Through the course of her career, Dolly Parton on has proven adept at a variety of musical styles, from traditional homespun country to polished pop. Wisely, she has recognised just how far she can push the musical boundaries without seemingly being out of place. She has surefootedly tackled disco, rock'n'roll, soul, mainstream country, folk, gospel, hillbilly and bluegrass. And to each genre, she has brought that distinctive Dolly magic. From the outset of her career, Dolly has come under the dictates of the commercial marketplace. Being on the charts with each and every single was paramount; turning albums into gold and platinum was essential. Taking a risk was allowed, just the once. If it paid off, fine. If it didn't, then it was back to the safe haven of the recognised mainstream. Increasingly, the major record labels have tightened the screw on their artists to maintain maximum sales from a public fed by instant formula-driven music. It has left diverse and freewheeling talents like Dolly Parton to either conform or look for pastures anew. Very much her own person, Dolly has long taken charge of her music, initially through her songwriting, and in recent years through her own Blue Eye production company. Working very much as a free agent, she is in the enviable position where she can make the kind of music she likes, and then lease it out to whichever record label is suitable for the project. She did that with 1999's critically acclaimed The Gross is Blue.', her first all-bluegrass album and winner of the International Bluegrass Music Association's Album of the Year award. 'It's just like when I did the bluegrass album,' Dolly explains, 'I can do project by project. Just like I said to producer Steve Buckingham, if we want to do a bluegrass record, we'll put it on Sugar Hill. I don't have a contract with them, except for that and now this new album. And I think that having the freedom, running my own production company, it's just like I can do just what I want to do, musically.' The new album, Little Sparrau', is in all-iicousric set that bridges Dolly's love of bluegrass with the Appalachian mountain music she grew up with. It is a spirited and eclectic collection of Parton originals, bluegrass standards, unique versions of mainstream country hits and inspired takes on material by the likes of Cole Porter and Collective Soul. 'I believe this album has more depth, breadth, and soul than all of the other albums I have done,' says a proud Dolly. 'Hopefully, it captures the best of everything I've ever lived or felt, written or sung. I also think this is Steve Buckingham's best work as a producer. I hope you enjoy it. You know how every parent thinks their kids are the prettiest, how every person thinks their hometown and their home team is the best and how every singer-song writer thinks that the album they just finished is the best they've ever done...well, I think that too.' As on her previous album, again Dolly serves up some tasty bluegrass numbers like the Louvin Brothers, I Don't Believe You've Met My Baby with an impressive cast of nine-star acoustic musicians including Jerry Douglas on resophonic guitar, Chris Thile on mandolin, Stuart Duncan on fiddle, Bryan Sutton on guitar, Jim Mills on banjo and Barry Bales on bass, along with noted guests such as Alison Krauss, Sonya Isaacs, Becky Isaacs Bowman and Dan Tyminski. This time, however, she widens the scope to include a Celtic-flavoured version of In The Sweet By And By, featuring the Irish ensemble Altan. The result is a project too broad to he tagged strictly bluegrass, as Parton stamps each number on the collection with her signature vocal style. 'I'm calling it blue mountain music,' she says. 'It's mountain music, and it's bluegrass. I've just kind of picked a name for the music, and I think blue mountain music is right on...we used the same bluegrass musicians that we used on the other album, except we used Chris Thile on mandolin instead of Sam Bush because Sam was on the road and we couldn't get him; but Chris was a wonderful choice.' Acoustic mountain music is very much ingrained in Dolly Parton's roots. Born and raised in Locust Ridge in the Tennessee's Smoky Mountains, she was the fourth of 12 children. The whole family lived in an old wooden shack wrapped in music and good old-fashioned maternal love. The memories of those hard, yet somewhat carefree, days have remained with Dolly ever since and often surface in the songs that she writes. 'Well, as I have mentioned in several interviews,' she relates, 'my people always played every type of instrument and every kid in every family was used to somebody's banjo laying around, somebody's fiddle being around, somebody's mandolin...so always, I just loved the sound of every instrument. I especially loved the banjo, because- I had an uncle rhiit played the banjo. Then there was an old man who used to live up the road from us. I wrote my song, Applejack, about him. 'He showed me how to play. Actually, if I don't have these long, artificial acrylic fingernails on, I can play the banjo, that old claw hammer style. Back when I was little, when my fingers were short and stubby, with no big fingernails, it was a big thing for me to learn how to do claw hammer banjo. So when I was young, I could really play it good. 