Little Sparrow

The title song reworks the Appalachian ballad Come All You Fair and Tender Ladies, also sung as Tiny Sparrow, and returns to one of her favorite subjects, false-hearted men. She sings alone at first before the band comes in, in a minor key. Jim Mills, Barry Bales, Stuart Duncan, Bryan Sutton, Chris Thile and Jerry Douglas play on it, and Alison Krauss and Dan Tyminski sing harmony with her. A short reprise closes the album.

Rolling Stone called it an outstanding, haunting original, AllMusic heard an ingenious metaphor, and the Austin Chronicle found it as beautiful and fragile as its namesake. It was never a single.

Live

She sang it second at her Austin City Limits debut, filmed five days before the album came out, and on WXPN's World Cafe that year. setlist.fm logs 90 performances, from MerleFest in April 2001 to Toronto in 2016, and live versions appear on Live and Well and Live from London. Candi Carpenter sang it at the Opry in 2019 to mark Parton's fifty years as a member.