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My Blue Ridge Mountain Boy was originally released on 11th
October 1969 and was her 4th solo album and 2nd of that
year. It managed No.6 on the Country chart, which was her
highest placed position of her career to date, although all
her 3 previous duet albums with Porter had all made the top
10. Continuing on the factual trail, there were 3 singles
cut from it, Daddy, In The Ghetto and My Blue Ridge Mountain
Boy, all of which unfortunately failed to set the charts
alight. Of the 12 tracks, only 5 of them were penned by
Dolly, which was about the average for one of her albums at
this time. It was very much the style at the time to throw
in a few covers of recent hit singles, namely Elvis’ In The
Ghetto, Joe South’s Games People Play, although it was a
little odd to release the former as a single just a few
months after Elvis’ made the charts.
The standout track on the album without a doubt in My Blue
Ridge Mountain Boy, its just a great story song of lost
love, with a semi-autobiographical tone to it. The other two
worth mentioning are I’m Fed Up With You and We Had All The
Good Things Going, both of which are good up-tempo country
numbers. As with many of Dolly’s early albums, there are a
few tracks that haven’t aged very well, especially the
those which verge on a semi-novelty tone, like The Monkeys
Tale and those which plod along as she sings about the
downtrodden, lost love woman, like Daddy and Home For Pete’s
Sake. That’s not to say that Dolly didn’t write some great
songs in this genre (eg Down from Dover and Will He Be
Waiting For Me), but there are so many forgettable ones
where the pace is so pedestrian, you wouldn’t even remember
it after 10 listens.
Overall My Blue Ridge Mountain Boy is not a bad album, but
in comparison to Dolly’s other 3 solo albums released in the
1960’s, it ranks at the bottom of the pile, simply because
in each of those you can count at least half a dozen catchy
tracks, whereas here I was struggling to find three.
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My Blue Ridge Mountain Boy - 03/02/2006 
