Kentucky Gambler

The song’s character — a man defined by gambling, moving through life with the particular freedom and particular loneliness of someone whose only commitment is to the next card — fit Haggard’s working-class outlaw persona naturally enough that the Parton origin was largely invisible to his audience. Haggard’s performance made no claims about autobiography, but the song sounded like autobiography, which is how the best country covers work.

Parton’s own 1975 recording demonstrates the song’s flexibility: her reading is equally convincing, the same character rendered with different vocal weight. The song belongs to a period in Parton’s pre-crossover career when she was writing material that other country singers could inhabit as naturally as she could — a songwriter’s songwriter phase before her own image became the primary context for everything she touched. The featured version is Haggard’s.