Dolly Parton's America: Sad Ass Songs

Remembering Dolly Parton

0:00Hey, this is Radio Lab. I'm Soren Wheeler. We here at the show, like so many other people out there are thinking about Dolly Parton right now, taking this moment to look back at an

0:30incredible songwriter, musician, icon. You know, we've told stories here at the show about all kinds of topics and ideas and people, and Dolly has been sort of an interesting touchpoint for us in a lot of ways. Back in 2008, in the pop music episode, we talked about the global impact of her music. We featured a song that she wrote for our sister show, More Perfect, about the 19th Amendment. And as many of you know, our founder and original host, Jad Abumrad, produced a whole nine-part series about her, her life, her music, and about her uniquely expansive appeal to people of all

1:03walks of life around the world. And one of the amazing things about Dolly Parton is how she was able to connect with so many millions of people in such an intimate and meaningful way. And I think we're all seeing that this week as stories come out about her and we reflect on her life. And as someone who's worked on those stories, it's impossible not to be sort of knocked on your ass by what she has done. And the example that she set as a person standing in the same world that we're all standing in and speaking out about it with a poetic clarity and honesty and resilience

1:37and dance and smile. So as you might have guessed, I wanted to play you one of the episodes from the series, the first one, in fact. But before I get to that, I want to share one small, but maybe you're a very telling example of the way Dolly has impacted this show and the people who work here. Because we very recently hired a new producer on staff, Jo Strogas. And she told me a little story about Dolly that I want to share with you here. How old are you in this picture?

2:09I was 12. And I have, I still have my braces. And you got a little shock of green hair. Yeah, which I died with Kool-Aid. That's a great bit. So given the story, you were in a band? No, no, no. So my voice teacher had a band and I recorded some songs with them. One of the songs being a cover of Jolene. And we had this recording, which my mom didn't even tell me, but she must have found like Dolly's foundation or team online where you can just send fan mail. And she mailed them or

2:46emailed them a link to my cover and must have said something like, my 12-year-old daughter is such a big fan of you. Here's her cover, Jolene. So your mom sends off a link. Yeah, she sends it behind my back. And then we get this huge piece of mail a few months later in one of those big orange envelopes. Open it up and there's this autographed photo of Dolly Parton. She's wearing this awesome green outfit. Her boobs look amazing. I don't think I can say that on here.

3:19And like, it's so funny to receive that as a 12-year-old too, because I'm like in this pure awkward phase and she looks like an icon and a diva. She is an icon and a diva. It's like hearing, it's like getting a letter from a god or goddess. And that's honestly what it felt like. And so then I read the letter and let me... So you get a picture, a signed picture and a letter. And a letter. I get a letter from her. Can you read me the letter?

3:50Okay. So in her letter, October 13th, 2014, she says, Dear Cannon, that was my stage name at the time. Dear Cannon, thanks for sending me your version of Jolene. You are awfully young to be singing a song like that, but your rendition is beautiful and original. From the information, it sounds as if you also have a great soft heart. I wish you the very best. Keep chasing those dreams. One day, our paths will cross. Love, and then she signs it.

4:21Dolly. Oh my God. Yeah. Yeah. That's so amazing. Oh my God. I love it. It was so special to me. It was so beyond special. I just think, I mean, I don't know what you were like as a 12-year-old, but there's just got to be something about that little, that the way your sense of self is in flux at that age. And that it can go so many different directions and that it's so sensitive to the world around it and to what other people have to say and what other people might think or how other people see you or especially to put yourself on stage and use your voice to do something in the world.

5:03And then just sit back and wait to see how people react. And to get that feels like, the weight of it feels honestly sort of hard to, I mean, yeah, it just feels like it could set you on a completely different emotional, spiritual, cognitive trajectory as a teenager than if you hadn't gotten it. I think it was one of those things was too big to process. I mean, it made sense to me. The more I learned about her, it made sense that she is the type of person that would take 10 minutes out of her day to listen to some random 12-year-old cover one of her songs.

5:45It just, it just, everything aligned with that idea that she was, she was the type of person that really felt she wasn't above anyone, even though she had this gift. She, she would take the time for anyone that was clear. That's beautiful. So, as I said, I'm going to play for you the first episode of the series of Dolly Parton's America, which was hosted by our very own Jad Abumrad, reported and produced by Shima Oliyai, and it's called Sad Ass Songs.

Growing up in Dolly's world

6:19What is Dolly Parton's America?

6:23Well, Dolly Parton's America would be the same as Dolly Parton's World.

6:30Hey, I'm Jad Abumrad. Let me explain how I got here to a podcast about Dolly Parton. I grew up in Tennessee, which means I grew up in Dolly Parton's World. Dolly's World. She was everywhere. She was looking down at you from billboards, coming out of car radio. She was on commercials. She just... Infused the air. So, as a consequence, I didn't really think about her a lot. It's a little bit like that joke.

