With her 1999 traditional bluegrass album The Grass Is Blue, Dolly Parton returned to the roots she appeared to have abandoned over the course of multiple country-pop records on various record labels. With Little Sparrow (Sugar Hill), her second album for the North Carolina-based bluegrass label, Parton maintains the standard she set on its predecessor. The material is a mix of Parton originals, including the tearjerker “My Blue Tears” (with harmony vocals supplied by Alison Krauss), the jaunty “Marry Me,” and “Down From Dover” (with Maura O’Connell’s harmony vocals revealing the link between bluegrass and traditional Irish music) along with a few cover versions. Two of the cover songs, Collective Soul’s “Shine” and Cole Porter’s “I Get A Kick Out Of You,” are given the bluegrass treatment with outstanding results.

Australian singer/songwriter Kasey Chambers’s major-label debut disc The Captain (Asylum) doesn’t have her covers of the Neil Finn, Ben Harper or Matthew Ryan songs (they were released on one of her singles), but it does have a piece of The Beverly Hillbillies Theme Song (“Ballad Of Jed Clampett”) on the insurgent country tune “We’re All Gonna Die Someday.” Julie and Buddy Miller lend their voices to a couple of songs and you’d swear that Chambers was from the panhandle and not down-under.

Young country upstart and Tennessee-native Jessica Andrews could be the Britney Spears of the country music scene (although with her downhome drawl, Britney could be the Britney Spears of country). On her second album Who I Am (Dreamworks Nashville) she rocks a little (“Karma,” “I Don’t Like Anyone,” the title track), but more than anything Andrews (or someone in her party) has swell taste in songwriters, exhibited in the inclusion of songs such as “Show Me Heaven” (co-written by Maria McKee), “Wishing Well” (co-written by Annie Roboff) and “Good Friend To Me” (co-written by Roboff, Andrews, and Bekka Bramlett).

Rosie Flores has long been lumped in with the “new traditionalist” country artists (Lyle Lovett, Dwight Yoakam), but has managed to maintain her individuality. Speed of Sound (Eminent) won’t change her reputation, although it might bolster it a bit. Flores does jazzy tunes (“Don’t Know If I’m Comin’ or Goin'” and “Somebody’s Someone”), Latin-tinged tunes (“Devil Music”) and pop tunes (Marshall Crenshaw’s “Somewhere Down The Line”), all with a softly caressing country touch. The title cut, co-written by Flores, is a dark and powerful country ballad, and is a standout track.

I wonder if having a Texan (why, oh why?) in the White House for the next few years means that we’re going to be inundated with musicians with Texas roots. Leslie Satcher is one such Texan who has forged a career as a songwriter in Nashville and has finally released a disc of her own, Love Letters (Warner Brothers). Dull as dirt, not even the guest vocals by Emmylou Harris and the ubiquitous Alison Krauss, can resuscitate this disc that is the musical equivalent of dragging your (cowboy boot) heels. In fact, it isn’t until the bouncy closing track “Texarkana (Wide Open Spaces) ” that this album shows signs of having a pulse. Sadly, the a capella hidden track about racial issues in the South, comes too late.

Texas-native Nanci Griffith was signed to the MCA label at a time when another Bush was in the White House (but we shouldn’t hold that against her, or should we?). She has since recorded a few albums for Elektra, but her years on MCA are the focus of The Best Of Nanci Griffith (MCA Nashville). This is the second “hits” compilation to mine songs from her five MCA discs. The songs on this one focus more on Lone Star State Of Mind, her first album for the label which includes the title track and Griffith’s cover of “From A Distance” (which predated Bette Midler’s version by four years) and her live album One Fair Summer Evening (which includes her stunning reading of Patrick Alger’s “Once In A Very Blue Moon”).