Dolly officially began her recording career on Monument - she made recordings before that but they are mainly of curiosity value. Dolly was still maturing as a singer during her time on Monument but I love these recordings as they have little in common with her later music (even her early RCA music). Dolly's natural voice contains a lot of vibrato that she gradually eliminated over many years. On these recordings, you hear Dolly sounding exactly as she was meant to sound - pure hillbilly.

This album is a straight re-issue of the original album, As long as I love, which was not released until Dolly was three years into her RCA contract, so yielded no hits. Nevertheless, it includes Why why why (covered by Tracy Nelson on her album, Country) and I wound easy (covered by Tammy Wynette) while the title track was covered by Dottie West. Some of these covers actually appeared before Dolly's recordings were publicly available. There are many other great songs here including I don't want you around me anymore, This boy has been hurt and Daddy won't be home anymore.

If you enjoy hillbilly music, you'll love this.