7:01One fish says to another fish, how's the water today? And the other fish says, what's water? I was that second fish. She'd created this world. And I was just swimming through it. But then...

7:17A few things happened.

7:222016, I'm living in New York. Dolly is on tour. And she comes and does a stadium show here in Flushing, Queens. Here you come again! And just the level of excitement of people around me was, like, otherworldly.

7:41Everybody around me was like... Dolly Parton is a goddess. She's a saint. To me, Dolly is a superstar who brings herself to the level of the people. I was like, whoa, I missed this. So, I was sitting in my home office. I was on Twitter. Writer Sarah Smarsh told me that her woe moment came around the same time when she was in Austin, online, watching people live tweet that same Dolly show. The people who were tweeting were all women.

8:11And one woman in particular, she said, that majestic bitch just started playing a goddamn pan flute.

8:19That's the best tweet. Pan flute was in all caps, which seemed important. And all this was happening. The pan flute, the tweeting, the touring. At exactly the moment when the 2016 election was turning very ugly. The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic. How do you lie to the FBI? And now you're running for president. Like, she tore right through all of that noise, through the general election and beyond. And I kept bumping into people who had described the experience of being at a Dolly show as like

8:52standing in an alternate vision of America than what was unfolding on the TV. I remember just standing out in the lobby and just people watching because it was the most diverse place I've ever been. I was seeing a multiracial audience. You have people wearing cowboy hats and boots. I was seeing people in drag. Church ladies. Lesbians holding hands. Little girls who were there with their families.

9:24You had a whole audience of people who absolutely their philosophies were in opposition to each other. Co-mingling and everybody is polite to each other.

9:40So that was one thing that caught my attention. That in this very divided moment, Dolly seems to maybe be a kind of unifier. And after doing a little poking around, the data does kind of bear this out. If you look at her global Q score, this is a measure of how well people think about your brand globally. What they do is they assemble a very diverse sample of people. They ask them a bunch of questions. And out of all of these different brands that are out there, all these different performers, she is in the top 10 globally in terms of everybody's favorites.

10:14But she's almost number one when it comes to lack of negatives, if that makes any sense. Like people have the least amount of negative things to say about Dolly Parton than anyone besides maybe Adele. And by the way, this Q score data is fascinating. I haven't dug into it too much, so I can't claim to fully understand it. But Beyonce, number 52. What? Lady Gaga, number 41. Wild. Anyhow, the second thing that happened that made this series possible, I'll be honest with you guys,

10:48was a strange twist of fate. Dolly Parton suffered a few minor injuries in a car crash. The accident happened just after noon in Nashville on Monday. 2013, Dolly gets into a minor car accident, ends up at Vanderbilt Hospital, and one of the people who ends up giving her medical advice is my dad. And they became friends. She shared this with me, by the way, and was totally fine with me sharing it. But it was very unexpected. Like, my dad is not a doctor to the stars kind of person.

11:19He's just a Lebanese guy in Tennessee. But they were friends suddenly. And so when I started getting curious about Dolly as maybe the subject of a story, I was like, you know what, Dad? I need you to introduce me.

11:35And he did. I sat down to talk with her, to ask her about this Dolly moment, how she thinks about it. Does she consider herself the Grand Unifier? Does that include everyone? A lot of these questions. I thought maybe I would get a story out of it or two. But what ended up happening is in simply talking with her about her life and talking with people about her, I fell into so many different rabbit holes.

12:02Profound questions of America kind of rabbit holes. And I was like, you know what? I think we got to make nine. We're going to take nine trips into the Dollyverse. This is Dolly Parton's America. I'm Chad Abumrad. Let's start.

Interviewing Dolly in Nashville

12:20I first spoke to Dolly Parton in November of 2017. My chair's squeaking. It's the squeaky one, right? Oh, I know the squeaky chair gets the grease, but we don't have time for a lube job today. We got a show to do. We sat down in a studio in Nashville in a squeaky chair in front of a mic that unfortunately had a little bit of a buzz in it.

12:48Dolly had just come off of her Pure and Simple tour. She captured the hearts of generations. That was the tour where she famously played the pan flute. Oh, yeah, just for show.

13:02I'm not great at any of it, but I can make a good show. Okay. That's good. Better take off the jewels before I hammer and mess up a good take.

13:14I had heard you play 20-something instruments. Is that right? Oh, I play at them. Okay. I don't play any of them. Well, the guitar's my best one, but I play a lot of mountain instruments, too.

13:25Delsimer.

13:28A lot of harp.

13:30Banjo, that kind of stuff. And you play wind, too. Well, that's the penny whistle. We do a little bit of an Appalachian thing that we, just a little woodwind, but it's just the mountain sounds. It's not like something you'd learn or play in an orchestra. It's just got that old mountain sound. Gotcha.

