A workhorse life, with frills for a show pony

Dolly Parton, Songteller: My Life in Lyrics Dolly Parton and Robert K. Oermann Chronicle Books

Dolly Parton doesn't remember if she actually wrote two of her greatest songs, I Will Always Love You and Jolene, on the same day, as the legend goes, but she could have. By her own reckoning, Parton, 74, has written more than 3,000 songs, beginning with an ode to her corncob doll, Tasseltop, when she was six.

“I may look like a show pony,” she writes in her memoir and song-primer, Dolly Parton, Songteller: My Life in Lyrics, “but I'm a workhorse.”

Jolene was inspired by a bank teller who got too flirty with Parton's husband, Carl Dean, while I Will Always Love You was partly written about her platonic musical partner Porter Wagoner, which is disappointing. He was a 40-year-old country star and Parton a 21-year-old unknown when he hired her to be the “girl singer” in his band. Wagoner was domineering, underpaying Parton long after her stardom began to eclipse his. They constantly feuded, and though they later reconciled, Wagoner is about the only person in Songteller who Parton clearly doesn't like.

I Will Always Love You was Parton's exit letter, although when she wrote its most famous couplet (“If I should stay / I would only be in your way”), it turns out she was only being polite. “I should have said, `You'd only be in my way,'” Parton writes.

Songteller comprises three sections: song lyrics, archival photos and written passages featuring Parton's folksy retelling of events.

There's a gold mine of little-seen photos of Parton's little-seen husband of 54 years, whom she sometimes refers to by his full name, Carl Dean. After attending one music industry event early in their marriage, Dean swore he would never go to another, and he never has, writes Parton. She plainly adores him.

There are photos from Parton's childhood: There's Dolly as an ordinary-looking child, Dolly in a ruffled prom dress and Dolly looking suspiciously brunette. In the book's best photo, she's in a schoolroom, wearing a minidress and a towering wig, playing for kids who are staring at her in wonder, like she has just landed from Mars.