Songfacts®:

• Although she grew up poor in rural East Tennessee, Dolly Parton has fond memories of her mountain home, which inspired her 1973 concept album. The title track finds her reminiscing about simpler times spent with her family. She recalled in her 2020 book, Songteller: "I love being a mountain girl, a country girl. And I've written so many songs about it. 'My Tennessee Mountain Home' really talks about sitting on a front porch, leaning back like we used to, singing, and having peaceful times. There were hard times, too. But when you grow up in the mountains, you're not working every second."
• Dolly is particularly fond of the line, "Life is as peaceful as a baby's sigh." She said: "We always had plenty of babies, and there's nothing like holding a little baby after he's bawled his head off and finally gone to sleep."
• Dolly's uncle Louis snapped a photo of the real-life Parton home in Locust Ridge, where the singer grew up with her 11 siblings, for the album cover. While fans can visit a replica of the tiny cabin at Dollywood, which features some of the Partons' original furniture and other mementoes, the actual home still stands in Locust Ridge. Dolly's parents sold the cabin in the '70s, but she bought it back in the '80s and restored it with the help of her brother Bobby.
  
  "What we tried to do was make it look like it did when we lived there, but we wanted it to be functional. So I spent a couple million dollars making it look like I spent $50 on it!" she told The Nate Berkus Show. "Even like in the bathroom, I made the bathroom so it looked like an outdoor toilet."
• Bob Ferguson, who wrote the hit country tunes "Wings Of A Dove" and "The Carroll County Accident," is listed as Dolly's producer on all of her RCA albums through the mid-'70s, but Porter Wagoner disputed his credit. Wagoner, Dolly's singing partner on a string of hit duet albums, said he was the actual producer but Ferguson was given credit due to the label's rules against using outside producers.
  
  "Bob Ferguson was 'in house,' so that's why his name is on all the things I produced on myself. Same on Dolly's things, our duets and everything." Wagoner told Robert K. Oermann, author of Behind The Grand Ole Opry Curtain: Tales of Romance and Tragedy. "He wasn't even there. Credit really didn't bother me. I just wanted to get it done the best it could be."
• The single, released on December 4, 1972, peaked at #15 on the Country chart.
• Dolly re-recorded this for her 1994 live album, Heartsongs.
• Folk/blues singer Maria Muldaur recorded this for her self-titled solo album in 1973. It was also covered by the Earl Scruggs Revue in 1974, Rose Maddox in 1977, and Norwegian-Swedish singer Elisabeth Andreassen in 2005.
• She released three more albums in 1973: We Found It and Love And Music, both with Porter Wagoner, and the solo effort Bubbling Over. The following year, she released Jolene, which featured the chart-topping singles "Jolene" and "I Will Always Love You."