13:52Anyhow. Well, you know me. You're just asking. I'll just tell it. Okay. As I know it, or as I feel it, what I want you to hear.

14:02So I decided to start the interview by playing her some stuff of hers. I'd love to play some of your early stuff. Okay. This one. Just tell me what comes to mind when you hear it. Being born was the worst and the first mistake I ever made. Wow. What is that first line? Oh, being born was the worst mistake I ever made. The doctor didn't spank me. He just slapped me in the face. Well, as a writer, you want to come up with all those.

14:33You want to come up with those really good lines if you're a really good songwriter. Where does that come from? That was really, really early on in those early, early days. Oh, I used to write a lot of sad-ass songs.

Jokes and the persona

14:47Let me explain the reason I wanted to start with the sad-ass songs.

14:57Growing up in the early 80s, I mean, one of my main associations with Dolly before this project was that she was sort of a punchline.

15:08Or, like, she was her own punchline. You know, like, I remember she would go on Leno or Letterman. You look terrific. And upstairs earlier today, we were discussing your weight.

15:19They'd talk about her weight for a little while. They'd then talk about how she looks. And then inevitably... People are always asking if they're real. Oh, I would never. They'd start talking about her breasts. But I would give about a year's pay to peek under there.

15:34They'd joke about her breasts. But then she would make an even better joke about her breasts. Do you know what's worse than a giraffe with a sore throat? And they said, know what? And the answer is Dolly Parton with a chest cold.

15:49Here's another example. The headline on the other major news story today, to which we intend to devote some time, is very simple. Hello, Dolly. Yes. The first cloned sheep was known as Dolly the Sheep. This is Helen Morales, author of the book Pilgrimage to Dollywood. Scientists managed to clone a cell. A single mammary cell from a six-year-old ewe. Well, and that cell was from a mammary gland. So these men thought it would be a good idea. I thought it would be a good idea to call her Dolly after Dolly Parton. To call it Dolly.

16:20I don't think I need to explain any more than that. But the sting in that story is, and characteristically Dolly Parton, is that when she heard about this, she invited the sheep, when it had served its scientific purpose, to come and live at Dollywood. So when you go on these shows, and they make a joke about you, and you double the joke, what is that? Part of me thinks, part of me loves that, but part of me thinks, why wouldn't you just tell these people, like, come on, I have written 5,000 songs.

16:55Ask me about my songs. So I don't know, I have two thoughts at once. Well, why would I go out with my tits hanging out, showing them, pushing them out there, and not expect somebody to make some kind of a comment on it? And I know what they're thinking, so I'd rather say it before they do, and then we get that off our chest, so to speak, right up front. That's a good pun, by the way. Yeah, I know, I've said it before. But I really do, like, I just think, well, you know, I mean, this is how I look. Of course you're going to notice it.

17:26See, I do that, too, for the public. I mean, it's like a little comedy thing. In that last sentence, by the way, Dolly was actually referencing something she'd once told Barbara Walters, like, years ago. Show business is a money-making joke, and I've just always liked telling jokes. But do you ever feel that you're a joke, that people make fun of you? Oh, I know they make fun of me. But actually, all these years, the people, you know, have thought the joke was on me, but it's actually been on the public.

17:57So, yeah, growing up, and I think I speak for many people of my generation when I say this, at least many men, Dolly Parton was seen as this kind of joke maker. This cloud of jokes always swirling around her. You know, jokes people would make about her, that she would make about herself, maybe on the public. Like, I don't know, but her persona was so big that often it was the only thing that got noticed.

18:25But then, I'll be honest, one of the first bits of guidance that we got as we were embarking on this series, and by we I mean myself and producer Shima Oliai, is Shima was talking with writer Helen Morales, who you heard earlier. Helen was basically telling Shima, look, you can talk about the persona and the jokes. But, but, it would be a pity if somewhere in your series, there was something about her songwriting. The only thing I would say is, treat her lyrics seriously, in a way that Johnny Cash has had books written about his lyrics,

18:59Hank Williams has been taken seriously, but Dolly Parton hasn't. Which brings us back to...

The dark early songs

19:09Oh, I used to write a lot of sad-ass songs. That's what was really surprising. There's some darkness in those early songs. Well, you, as a songwriter, and see, you've got to remember, too, that's how I grew up. Now, hardcore Dolly fans will know this, but Dolly's discography goes back all the way to 1967, and the songs on those first four albums, it's an ocean of pain. Those songs, which are, which many people don't know about, they're not the ones that have made the charts, they provide an insistent witnessing of women's lives.

19:41That's how Helen Morales puts it. Women being treated really badly by men. Let me just play you another one. Do you remember this one? That was Daddy Come and Get Me. That was actually a song I wrote that was based on something that really happened in our family.

