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release, "Little Sparrow" (Sugarhill Records, 2001), shows the full range of her abilities. Taking bluegrass and Irish ballad structure as her frame, Parton shades in all kinds of colors and textures on those themes within the album's 14 songs. She's helped along by truly brilliant musical work from bluegrass luminaries like Dan Tyminski and Stuart Duncan . Melancholy bouzouki and tin whistles from the Irish group Altan lend a genuine Celtic sensibility and remind your ears of the source of mountain music. Parton's own steel-forged soprano is backed by gorgeous harmonizing from Alison Krauss, the Isaacs, Maura O'Connell and Rebecca Lynn Howard.

"Marry Me," one of the few joyously happy songs on the record, is cute in the way that other songs that try for that adjective are not because it's written in the true voice of a teen-aged girl. This is what really goes on inside a girl's head, not that creepy Lolitaesque teasing going on in Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera's songs. Want to know how your daughter feels? Listen to this song. Better yet, make her listen to it.

In the final analysis, what makes her music pulse with life is the fact that Parton never did get above "her raisin'" she never strays far from her home in the mountains. She's taken the commercial restraints off her voice, allowing herself to tear through material with all the force of a double-barreled shotgun and the delicacy of a butterfly.

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