Coat of Many Colors Songwriting Credits by Dolly Parton

Coat of Many Colors is the seventh studio album by Dolly Parton, released in October 1971 on RCA Records and produced by Bob Ferguson. It is widely regarded as Parton's finest album and one of the most celebrated works in country music, built around the autobiographical title track that describes a childhood coat her mother made from rags and the teasing she endured from classmates for wearing it. Parton wrote the majority of the tracks, including 'Coat of Many Colors' (her account of a biblical lesson her mother taught her about the value of love over material wealth), 'Traveling Man,' and 'Here I Am,' demonstrating at age 25 the narrative depth, melodic craft, and emotional specificity that would define her best songwriting for the following five decades. The title track reached number four on the Billboard Country chart and is consistently cited in surveys of the greatest country songs ever written; the album itself reached the top twenty on the Billboard Country Albums chart. Coat of Many Colors is Parton's most autobiographical album, drawing directly from her Smoky Mountain childhood, her mother's storytelling, and the particular mix of poverty and family love that characterized her early life, and it established the mountain girl narrative identity that coexists with the Dolly persona in all her best work. The album has been certified platinum in the United States and is consistently cited by other songwriters (including Emmylou Harris, Norah Jones, and Alison Krauss) as one of the most influential country albums they encountered.