Songwriting is a talent Dolly Parton has always had: Her very first was about a corncob doll that her mother had made. One of her biggest hits — “Coat of Many Colors” — is not only a favorite, but it captures one of the most vivid memories of her childhood. She explained (via Hamilton College music professor Lydia Hamessley): “Whenever I sing that, I just see my whole childhood.”
Her coat of many colors was made out of necessity. Winter was coming, and her mother made her own out of rags, bits and pieces of fabric. “So, while she made that coat she told me the story about Joseph in the Bible,” Parton told GPB. “And boy, I thought I just really looked like Joseph, and I was so proud of it, and wore it to school. And the kids laughed and said it was just rags, and I didn’t look like Joseph, and that we were poor and all that. I remember crying so hard.”
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She wrote in her memoir, “Dolly,” about just how much the coat had meant to her. It had, after all, been something her mother made just for her, something that was hers and hers alone, made with such love. Even after the kids at school laughed at her and made fun of her, she wrote, “They would not shake my pride in my coat, my love for my mother, my faith in myself. I would not have it.”
