She told the warden how much she loved him

Thursday music corner: Dolly Parton, who died this week aged 80, was a much-loved entertainer and entrepreneur renowned for her many works of charity alongside her long and successful singing and acting career. Born in Tennessee in 1946, she was a hugely prolific recording artist, releasing 49 studio albums from Hello, I'm Dolly in 1967 to her last, Rockstar, in 2023, which includes a version of Let It Be featuring both surviving Beatles members. Parton appeared in 12 movies including 9 to 5 (1980) and Steel Magnolias (1989).

Parton, Emmylou Harris and Linda Ronstadt performed a range of songs together on Parton's self-titled TV show. Originally performed by Harris and Ronstadt as a duet in 1975, The Sweetest Gift appeared on Ronstadt's million-selling Prisoner in Disguise album of that year. Parton, Harris and Ronstadt recorded two highly-successful collaborative albums, Trio (1987) and Trio II (1999). 

Parton, Harris & Ronstadt - The Sweetest Gift (1977)

See also:

Music: Dolly Parton - Here You Come Again (1977)

Music: Dolly Parton - Baby I'm Burnin' (1978)

Music: Dolly Parton - Jolene (live at Glastonbury, 2014)

Grayson Perry, on Martin Parr

When I first came upon the photography of Martin Parr in a colour supplement at some point in the 1980s, a very loud bell rang. Here was someone who was pointing out with laser precision the aspects of society I didn't even know I was driven by. He framed anthropological observations that I didn't yet know I was fascinated by. Class, identity, individualism and belonging, what it is to be British: in these subjects, Martin's photos are my guiding text. Often the most affecting encounters with culture are those that make concrete the wisps of feeling we have been sensing for years. For me, the photographs of Martin Parr did just that, and I'm sure they have done the same thing for millions of other people all over the planet.

Since that first encounter, his work has been a guiding beacon for me, pointing out patterns and dissonances in society, but more importantly showing me how to look. Over the course of his long and vastly prolific career - to date he has produced more than 100 books and many more exhibitions - Martin has developed an anthropological 'sat nav' that will reliably take him to where his hyper-developed image-making skills can play and disrupt. His genius is not just in spotting the shot, but in booking the flight and getting the access [...]

One of the first things I asked him is something I'm sure other people must wonder: 'How do you get away with taking some of these photographs?' If I saw Martin striding purposefully towards me with a camera, I would be tempted to run. The few times he has taken my photo, I have ended up looking like someone in a Martin Parr photograph. I stare blankly out, my pretentions pinned like a butterfly to a card. I have occasionally seen him at work in the field, alert but camouflaged by banality. He has developed a carefully crafted image: the genial dowdy everyman that no one will notice, in faded clothes and sandals, who pokes the camera in someone's face with utter confidence and then turns away and disappears into the background the split second after pressing the shutter.

- Grayson Perry, in Martin Parr: Only Human, London, 2019, p.10-11. 

And I might as well just grin and bear it

Thursday music corner: Originally formed in London in 1988 other other, less memorable, names, the four-piece rock group Blur signed to Food Records in 1990, and their debut album Leisure was released the following year. Blur have released nine studio albums, with the last seven all topping the UK album charts, including the most recent, 2023's The Ballad of Darren. The band has also scored 26 UK top 40 singles.

With lyrics by Damon Albarn and music by the band, the sweeping ballad Badhead is an album track from Blur's breakthrough third album Parklife (1994), which is often cited as one of the definitive British albums of the 1990s. Apart from the band, the track features contributions from the Kick Horns: trombone from Roddy Lorimer, and saxophone by Tim Sanders and Simon Clarke.

Blur - Badhead (live at Alexandra Palace, 1994)

See also:

Music: Blur - Holding Onto Tomorrow (live at Budokan, 1995)

Music: Graeme Coxon - Freakin' Out (2004)

Music: Gorillaz feat. De La Soul - Feel Good Inc (2005)

Finding out happiness is just a state of mind

Thursday music corner: New York-born singer-songwriter Richie Havens (1941-2013) had released five albums by 1969, when his live performance reputation saw him booked as the opening act at the Woodstock festival in Bethel, New York, in August of that year. This fifty-minute set and the accompanying film and soundtrack album became the keystone of his five-decade recording career in which he released 21 studio albums, three live albums, and a range of singles including the 1971 US top 20 hit, Here Comes the Sun.

Going Back to My Roots was originally released in 1977 by its author, Lamont Dozier, tapping into the themes raised by the best-selling Alex Haley novel, Roots. Havens' version appeared on his 1980 soul-funk album Connections.

Richie Havens - Going Back to My Roots (1980)

See also:

Music: Richie Havens - Here Comes the Sun (1971)

Music: Lamont Dozier - Trying to Hold Onto My Woman (1973)

Music: Odyssey - Going Back to My Roots (1981)

The lucrative profession of photography in 19th century New Zealand

Alfred Burton's [1885 photo montage] The Maori at Home will always remain a remarkable and unique record. A few years earlier the journey would have been impossible or at least suicidal. A few years later the Maori had become sophisticated in front of the camera. This work deservedly gained him the Fellowship of the Royal Geographical Society. And it undoubtedly brought the firm kudos that was reflected in all the branches of their photographic work. Burton Brothers became a national New Zealand concern and known widely abroad.

Just how much Alfred gained financially from these important additions to the catalogue of topographical and ethnographical photographs it is not possible to say, because no account books of the period have survived, and, as has been emphasised before, many photographers in Dunedin who specialised in portraiture during the formative years appear also to have done well.

The record of freeholders in New Zealand which was published in 1882 gives some idea of relative prosperity in the profession. Robert Clifford, apart from his dwelling in Fleet Street, had freehold property in Mornington, the North East Valley, and West Harbour, to a total value of £1,710; Frederick Henry Irwin, of the London Portrait Rooms, held freehold property to the value of £3,500; Alexander Peyman, no longer in partnership with Irwin and living in England, owned 1,273 acres at Wanganui valued at £12,730, and properties to the value of £7,870 in Oamaru and £2,500 in Dunedin, and Caroline Peyman at Wanganui had freehold property to the value of £1,737; William Meluish, living in England, had in 1882 freehold property in Dunedin to the value of £8,820, and Alfred Burton held freehold an acre and dwelling at Sunnyside, Roslyn valued at £780 and property in Dunedin giving a total of £1,180. These figures, at that date and viewed relatively, may not signify great wealth, but they do suggest that the top photographers were men of social standing and some substance.

- Hardwicke Knight, Burton Brothers: Photographers, Dunedin, 1980, p.34-5.