New Harvest... First Gathering Songwriting Credits by Dolly Parton

New Harvest... First Gathering is the fifteenth studio album by Dolly Parton, released in February 1977 on RCA Records and produced by Parton and Gregg Perry. It was the first album Parton co-produced, a significant career milestone reflecting the expanded creative control she had negotiated as her commercial standing grew, and the album that most explicitly marked her transition from traditional country toward the pop crossover that would characterize her late 1970s commercial peak. Parton wrote the majority of tracks, including 'Light of a Clear Blue Morning,' 'Applejack,' and 'How Does It Feel'; the production reflects a pop-country synthesis closer to the radio-friendly mainstream than the traditional Nashville Sound of her earlier RCA work. The album reached the top ten on the Billboard Country Albums chart but was notable primarily for establishing the creative independence and crossover ambition that would produce Here You Come Again later the same year. New Harvest... First Gathering demonstrates Parton's awareness that the pop mainstream represented a larger commercial opportunity than the country market alone, and the co-production credit is the most direct evidence of her intention to control the direction of that transition personally.