DOLLY YOUR ENTHUSIASM (1)
By:
January 2, 2023
One in a series of 25 enthusiastic posts, contributed by 25 HILOBROW friends and regulars, on the topic of favorite Country singles from the Sixties (1964–1973). Series edited by Josh Glenn. BONUS: Check out the DOLLY YOUR ENTHUSIASM playlist on Spotify.
PORTER WAGONER and DOLLY PARTON | “WE FOUND IT” | 1973
Porter Wagoner was my first country hero for decades before I ever heard “We Found It.” In grade school, I sang along with the radio to Wagoner’s hooky, fatality-filled radio hits like “Green, Green Grass of Home” and “The Carroll County Accident.” And while back then I’d only ever seen his rhinestone suits and strawberry blonde pompadour in black and white, I knew him as a decidedly colorful character from his knowingly corny syndicated TV show. Bonus: The Thin Man from West Plains was the only famous person I’d heard of who hailed, like my dad’s people, from the Missouri Ozarks. Indeed, Wagoner looked and acted like my kin in ways that were sometimes a little too familiar: His songs of alcoholism and violence, and his laughing-too-loud-stage presence, echoed our blue-collar home’s taciturn turns and unpredictable rages.
Maybe it was those menacing intimations of what another Wagoner hit had called “The Cold, Hard Facts of Life” that held me back from digging into Wagoner’s enormous catalogue beyond the hits — a neglect that extended to his several albums with protégé, duet partner and budding superstar Dolly Parton. When I finally took the plunge (while prepping to interview him in 2007), I discovered one of country music’s truly great bodies of work. But it was his uncharacteristic and unironic “We Found It” that made me cry.
The title track to the pair’s ninth album, and a mere #30 hit, “We Found It” was written by Wagoner after Parton’s model pushed him to try songwriting himself. It bursts with the pop ambition Dolly was only just discovering for herself. Barely two months after “We Found It” charted, she cut “Jolene.” The secret pop weapon on those records, and on nearly every Porter and Dolly track in those years, duet or solo, was their bassist and session leader Bobby Dyson.
A breathless Porter and Dolly open “We Found It” trading details about how their love died. Then, with Dyson carrying the record on his back — his country funky playing is bubbling and buoyant, busy by country standards — the song leaps into one long beaming chorus of rediscovered love: “Joy to love! Joy to love! We found it!” Dolly’s fluttering half of the duet elevates the pair while flat Porter keeps it earthbound. But it’s Dyson’s arrangement that does the emotional labor, tricking you into thinking it’s stacking key changes till the end of time when all it’s really doing is staying put, satisfied and beaming. I’d never experienced anything like it.
Well, not quite. Just as I’d dreaded the awful limits in Wagoner’s earlier hits, I later heard in “We Found It,” written by an artist best known for his tragedies, the life-saving, heart-swelling joy of loving and of being loved. I can’t recommend it enough.
[Editor’s note, added 11/20/23: Also see David Cantwell’s list of the Best Country Albums of 1973, Part 1.]
DOLLY YOUR ENTHUSIASM: INTRODUCTION by Josh Glenn | David Cantwell on Porter Wagoner and Dolly Parton’s WE FOUND IT | Lucy Sante on Johnny & June Carter Cash’s JACKSON | Mimi Lipson on George Jones’s WALK THROUGH THIS WORLD WITH ME | Steacy Easton on Olivia Newton-John’s LET ME BE THERE | Annie Zaleski on Tammy Wynette’s D-I-V-O-R-C-E | Carl Wilson on Tom T. Hall’s THAT’S HOW I GOT TO MEMPHIS | Josh Glenn on Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen’s BACK TO TENNESSEE | Elizabeth Nelson on Skeeter Davis’s I DIDN’T CRY TODAY | Carlo Rotella on Buck Owens’ TOGETHER AGAIN | Lynn Peril on Roger Miller’s THE MOON IS HIGH | Erik Davis on Kris Kristofferson’s SUNDAY MORNIN’ COMIN’ DOWN | Francesca Royster on Linda Martell’s BAD CASE OF THE BLUES | Amanda Martinez on Bobbie Gentry’s FANCY | Erin Osmon on John Prine’s PARADISE | Douglas Wolk on The Byrds’ DRUG STORE TRUCK DRIVIN’ MAN | David Warner on Willie Nelson’s WHISKEY RIVER | Will Groff on Tanya Tucker’s DELTA DAWN | Natalie Weiner on Dolly Parton’s IN THE GOOD OLD DAYS (WHEN TIMES WERE BAD) | Charlie Mitchell on Stonewall Jackson’s I WASHED MY HANDS IN MUDDY WATER | Nadine Hubbs on Dolly Parton’s COAT OF MANY COLORS | Jada Watson on Loretta Lynn’s DON’T COME HOME A DRINKIN’ (WITH LOVIN’ ON YOUR MIND) | Adam McGovern on Johnny Cash’s THE MAN IN BLACK | Stephen Thomas Erlewine on Dick Curless’s A TOMBSTONE EVERY MILE | Alan Scherstuhl on Waylon Jennings’s GOOD HEARTED WOMAN | Alex Brook Lynn on Bobby Bare’s THE WINNER. PLUS: Peter Doyle on Jerry Reed’s GUITAR MAN | Brian Berger on Charley Pride’s IS ANYBODY GOING TO SAN ANTONE.
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