20:16Really? Yes, I need help, but nothing's come. I had an aunt love this man, and he just drove her crazy. It's not my mind, it's broken. What'd he do? Cheating and all that. Put her in an insane, well, I can't say who. No, no, I don't need to know who, but... Oh, I thought you said who. I said, I can't call names, but it was a relative, and she would beg her, her, her, she was begging her daddy, trying to get a message to her daddy to come and get her out of the insane asylum.

20:49Wait, so... That her husband had put her in there. Wait, so he was cheating on her, and then, and then what happened? Well, she had a nervous breakdown.

20:58So he just called and had her put away.

21:02This is something, by the way, that if you Google it, you will fall down a rabbit hole. Well into the 20th century, this was a common thing. Husbands would commit their wives for things like, quote, nagging, excitement, disagreeing with their husband's religious beliefs. So he wanted her out of his life. Wow. So that's, you just, I grew up with that. And I was very, you know, impressionable. Another theme that is impossible to miss from Dolly's sad-ass song period is, uh... Well, this next song pretty much captures it.

21:33This is a song that she wrote in 1967 called The Bridge. The bridge, so high, the bridge, so tall, here is where it started, on the bridge. It tells the story of a woman falling in love with a man. They have their first kiss under the full moon on a bridge.

22:03He gets her pregnant, then he bolts, and a month later, as she's pregnant, she returns to that bridge. Tonight while standing on the bridge, my heart is beating wild To think that you could leave me here with our unborn child My feet are moving slowly Closer to the edge

22:35Here is where it started And here is where I'll end it Damn, that ending. A couple of your songs in this period deal with suicide. Is that something that you've thought about ever? Years ago, I don't think I got to that place, but I understood exactly how people do. I was, this was back in the, oh, I don't know, many years ago.

23:10Early 80s, I think it was. She was in her late 30s at this point. She'd just done a movie, which caused her a ton of stress. And she was having health problems. I was, I got overweight, and I was going through the change of life. I was having a lot of female problems. I had been going through a whole lot of family things, just the stress, with a heartache. You know, there was just several things going on at that time, and I was just broken down. You know, I really was having some serious conversations with God during that time.

23:41What were those conversations? Well, I just said things like, look, this is just ridiculous. I am not happy. Arguing about what, you know, why we can't, when they say you shouldn't commit suicide, because that's a sin you can't get forgiven for. But then it was just all, everything was just confusing to me, and I was just angry, and I was hurt, and I was unhappy. And so I just said, you're going to have to give me some answers, or I'm getting out of here. And then we'll both deal with it. How close did you get when you? I don't know.

24:12I don't know how close I got. She says there was a moment, sort of at the low point, when she was sitting on her bed, and her dog jumped up on the bed. It felt to her like a sign. My little dog, Popeye, at that time, he jumped up on the bed about the time I was writing my, you know, so, God, G-O-D, D-O-G, G-O-D, dog, God, spelled backwards. So I always thought, you know, that might have been the very thing that kind of— Were you writing your suicide note, or?

24:42I was thinking about it all. Wow. You said heartache. I mean, was it—what was the heartache? Well, it was personal. Fair enough. We started talking about how a lot of her early songs are about women losing children. I never lost a baby. I've never been pregnant in my life. But I've seen a lot of people that have and have had to go through that. I've seen it. I've seen the—you know, like I always say, there's two kind of women in the mountains, the kind of get married and have a lot of kids, and the kind of stay single and have a lot of kids.

25:16But I would also write things about people's lives and topics that I knew that mattered. I was writing about abortion. I was writing about adoption. I was writing about all sorts of things. Back before it was when I even wrote a song called Down from Dover about a girl that got pregnant and got sent away from home because she was pregnant, because they wouldn't accept it. I know this dress I'm wearing doesn't hide the secret I have tried concealing.

25:49The song is written from the perspective of a young teenager who's pregnant, trying to conceal it, and waiting for her man to return. Oh, he'll be coming down from Dover. If he comes back in time, she basically won't be shamed by her community. But of course— My body aches. The time is here. It's lonely in this place where I'm lying. He doesn't. She's ostracized from her family. And then the baby's born. Our baby has been born, but something's wrong. It's much too still. I hear no crying.

26:21And the baby died. Stillborn. I guess in some strange way she knew she'd never have a father's arms to hold up. And dying was her way of telling me he wasn't coming down from Dover. And so she felt like that God had done her a favor. God had taken the baby back. In my mind, the baby was better off back with God than it would have been with me.

26:54And they wouldn't play it on the radio back at that time. It's one of my best songs ever. They wouldn't play it on the radio because of the content? They wouldn't play it on the radio, not because the kid died, but because she got pregnant. Because it was an illegitimate. At that time, see, that was when I first wrote that. That was in my early days of my career. And I wanted to put it out as a single and RCA wouldn't do it. Keep in mind, this song was written five years before Roe v. Wade. But I suggested to Dolly that maybe one of the reasons RCA didn't want to put it out is that it's just too dark.

