"Dolly Parton, 'sure can sing', crowd enjoys it.

"Ah, but she sure can sing." Those words from the song "She," written years ago by country rooker Grain Parsons, nicely sum up Dolly Parton's Des Moines concert Tuesday night. There were some faults and flaws; some lackluster tunes mixed in with the beauties, and, as always at Veterans Memorial Auditorium, the sound was not the best. Yet there was little question that the lady "sure can sing." Her hour-long, 23-song set mixed up classic Parton pieces such as "Jolene," "Tennessee Mountain Home" and the spirited "Apple Jack" with newer, more pop flavored songs — "Two Doors Down," "Here You Come Again" and "It's All I Can Do." The latter were more warmly received by the crowd of some 3,400 who paid from $5 to $7 each to see Parton and opening act Narvel Fefts. But nowhere in her hour on stage did Parton shine as she did early in the set when she sang "To Daddy." Parton wrote the tune, and Emmylou Harris first brought it to commercial attention on a recent album. Better than Harris The lyrics tell of a martyr-like mother who never had womanly desires — "or if she did, she never did say so to daddy." Once the kids are raised, momma takes off for good trying to make up for lost time. Parton's version was sung with such heart-rending sincerity Tuesday that Harris' effort pales in comparison. (This is said only after painful deliberation, and comes from a rabid Harris fan.) "Coat of Many Colors," about Parton's poverty-steeped childhood, was likewise delivered with moving candor. But there was a bubble of incongruity in hearing Parton, rapidly becoming a pop glitter princess, deliver a treatise on being poor and wearing rags sewn together by a loving mother. Still, the song was a knockout. This, in part, because it was bolstered by fine, emphatic "oohs" and "aahs," appropriately sprinkled by backing vocalists Anita Ball and Richard Dennison. Admittedly, an "ooh" or "aah" would seem inconsequential. But layered, as they were, over the transitional voids in the song, the backing vocals came 'close to making the tune. As expected, the show was enough of a mixture to please more traditional country music fans and newer converts who have discovered Parton amidst her crossover from pure country into the pop arena. The singer commented in an interview: "In this crossing over, I won those people I wanted to in the pop market, and I didn't lose my country fans."