Christmas will come early for Dolly Parton fans with the 2nd of October. Arrival of In Holly Dolly Christmas, the icon’s first holiday album in 30 years.
Based on Parton’s own Butterfly Records in collaboration with 12Tone Music Group, the collection includes a mix of originals and holiday standards and features Parton dueting with such famous friends as Michael Bublé, Billy Ray Cyrus, goddaughter Miley Cyrus, Jimmy Fallon and Willie Nelson, as just like with her brother Randy Parton.
The first single from the Kent Wells-produced album will be “Cuddle Up, Cozy Down Christmas” with Bublé.
The album title first came to Parton, who tells Billboard she has the project in mind a bit, but it was delayed by her work on the soundtrack to the movie Netflix, Dumplin‘until they pick up again this year.
‘I thought,’ I think I’ll call it In Holly Dolly Christmas because I love the song ‘A Holly Jolly Christmas’ with Burl Ives. He had been through all my Christmas specials for years. I think of him as Mr. Christmas. I thought, ‘Why don’t I call it something fun and clever, like that or Deck the Halls with Boughs of Dolly, what grain like that. ‘”
While collecting songs for the project, she turned to one of her longtime friends: “One of my favorite songs ever is a traditional song now Willie Nelson wrote called ‘Pretty Paper’,” Parton says the Nelson -mody first made famous by Roy Orbison and later cut by Nelson. “I did it the old-fashioned way and asked him to be a part of it.”
She also decided to cover a modern holiday classic, Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas Is You.”
“I thought, ‘What other songs are really hot?’ And I thought, ‘All I want for Christmas is you.’ Jimmy Fallon, a few years ago, I was on his show around Christmas and he asked me to sing it and I did not know it and I felt so bad that I went and learned it and I would just put it on my album and then I went, ‘I’ll ask Jimmy Fallon to sing it with me!’ And he said, “Yes. I’m really excited about that.”
Most of their duet partners registered their parts separately from Parton, who completed the project with Wells after the COVID-19 pandemic began.
“We worked in our little circle with our masks and with our gloves, and we had our engineer and we had just the very few people we needed when we were there when I sang,” she says. ‘They had done some of the tracks for the pandemic, but then we went inside and started doing our singing. We have been very smart, very careful because we are trying to protect ourselves and I am an older person. I’m not out to get it if I do not [have] to, I hope I can overcome all that. We have all been very, very smart, but it does not slow us down. ‘
In her six-decade career, Parton has released surprisingly few holiday-themed albums, noting the 1984 double platinum collaboration with Kenny Rogers, Once Upon a Christmas, and the 1990s Home for Christmas, while a medley of “Winter Wonderland / Sleigh Ride, from a compilation with multiple artists. hit the Hot Country Songs chart in 1999.
In addition to the In Holly Dolly Christmas, Parton has many other music-themed projects coming up this fall. On November 17, Chronicle Books will release Dolly Parton, Songteller: My Life in Lyrics, a deluxe coffee table book that explores her career and life through 175 of her songs.
“A songwriter is what I am, and this is my first book of lyrics,” Parton said in a statement when the project was announced in June. “That, I revisited my memories and opened my archives to share the stories and treasures behind them in a way I’ve never had before.” An accompanying audiobook will be released the same day via Recorded Books.
Also this fall, Time Life will release The Ultimate Dolly Parton DVD collection.
See the In Holly Dolly Christmas Track Listing:
Holly Jolly Christmas – Dolly Parton
Christmas Is (feat. Miley Cyrus) – Dolly Parton
Cuddle Up, Cozy Down Christmas – Dolly Parton, Michael Bublé
Christmas in the Square – Dolly Parton
Circle Of Love – Dolly Parton
All I want for Christmas is you – Dolly Parton, Jimmy Fallon
Comin ‘Home For Christmas – Dolly Parton
Christmas Where We Are (feat. Billy Ray Cyrus) – Dolly Parton
Pretty Paper – Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson
I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus – Dolly Parton
You Are My Christmas (feat. Randy Parton) – Dolly Parton
Mary, did you know that? – Dolly Parton