27:25Well, as a songwriter, and see, you've got to remember, too, that's how I grew up. All those old mountain songs and all those old songs from the old world, all those old English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh ballads about the Knoxville girl. Dead little girl in Knoxville, a town we all know. Getting killed and thrown in the Knoxville River. And I was very, you know, impressionable.

Tracing the Knoxville Girl ballad

27:54Okay, okay, okay. Let me just take a digression here because that song that Dolly just mentioned, sent me down another rabbit hole. In the interview, I didn't catch it when she said, The Knoxville girl getting killed and thrown in the Knoxville River. But listening back, I was like, wait, what? A Knoxville girl thrown in a river? It turns out this is a very old Appalachian ballad that is sung from the perspective of a man who goes to meet his young wife or girlfriend, I guess. And they're taking a walk along the river.

28:26And then all of a sudden, I picked a stick up off of the ground And I knocked that bad girl down Picks up the stick, beats her She fell down on her beamed She begs for mercy This is in the song She begs for mercy, but he keeps beating her with a stick until she's unconscious And then He drags her by her hair

28:58Throwing her into the river That flows through Knoxville town Then he throws her in the river And I was like, wait, this is what she was talking about? I grew up with that What is this twisted song? Who's the girl? Why does the guy murder her?

29:18So I ended up calling this journalist Hello? Can I speak to Paul, please? You're doing so. Hi, Chad His name is Paul Slade He's a music writer based in London And he recently wrote a book All about this Called Unprepared to Die Which looks at the real murder stories Behind Knoxville Girl And a range of other American murder ballads First thing he told me is that there are tons of these songs Stapped her with my knife So many Almost always about a man I shot her through the head

29:51Killing a woman, often his wife, by shooting her or My mind is to drown you and leave you Drowning her, that's a big one But with the Knoxville Girl song What Paul did was he traced it back From East Tennessee, where Dolly would have heard it Back to England The first version of the song I've seen was 1685 Or thereabouts We can't be precisely sure about that The song was originally called The Bloody Miller So I went looking for surviving copies of The Bloody Miller's ballad sheet

30:23Now obviously there are no original recordings of the song But he did manage to find a copy of the sheet music From the original printing 330-ish years ago And at the top of that sheet music There was like a little intro And it says this A true and just account of one Francis Cooper Of Hogstow near Shrewsbury Who kept company with one Anne Nichols For the space of two years And being urged by her father to marry her He most wickedly and barbarously murdered her

30:54Oh wow So it lays it all out right there Well yeah, we've got the name of the killer His victim And we've got a location which is Shrewsbury Paul goes to Shrewsbury Digs around in the archives Finds a copy of a diary from a shoekeeper at the time Confirms that yes There was a murder that happened Right at the time that the song was written He visits the grave of the murder victim Confirms that yes She was a real person He checks the burial records To confirm that yes Her death was actually very violent And it was the age-old story The woman, Anne Nichols, was pregnant

31:29And the guy, Francis Cooper He's got this girl pregnant And he doesn't want to marry her So that's why he's killed her She never spoke another word I only beat her more As for how it ended up in a song Paul says what likely happened Is that this guy, Francis Cooper The killer, gets caught And on the day of his execution A songwriter showed up to witness the hanging And then immediately documented it in song Which was a common practice at the time

31:59Very often the sheets themselves Were actually sold at public hangings While the condemned man was still swinging There'd be people wandering around Selling ballad sheets Telling the story of that particular crime So it really was like almost journalism Yeah, yeah, that's a big part of it And are these songs usually sung From the perspective of the murderer? Yeah, it's much more common To tell them in the words of the murderer Paul says these songs were actually Pretty big business Songwriters would go to the hangings

32:30And then travel from town to town Singing the songs for money They would change the name of the song To match the town that they were in And that's probably what happened At some point, one of the songwriters Hopped on a boat, came to East Tennessee Changed the song to Knoxville Girl And that was the song that got sung To Little Dolly Parton on her porch Perhaps one way to see Dolly's Early sad-ass songs period Is that she was taking these songs That she'd heard as a girl

33:02You know, these pulpy ballads of men Brutally killing nameless women Sung almost always from the perspective Of the men And she was flipping it So that you finally heard From the victim Now Dolly was not the only person to do this To sing from the victim's point of view

33:32When we spoke with Longtime journalist and historian Robert Orman He told us you gotta add that caveat It's not that she's the only one It's that she's better than anybody else He said she just had a knack For imagining lives that weren't being seen Like, what's it like to be that woman At the bottom of the river? Let me tell her story There are few finer songwriters Male or female Mind you, she's writing all of these songs When she's 21 I believe this is the earliest recorded interview