'Then I got all sissy. I can still play it, hut I have to figure out how to get my way around it. I used to play a lot on stage when my song Applejack was out. It was a great performance tune, I even did it once on the CMA Awards.' Debuting at the Grand Ole Opry in 1959, when she was only 14, Dolly's remarkable career in music has successfully navigated both country and pop charts as well as successful forays into television and films. She has authored over 3,000 songs including the hits Coat of Many Colours, Jolene, My Tennessee Mountain Home, Nine To Fine and I Will Always Love You. In 1992 Whitney Houston's rendition of the latter spent an unprecedented 14 weeks at the top of the pop charts, for a time becoming the biggest pop hit of the rock and roll era. From collaborations with Porter Wagoner to Emmylou Harris and Linda Ronstadt (including the Grammy Award-winning Trio albums) Tammy Wynette, Loretta Lynn and many others, Dolly Parton's legacy spans the history of modem country. Though she has worked with many of the legends of the music, she has also built her reputation on helping and working with talented newcomers in the business. She was one of the first mainstream country artists to nurture and work with Alison Krauss. The bluegrass-base singer and fiddle player sings on four of the tracks on Little Sparrow. Dolly credits her reclusive husband Carl Dean for putting her on to Alison. 'Carl saw Alison on one of the country shows,' Dolly explains. 'I don't know, it might have been the Grand Ole Opry. He said, "There's this little girl, she sounds a lot like you and she's got a voice like a dove, the sweetest little voice and the sweetest little face. You ought to try and find her. I think her name is Alison Krauss, or something." Then different people kept saying she's a big fan of mine, that I should meet her because she'd been wanting to meet me. 'It was the sweetest meeting, because when we met, she started crying. It was just so sweet. I just claimed her. It was like she was my little soulmate; like, if I'd have had a child, it would probably have been like Alison. 'Our little voices just blended so well, it just seemed our emotions seem to come out in song the same way. It was just a magical thing. Alison sang on several songs on this album, as she has on several of my albums. I would do anything that Alison asked me to do. She's just mine. I just love her. She's definitely got to be part of my family. 'If there's such things as living in other lives, knowing people from other times, we definitely had to have been together in another life, because we're just too close in this one, not to have had some son of a history somewhere else.' Alison adds the girly harmony to Dolly's fun-packed rendition of Cole Porter's I Get A Kick Out Of You. This might appear to he a little bit of a stretch on an acoustic-mountain record, but the jazzy arrangement utilising mandolin, fiddle and banjo is quite irresistible. It is, obvious that evervone involved had a ball, with Dolly founding the whole performance off with an infectious giggle. Krauss and Union Station's Dan Tyminski come together fot the exquisite harmonic on the folksy title tune, A Tender Lie and My Blue Tears. The latter is a Parton oldie, first cut for her Coat of Many Colours album. Dolly recorded it again, with Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris for the first, aborted Trio album in 1978 (Ronstadt included that version on her 1982 Get Closer album), then again on her live Heartsongs album. A Tender Lie, a pop-country hit for Restless Heart in 1988, is transformed from an Eagle-ish country-nick power ballad, into an exquisite wing of heartache and longing. This is one of Dolly's most emotional performances and the leathery harmonies add volumes to the lyrical punch. Parton has always taken great care in the choice of those she gets to sing with her and on this new album she introduces her public to the wonderful Sony'a Isaacs and her sister Becky Issacs Bowman. They add the vocal parts to the old-time mountain-sty led Marry Me and the bluegrass reading of Steve Young's Seven Bridges Road. 'Sunya and Becky are unbelievable,' enthuses Dolly. 'I've always loved that song and thought it would be great sung with women, because the only way I've ever heard it was sung with men... I thought I'd gather me up some good girls, so I did it with the Isaacses, and they did a great job. They are such great singers. 'I feel fortunate to have all the great people I have on this album,' she continues. 'I've worked with Claire Lynch many times, and she's just a doll, and my little Alison, I'm just crazy over her. Any time I get a chance to sing with her I do. There is just a little soul mate there with Alison and me...and Rhonda and Darrin Vincent, I've been working with them for years. They are like a little brother and sister to me, and that's as close to a family-sound I believe that I've ever heard with me and them, I love that.' The Vincents can be heard on the rural Bluer Pastures, while Claire Lynch joins Keith Little to provide the harmonies on Collective Soul's Shine. This project also features Maura O'Connell on Down From Dover and Rebecca Lynn Howard and Carl Jackson on Mountain Angel. 