Brand: SONY MUSIC

PartNumber: MFR074646714027#VG

Details: Amazon.caPerhaps if Dolly Parton looked more like Abraham Lincoln and less like Jayne Mansfield, she would get the same respect from critics and historians as Merle Haggard and Willie Nelson. Parton certainly deserves it, for her gifts as a singer and a songwriter are quite similar to those of Willie and Hag–all three have at times perfected a particular regional style of country music (Parton’s Appalachiana, Nelson’s Texas swing, and Haggard’s Bakersfield sound) until it became paradoxically universal. Parton’s 1995 album, the aptly titled Something Special, is one of those rare glimpses we get at just how talented she is. The disc includes three of her best-known tunes–“I Will Always Love You,” “Jolene,” and “The Seeker”–from the early ’70s, when she was at her songwriting peak, and supplements them with seven more recent Parton compositions in the same sty