, along with Emmylou Harris and Linda Ronstadt, she released the decade-in-the-making Trio album to critical acclaim (a second collaboration, "Trio II", would be released in 1999). In 1993, she teamed up with fellow country music queens Loretta Lynn and Tammy Wynette for a similar project, the Honky Tonk Angels album.

After 20 years with RCA, Parton signed with Columbia Records in 1987, where her recording career continued to prosper, but by the mid 1990s, Parton, along with many other performers of her generation, found that her new music was not welcome on country radio playlists. She recorded a series of critically acclaimed bluegrass albums, beginning with "The Grass is Blue" (1999) and "Little Sparrow" (2001), both of which won Grammy Awards. Her 2002 album "Halos and Horns" included a bluegrass version of the Led Zeppelin classic Stairway to Heaven.

In 2005, Parton released Those Were The Days, her interpretation of hits from the folk-rock era of the late 1960s through early 1970s. The CD featured such classics as John Lennon's "Imagine," Cat Stevens' "Where Do The Children Play," Tommy James' "Crimson & Clover," and the folk classic "Where Have All The Flowers Gone" and the title track.