34:20That exists of Dolly Parton It's 1967, Nashville She's been interviewed by a guy named Everett Corbin from the Music City News Dolly, I suppose It would help me if we Just go back to the beginning I was born We'll start with when I was born, okay I was born on January the 19th In 1946 In Sevilla County It's Sevilla, Tennessee It's a little town between Knoxville, Tennessee And Gatlinburg, Tennessee And you might shorten it by saying The foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains She talks about her family How there were 12 kids

34:51Six girls and six boys How they grew up in this little cabin In the mountains Worked the fields Piled into the same bed at night What type of songs do you prefer? I like ballads Real strong, pitiful Sad, crying ballads I write a lot of sad songs And I just write about things That maybe I've seen happen Or things that have been in the family Well, I have a new album out I didn't mention too Or it's not out This will be out It should be out by the end of this month But it's called Hello, I'm Dolly

35:21Now there's no earth-shattering information On that tape But what I take from it Is just Wow, that's a very different human being Coming to us from a very different world That interview was 52 years ago And Dolly Parton is still making music So I think it would be a disservice to her To just focus on the sad-ass songs And one of the things you see Over the next couple decades

The evolution of her lyrics

35:51Is a really interesting shift Hello And for this I want to bring back Helen Morales Hi, Dad If you recall She was the one who wrote the book Pilgrimage to Dollywood She was the one who urged us Don't focus on the boob jokes Look at the lyrics And one of the things that you do see She says If you look at the lyrics From the sad-ass songs Of 67, 68, 69, 70 Up until now You see a progression That is the progression Of women in America You know, her lyrics go from

36:23Songs like The only way out Is to walk over me Just to prove that I love you I'll crawl at your feet And just to prove That I love you I still can't believe that That's a little BDSM, actually Well, exactly The pleasure is in being treated badly And then Then she moves on to Songs that really are Calling men out

36:53For cheating on women For behaving badly Your attitude sinks And I hate it Your hair is a cocky You don't know You don't know love From Shinola One of the great lyrics You ain't worth the salt In my tears Women are angry About whether pleasure is In leaving men Or in being angry And then in the final one She moves on

37:23To songs Where men are less important And it's just It's just about women Improving their lives And what's a good example Of that phase? Well, things like Some of her Most recent music Changes I know you've got A world of problems And you think You can't do anything To solve them But I'm here To tell you You can Something got you down Got you chained And bound

37:53You've got to break it If you've built a wall And know it needs to fall Then shake it Yes Replace it Something that you know Is damming up the flow Tear the dam down Dam down Let me explain it If you don't take the reins It's going to stay the same Nothing's going to change If you don't change it

38:25So the progression Is basically From these very vivid Portraits of misery To fight songs To This third phase Which are songs That Maybe they're a little more Self-helpy They're certainly not Just about men and women anymore Oftentimes there's no men involved And Sometimes you don't get The vivid detail Of the sad ass songs

38:57But what you get instead Is a kind of Relentless Optimism A relentless hope That you can't bring me down You can joke about me All you want to But I'm going to keep going It's partly for this reason That Helen Morales Refers to Dolly's music In her book As not just music But as a toolkit For a living I mean her song Light of a Clear Blue Morning Has really helped me out

39:27Of many a blue period And what is it about that song? The lyrics just convey A sense of Being very confident That things are not okay now But they will be okay Can you describe a moment Or the time in your life Where that Song Served you

Light of a Clear Blue Morning

39:46Or helped you? That's producer Shima Oleyai By the way You want me to go back To my worst moments? Yes please That's very Undolly Parton-like That's very Dolly Parton-like So Yeah Well there was There was a I'm Yes I'm not sure I want to talk about that On the radio I'm not going to give you A specific example Actually I do in the book I talk about When my sister Was caught cheating At Oxford And I just played

40:20That song On a loop I'm not sure That that's going To go down That didn't go down Very well in the book I'm not sure I want to talk about That on the radio Okay Yeah yeah Fair enough I'd be happy to read Some out of the book If you wanted a snapshot Of where I used her lyrics Do you mind? I mean I don't mind If you want that I'm happy to do that Which one would you like? You mentioned your sister So maybe Maybe that one Okay Um Okay

40:50It's true That one of the reasons Um Dolly Parton Matters so much to me Is that her songs Have underscored Special moments Or heightened episodes In my life One snapshot Is of a weekend In July 1998 Newspaper journalists Are laying siege Outside my mother's home One of my younger sisters Has been caught cheating In her final exams At Oxford University And because she is also President-elect Of the Student Union On a free education

41:20For all ticket The press is out for blood My mother is not Taking it well And insists that This scandal Will devastate my brother Her youngest child My brother is sitting At the computer Enthusiastically Looking up famous Alleged exam cheats And announcing them In thrilled tones Geoffrey Archer We open the newspapers One has a photo Of our mum's house Which in reality Is a nice Three-bedroom Victorian terraced house The photo Has the adjoining houses Edited out So that it looks Like a mansion The spin

