By: Brian Berger

His nickname — pronounced “Hi-Lo” — honored his vocal range.

By: Brian Berger

“The greatest song hound of all.”

By: Brian Berger

Nobody in American music did more with less.

By: Joshua Glenn

A scene from TENDER MERCIES (1983)

By: Brian Berger

He fused old-timey vernacular, post-Dylan poetics, and orchestral pop.

By: David Smay

Forget HEE HAW — he was of the architects of the country sound.

By: Brian Berger

Ambiguity in a world of song beyond hero and anti-hero.

By: David Smay

Her voice was an unalloyed conduit of broken love.

By: Katie Hennessey

He was alt-country before alt-country was cool.

By: Ingrid Schorr

She didn’t have to sing about crying into her beer.

By: David Smay

Like Brando and Billie Holiday, an inescapable exemplar.

By: Brian Berger

A singer of startling dramatic (sometimes melodramatic) empathy…

By: Brian Berger

Forget the breasts, the wigs, and, recently, the plastic surgery. Consider instead DOLLY PARTON (born 1946), the fourth of twelve children from a farming family in Locust Ridge, Tenn., as she arrives in Nashville, 1964. […]