'I don't know if this album will do what the last album did as far as critical acclaim, but I think this album is just as good. It's got a lot of my heart and soul,' Dolly says. 'I'm on the right track as far as the people who like to hear me do really heartfelt, gut music...this is really who I truly am. It's my roots, my Smoky Mountain DNA- It's in every fibre of my body. When I open my mouth to sing these songs, it amazes me the feeling I get here in my heart and down inside my soul.' The Grasss Is Blue, was the first joint venture between Parton's Blue Eye imprint and Sugar Hill Records. As well as winning the album of the year honour at the International Bluegrass Music Association Awards in October, it has also gained a Grammy nomination fot Best Bluegrass Album, while Dolly's version of Billy Joel's Travelin' Prayer, from the album has been nominated as Best Female Country Performance. Travelin' Prayer was my idea,' Dolly explains. 'I've always loved Billy Joel. I think he's one of the greatest writer's in the world. The Entenainer is one of my favourite songs. But Travelin' Prayer, to me it is a bluegrass song, without the piano, As a matter of fact, I think Randy Scruggs or the Earl Scruggs Revue, they might have done that years ago. I think Billy Joel might have played the piano on that. 'But I heard it off Billy Joel's record. When that record came out, I had it there at the house and I thought that will lend itself really well. I think I scared Steve Buckingham, sending him all these weird songs over. I guess he was taken aback a little bit, but then when he got into it, he just loved it. So it did turn out one of the very best songs on the album.' Dolly admits to being pleasantly surprised that The Grass Is Blue was so well received, especially by the bluegrass community. 'You could have knocked me over, she says of winning for bluegrass album of the year. 'My brother said, "That's one of the few times in my whole life I've ever seen you not know what to say." He says I stammered and stuttered and sounded like a fool.' Though not a regular member of the bluegrass community, she says doing a bluegrass album wasn't really a stretch for her at all. 'I've always done bluegrass music,' she observes. 'It's not like I came in the back door with their music, I've been doing it on my front porch for years. With the bluegrass community, they felt what I was doing and felt it was real. 'I think that high lonesome sound is just that mourning of the soul that I think people feel to the depths of their souls, almost like being part of" the wind,' she continues passionately. 'It's like that high lonesome wind, going deep into the soul of something. It's the way of expressing something, how you have the mournful sound like when you do a sigh, or scream and holler when the pain is so great. 'I think it's a way of being able to condense that or contain it somehow, in how it can come out and make it musical. It's just the way of expressing it; just country depth and soul mountain soul.' Though she long ago left the simple Mountain life behind her, Dolly Parton still remains close to her roots. Over the years, she has raised millions of pounds to help enrich the lives of the people who live in Sevier County in the Blue Ridge mountains. Her Dollywood theme park, in Pigeon Forge at the foot of the mountains has not only helped provide thousands of books for local schoolchildren, but has also became the home for the Southern Gospel Music Hall of Fame and Museum. Something of a workaholic, this Spring she is due to start work on a movie for the Lifetime cable network, is planning a tour in the summer, and a return to the UK for TV appearances, but sadly, no concerts. 'I'm coming over, hopefully, sometime in February to do some more television and sing some of the songs from the album,' she says, 'I don't think we're going to be doing any full-blown concerts, because it's so hard to get this band together. They are the greatest, and they all have their other bands to work with, I can sing live to tracks on the television shows.' For some inexplicable reason, Dolly's whole personality seems to make a connection with the British public, even those who profess to not liking country music. Following her last visit to the UK a couple of years back, her Hungry Again album sold mure than 70,000 copies in the UK, This proved that even for a veteran artist like Dolly Parton, if the time and trouble is taken to come over to the UK, they can sell a lot of records to more than just the die-hard country music fans. That's the funniest thing,' she agrees, 'Britain has just always accepted me for my personality, probably more than they have for my talent because they have such a great sense of humour and understand that that's exactly how I am, 'I have always had a great rapport with the British audiences. They have accepted my whole person, my looks, my personality, and sometimes I wonder why, because it seems as if I'm more loved and appreciated over there than I am over here. 'Like when I did the Lottery Show. That's really like a game show, and you really wouldn't think they'd take the music seriously on a show like that, but they do. It's such a broad audience and we got such a great rating on the Lottery Show. I'll probably come back and host that again and do a few other things.