41:51In the accompanying article Is how the mighty Have fallen The photograph In the next paper Makes the house Look like a slum The spin Of this article Is look what happens When you let Greek Cypriot immigrants Into the country Richard Branson Yells my brother It's not a calm summer My mother develops Agoraphobia I put Light of a Clear Blue Morning On my stereo And wear out the cassette tape Playing it over and over Cause I can see

42:21The light Of a clear blue morning I can see The light Of a brand new day I can see The light Of a clear blue morning Oh my god

42:54That sounds horrible Oh yeah It was Sometimes Having a song That you can play Over and over Is really helpful Coming up We meet someone

43:25Who not only Listened to the Sadass songs But lived them And turned out To be a real life Dolly Doppelganger You know One beautiful thing That happened to me In Nashville Was one of my Uber drivers Gave me A charger For my phone Portable And she had A Wonder Woman Sticker on it And it was just A beautiful moment She's like Take it I'm like Really? No She's like It's yours Wow That's Dolly Parton's

43:56America right there Yeah Okay This is Dolly Parton's America I'm Jad Abumrad Here with producer Shima Oliay We're at the beginning Of a nine part series Where we dive Into the life and music Of the one and only Dolly Parton What can she tell us About America? That's sort of the question And then we started This episode by saying That a lot of people Of my generation Men mostly Tended to see Dolly Parton one way But I would give About a year's pay To peek under there And one of the reasons I wanted to do this series And by the way Shima is going to Help me narrate

44:28This segment Hey Hello So one of the reasons We wanted to do this Well maybe you should Just take it from here Well yeah One of the big things That first got us Thinking about Dolly Parton To begin with Is that in the last Couple of years She seems to have gone From this thing That you described From this idea You described To mean something Much deeper And much more hopeful For a new generation Of women I think Dolly Parton Is an angel I'm not going to say

44:58She's God But she's definitely A heaven sent And I think that She makes the world A better place She just exudes Amazingness And we don't deserve her Is that I don't even know If that's a word Dolly for me Is like When I see her And I think of her I feel more confident In myself She's like the epitome Of female power She's everything She's just the greatest Person on earth I truly think That she is One of the most Underrated Feminist icons Of our time So

Feminism and business

45:27One of the big questions For us was How do we even start To explain the shift Well I have a little bit Of a theory This is Sarah Smarsh She wrote a book Called Heartland And she's written A lot about Dolly A lot about class And just to add Sarah has been Kind of a spirit guide For us In our journeys Into the Dollyverse Definitely My vague theory Is that She was like The OG Third wave feminist Let me give some

45:58Context to that Please First wave feminism When people talk About that They usually mean This group of women In the 1800s And early 1900s Who were fighting For their rights Second wave feminism Welcome to the new Wave of feminism Welcome to each other Welcome home This was sort of Dolly's era It was the feminism Of the 1970s And 80s It's where you had A lot of women Start rejecting Traditional roles And built the workplace And the home That's a moment When women

46:29Who had her Business ambitions Were being encouraged To sort of Downplay their own Quote unquote Femininity You don't need To wear makeup You can cut your hair short You can put on the pants And Sarah says that During the second wave Dolly is one of the first To represent The future third wave She went like In the opposite direction Was like You have a problem With my tits Then here they are Hanging out My tits hanging out Pushing them out there Of course I played it up And you can deal with it

46:59While I make you My employee And there is Something about that That is sort of like I think a more Kind of millennial spirit Of approach to feminism One of the women I spoke to Red Sagalow Talked about it this way There's this Idea of what Feminists are supposed To look like That they're supposed To like not shave And they're supposed To like burn their bras And all this bullshit And it's like No Feminism can be Whatever the It is you want it To be as a woman You want to have Big hair and big boobs

47:30And wear rhinestones Then do it She I believe Was the pioneer On that one Sort of like You know The way that The way that evolution Happens There's At any given moment There's like Some deviation And then it takes It takes time For that to swell And natural selection To take place Like among a Field of second Generation flowers She was like

48:00A third generation Spirit The way that Sarah tells it Dolly was kind of Like the mutation One of the first Special flowers In this field And then her Flower power Spread to all The other flowers Until the entire Field was filled With third wave Dolly flowers Yeah Brings us to Present day Sarah was curious To see what Dolly thought Of this idea So in one of Our conversations I asked her Do you think Of yourself As a feminist No I do not

48:31She shot that Right down I think of myself As a woman In business I love men And I I really Because I have a dad I have all those Brothers All my uncles I love My grandpas I love And I relate to them And I write A lot of songs About women Because I am a woman Or I just write Songs that women Experience But I write a lot Of songs for men In fact I've had Hit songs You know by men I write You know I write Songs about My dad The dinner bucket song

49:01Every time I hear The sound of a train Coming down a railroad track Hear a big jet plane Flying high I'd like to throw My hammer down Right off to Some distant town Not even take the time To say goodbye But I got to think About my babies About my You know My wife And my old ladies About how much She'd miss me If I was gone So I write About working men I write About gamblers I write about But I write Songs For men And about men And their feelings too

