An Obit Called “Coat of Many Colors”
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Few people have written their own obituary on the back of a dry cleaner’s receipt. Dolly Parton did. And yes, it’s in song – “Coat of Many Colors.”
The country music legend wrote her lyrically-stunning autobiographic reflection some 57 years before her death, on August 25 at the age of 80. She was in the back of a bus - touring with country star Porter Wagoner – when she started reflecting on her impoverished childhood.
“I’ll grab whatever is handy when a song strikes me. It was Porter Wagoner’s dry-cleaning receipt which was on the tour bus,” she later wrote. “I scribbled down my original lyrics for ‘Coat of Many Colors’ right then and there.”
The song tells the true story from her “dirt-poor” upbringing as the fourth of 12 children in the Great Smokey Mountains of East Tennessee. Her mother sewed Dolly a winter coat out of colorful family rags, and, as she stitched, she told her the biblical story of Joseph and his coat of many colors. What happened when Dolly proudly wore it to school constitutes one of the most endearing stanzas in modern music.
So with patches on my britches
And holes in both my shoes
In my coat of many colors
I hurried off to school
Just to find the others laughing
And making fun of me
In my coat of many colors
My momma made for me
She provides a wonderful summary of her feelings at that time in her insightful analysis of her song-writing - the 2020 publication Dolly Parton Songteller – My Life in Lyrics.
“I was even kind of hurt and angry at my mama, because I felt she had sort of told me a fib. I even expressed that to her. So that’s when Mama said, ‘Look don’t you ever say we are poor. We are not poor people. Now we don’t have as much material stuff as other people do, but wealth is not measured by a dollar.’ She explained the whole thing to me and again made me feel proud of my little coat.”
This thought becomes the moral of the song.
But they didn’t understand it, and I tried to make them see
One is only poor, only if they choose to be
Now I know we had no money, but I was rich as I could be
In my coat of many colors my momma made for me
“So that little song is like a world of things. It teaches about bullying, about love, about acceptance, about good parents. That little story has even been written into a schoolbook to teach children about being different, that it’s all right to be different. And that you don’t make fun of other people. You have to accept everything and everyone,” she added in Songteller.
“At the time I thought, ‘Why is this happening?’ Now I know it was so I could write that song. It really is true that ‘God works in strange and mysterious ways. His wonders to perform.’ You never know when you’re going through things what is actually going to turn about to be a blessing. So it’s worth the suffering,” she concluded.
“Coat of any Colors” certainly turned out “to be a blessing.” Dolly was accompanied by some of the best session musicians when it was recorded in RCA Studio B in Nashville. It would be the title track to her 1971 album and as a single – the second from the album – it would reach #4 on the Billboard Hot Country Songs. It is included in Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Songs of All Time and would be covered by many artists. One of the first – and best – was by Emmylou Harris who included it on her first big-label album Pieces of the Sky in 1975.
There is an intriguing postscript to “Coat of Many Colors.” When it was released in 1975 on the Best of Dolly Parton compilation, the lyrics to the song were included in the album’s liner notes. And printed there was a final verse that was never included in any of Dolly’s recordings.
Through life I’ve remained happy and good luck I on my w\side
I have everything that anyone could ever want from life
But nothing is as precious as my mam’s memory
And my coat of many colors that mama made for me
But where and when she wrote the heart-wrenching song - long regarded as her favourite composition - will always provide a unique perspective into her song-writing techniques
Indeed, in the introduction to Songteller, Dolly said: “People ask me. ‘Do you have to be in a particular place to write a song?’ I don’t. I can write anytime, anywhere, any place. I don’t have to be in a particular environment. Noise or anything else around me can’t stop me. On my tour bus, on an airplane, in the bathtub, or just about anywhere, the writing comes all the time.”
She concluded: “I stay close to my guitar or a tape recorder, so that I can always remember a melody if it comes to me.”
So what happened to that dry cleaner’s receipt? Well Porter Wagoner – always one to know a good lyric – kept the receipt and it is now framed and hangs in Dollywood’s Chasing Rainbows Museum in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee.
Paul Cutler
Editor Crossroads – Americana Music Appreciation
Coat of Many Colors – Written by Dolly Parton
Back through the years I go wanderin’ once again
Back to the seasons of my youth
I recall a box of rags that someone gave us
And how my mama put the rags to use
There were rags of many colors, and every piece was small
And I didn’t have a coat and it was way down in the fall
Mama sewed the rags together sewing every piece with love
She made my coat of many colors I was so proud of
As she sewed, she told a story from the Bible she had read
About a coat of many colors Joseph wore and then she said
Perhaps this coat will bring you good luck and happiness
And I just couldn’t wait to wear it and mama blessed it with a kiss
My coat of many colors that my mama made for me
Made only from rags but I wore it so proudly
Although we had no money I was rich as I could be
In my coat of many colors my mama made for me
So with patches on my britches and holes in both my shoes
In my coat of many colors I hurried off to school
Just to find the others laughin’ and a-makin’ fun of me
In my coat of many colors my mama made for me
And oh I couldn’t understand it for I felt I was rich
And I told them of the love my mama sewed in every stitch
And I told them all the story mama told me while she sewed
And how my coat of many colors was worth more than all their clothes
But they didn’t understand it and I tried to make them see
That one if only poor only if they choose to be
Now I know we had no money but I was rich as I could be
In my coat of many colors that my mama made for me
Made just for me
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