Diamonds, Rhinestones, Crystal Balls, Mood Rings, Lover’s Crosses In The Yard

Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris, Linda Ronstadt—The Complete Trio Collection: the title isn’t quite accurate, as the Wikipedia article on this round-up points out: several more tracks from the original Trio and Trio II’s  respective 80s and 90s sessions turned up on solo albums, as did a few of the 20 that are included on the bonus disc. Some of the alternate takes and previously unreleased titles (which could have added variety of style, detail, and/or dynamics to the troika’s LP-length albums) sung strictly or nearly solo, seem more effective than the previously released versions: when the song is about and from a solitary place, other voices, at least when they enter at predictable points, can slightly dilute the brew, pad the impact, no matter how much they want you to know, “ You ‘n’ me both, Kid” and furthermore ,” I’m with you, Sister.”

But those responses are never far away, even in the darkest, starkest moments. It may seem, especially given Parton’s weepier tendencies as singer and writer, that they’ll all get stuck on a lover’s cross, and they def have their hang-ups, but don’t we all, and ain’t that country, but mainly there is, often enough (usually every few seconds, only a few DOA, although that’s another country tradition too, of course), at the very least, an implicit yet not too polite strength in self-assertion and solidarity. Which certainly goes with the blend of traditional and modern, in the sounds and sentiments. “Lover’s “Return”, written or anyway copyrighted by principals of the Original Carter Family, is mountain-y and civil, while informing the one who once dumped her, and now comes crawling back, “God doesn’t give us back our youth.” Parton writes and sings “Wildflowers” with folk

tropes calmly moving to her wish granted, “the garden set me free.(Had to be, for the garden’s sake as well: “The flowers grew/Too close together.”).

Ronstadt’s robust tones are at their most flexible here, sometimes suggesting Karen Carpenter’s negotiation of the maybe chromatic turns of “Goodbye To Love”, but then again LR wisely lets Parton and Harris take most of the highest notes, but say if Carpenter had lived to cover “Live To Tell” or something with the same burnished intrigue—not the cheesier 80s….mainly I’m thinking of the 1987 Trio version of Anna and Kate McGarrigle’s “I’ve Had Enough”, which is immediately recognizable by its combination of romantic to almost but never quite post-romantic eloquence, blunt and frilly, in lyrics and melody. It sounds sophisticated, wised-up yet still maybe naive and nostalgic at some points, or wanting to be, hoarding the crumbs, the scars, the hopes, the history (in the Wikipedia entry, Parton is quoted as saying they didn’t understand what the hell “After The Gold Rush” meant, and supposedly they called Neil and he said he didn’t know either, but conceptually it’s perfectly, ruefully at home in these sessions, while still sounding a little drippy, as always–though more so here, when Parton changes the candidly confessional “I felt like getting high” to feeling like she could cry). The alternate “I’ve Had Enough” is one of the few easy choices for exclusion, since it draws the harmonists into tiny waves of insular, rainy day consolation around the old upright (no longer the cosmopolitan, note-bending electric on Trio II). This is good as far as it goes,(which is backwards, sonically: they’re not walking it like they talk it), but reminds me of the stylish young Canadienne secretary in an 80s (maybe early 90s) documentary about the McGarrigles, who said that their songs reminded her of “what the nuns used to make us sing,” and why she moved to the big city.

(Meahwhile, the Sisters McG. mine their rich mix of signals in several directions on the CD debut of Pronto Monto, from 1978: the sometimes exhilarating results are mixed too, appropriately enough)(wonder what 70s Neil Young thought about them?)

Emmylou Harris’s choice of material is not so striking, but in this context, her solo voice can seem to draw in properties of the other two—who, when they come in, can seem like further definitions, a new mix, of her high and low ends—until the unified effect becomes a sonic spectrum (helps with the nuances and other details too).

As far as left-behinds now adding the aforementioned variety of etc., the hymn “Softly and Tenderly” is just like the title says without cloying or clotting. The Roebuck Staples-co-written “You Don’t Knock” truly and briskly believes in abstaining from timidity at Heaven’s door. “Do I Ever Cross Your Mind” is Parton leading a tailfeather tambourine handclapping parade in the face of and past another no-good ex, with another reminder of what’s being missed on the Hallelujah Trail (a good thing or three).