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While Agnetha Fältskog’s “My Colouring Book” was an interesting foray allowing Agnetha to resurface from obscurity singing old classics from her youth, in a somewhat safe manor in which to re-approach recording songs in English. But she’s not the only artist whose prominence in the music scene of the 1970’s has resulted in a “new” collection of “old” songs.

This month we’re treated to a new covers collection of songs from the 1960’s and 1970’s by Dolly Parton. The album is appropriately titled, “Those Were The Days” and indeed the title song leads off the collection and takes on a whimsical journey through twelve songs ending with the timeless “Imagine” originally by John Lennon. Dolly didn’t necessarily need to release a collection of cover songs as she’s a well known song writer and having written several classic songs that have been done by other artists. In the notes for the album, Dolly indicated that she wanted to put together a CD of songs from the 1960s and 70s of songs that she loved or felt touched by in one way or another.

Dolly’s unique spin on her collection of songs from the past is that she invited as many of the original artists and writers of the songs to come sing the songs with her with quite a number of them agreeing to take part. Additionally she also invited some newer artists to come along for the journey bringing a couple generations of musicians together to perform in what Dolly calls a special event. In fact, the album has quite a long list of “special guests” listed right on the cover and a scan of the album credits reveals even several other additional collaborations that occurred in the process of bringing this album to life.

And to top it off Dolly also took many of the songs out for a spin on a tour to promote the album hitting several of its stops before the album appeared in stores. Mixing many of the songs from the album in with her own big hits made for a wonderful concert experience when I caught her show in Los Angeles proving that Dolly is one of the ultimate entertainers in the world showing as much ownership over these songs by others as she does over her own songs. Many of the “new” songs were opportunities for the audience to sing along because the songs are so well known.

One of Dolly’s choices, “Where Have All The Flowers Gone” is one that Olivia Newton-John performed on her collection of oldies that she called “Indigo.” Oddly ironic that Olivia once made a hit for herself with Dolly Parton’s “Jolene” in the 70’s and now Dolly chooses to do one of the songs same Olivia picked for her collection of old songs a year after Olivia did it. Olivia’s collection is said to be a collection of songs by women who had inspired and influenced her over the years.

Perhaps the whole reinvention of 70’s artists as interpreters of songs from eras bygone started with Rod Steward who was in bad need of a way to reinvent his career and find a way to stay relevant with modern audiences, took golden era songs from the World War years of the 20th century and giving them new life in the twenty-first century. Reinventing himself as a crooner of classics has touched connected with audiences and even inspired sequel albums. The fourth sequel album in the series of his “Great American Songbook” collections hits stores later this month. In addition to singing the songs himself he’s invited other artists that have had prominence in the last thirty years of music to sing with him. Dolly Parton was a featured guest vocalist on a little song called “It’s Cold Outside” from the third volume in the series.

And this trend of dipping back into the past for current inspiration has also affected some other 70’s artists in different ways. September 2005 saw the release of “Guilty Pleasures” an album rejoining Barbra Streisand with Barry Gibb of the BeeGees who produced her hit album “Guilty” which helped close out the seventies in 1980. In an obvious nod to the previous album the artwork for the new album is very reminiscent of the original collaboration although instead of young people, it’s ancient versions of Barbra and Barry who seem to fill out the CD cover a lot more so than their younger selves on the cover of “Guilty”. Albeit, this album is unlike the others discussed here this month in that it is a collection of new material, but much of it feels like follow up songs to the ones on the original album. It’s very much capitalizing on the nostalgia for the original album, where it’s no surprise that the original album finally saw release in a remastered form two weeks prior to “Guilty Pleasures” with bonus material on the DualDisc version of the album promoting the new album.

While I doubt very much any of these releases I’ve discussed here this month have anything to do with Agnetha’s releasing of “My Colouring Book” last year, the significance is that it takes Agnetha’s album for us to open our eyes and see many of Agnetha’s contemporaries from the 1970’s are being struck with similar nostalgia and finding that the best way to stay relevant for today’s audiences is reminiscing about the past.