Released when Dolly Parton was 27 years old, the introductory track of My Tennessee Mountain Home finds her reading an old letter she wrote to her parents when she left home to chase a music career in Nashville at age 18. Her dispatch from Music City embodies a familiar feeling, no matter where you come from: going off on your own, only to find you miss all the trappings of home that you never noticed or appreciated.

‘Where I came from, people never dreamed of venturing out. They just lived and died there,’ she told Playboy in 1978. ‘To me, a little kid coming from where I did and having that ambition and sayin’ I wanted to be a star, people would say, “Well, it’s good to daydream, but don’t get carried away.”’

But the same oppressive circumstances that she lived under in her childhood gave Dolly her edge as a songwriter, and eventually led to her being able to leave them for more. The musical history and storytelling of Appalachia is embedded deeply into the sonics of My Tennessee Mountain Home. Each detailed narrative, each weeping harmonica line, each clawhammer strike, each easy-to-remember folk song structure form an unspoken homage to the past and folk traditions that made her.