49:31Because I know How they feel I look like a woman But I think like a man But I think like a woman too But the idea Of Dolly Parton The feminist Bugs you in some way I'm gathering Well that word Feminist I guess when you say Feminist It's just when I think At the time Like everybody Goes to extremes Sometimes I do not like Extreme things I do believe In making a point And making it well I don't believe

50:02In crucifying A whole group Just because A few people Have made Mistakes To me when you say Just the word Feminist Is like I hate all men So did she say no Or she just Like was evasive No she like Recoiled Like which surprised me You know I thought I don't know It was like I dropped a word bomb In the room Well I think She knows And of course I can't speculate

50:33But I think that Let me put it Through my own Okay Experience I had a very Complicated relationship To the term Feminist When I was a Teenager In rural Kansas Fox News Was kind of A new phenomenon In the 90s Feminists now Apparently stand For nothing We didn't have Cable news In our farmhouse But Families are Disintegrating Men are Disconnected You know Like the culture Was starting To shift The big picture Here is Women do Earn less In America

51:03Because They choose to The sort of Like backlash That is Full-throated Now Was like Burgeoning When I was A teenager And I could Feel it And I I had Absorbed That just Using the word Feminism It had some Kind of I don't know It felt Vaguely negative And I was Hesitant about The term So you would Now identify As a feminist Of course Does it bother You a tiny bit That she won't Yeah But I want to Say like

51:33The part of me That's pissed off Is the part of me That got to go To college The thing to know About Sarah Is that she Grew up poor Forty miles Outside of Wichita, Kansas She said one of Her chores growing up Was quote unquote Slop in the hogs She ultimately Was able to Scrape together Enough money From four jobs And a scholarship To enter the University of Kansas Which was just A few hours Up the road But

52:03She told us That you can't Overstate how far Those two worlds Feel from each other The world she came from Of farmers and laborers Who mistrust the systems That have ultimately Failed them And The world of people Who live in cities Who run those systems And she says Certain words They have a different Life in those two worlds But There are women Who as we speak Are living The tenets of feminism More strongly

52:35And in a more Badass manner Than Women who Wear the word On a t-shirt And march In the marches And yet What do you think Of that word even No I don't think That No No Would not Take that term On themselves She gave the example Of a grandma I think that men And women Should be paid equally There's just a lot Of things That Well That I don't Necessarily agree with

53:06And you're going To ask me What it is And I can't tell you Because I don't know But So Maybe just Introduce yourself Tell me who you are I'm grandma daddy That's it In talking with Sarah About This is distant And about Dolly She kept bringing up Her grandma And she's like If you met my grandma You'd know what I mean I'm a little nervous Oh yeah No no It's great This is great Your first time Being interviewed By anybody Other than me I believe She

53:37Totally Didn't want to be interviewed She did it I think As a favor to Sarah And Mostly because She loves Dolly I think She seems like An angel In any case

Meeting Grandma Betty in Kansas

53:54Betty was born Just a few months Before Dolly Pardon Well I was born In 45 So What is this Well that's an oldie She showed us Pictures of her From 1967 The same year That Dolly Did that interview You heard earlier I just made up My mind That's what I wanted To do And anything I ever made up My mind That's me And that's your beehive And in the pictures So you look just like Dolly My hair did Oh my god That's Totally It's identical Betty told us She was a really Rebellious kid

54:25Growing up She skipped school A lot She got into fights Mostly with rich kids Who bullied her And her cousins Oh yeah I mean that's the way That I dealt with things Back then You know Somebody give me any crap You know You shoot it right back You don't walk away She told us about this One time when she was 17 And she was at home And then her mom's Ex-husband showed up He was drunk Of course They had broken up And he came to the house One night And he was Drinking Drunk And he I was I had already gone to bed

54:56And I could hear him in there arguing And he called my mother a pig And I got out of the bed And I went in there And said Don't call my mother a pig Ever And I went back to the bedroom And then They continued to argue And I heard him call her a pig again And I got up And went in there And said This is it I picked up a cast iron skillet That had grease in it And I Landed him upside the head

55:27And knocked him down But he got up And he staggered to the front porch And then he fell off the porch And That's How it happened Because he called my mother a pig And I Told him not to do that Wow That's That's amazing My grandma grew up Working on factory floors Waiting tables And diners On

55:57Interstates And highways And so You know She didn't take any lip Sarah says that her grandma Was the person That all the women in the family Would come to When they had problems Nonetheless By the time Betty was 30 years old She'd been married Seven times Most of those husbands Had beaten or abused her One had even shot her In the shoulder Sarah told us about this One time when they were together And her grandma Kind of popped her jaw In and out Like clicked her jaw And then said Matter of factly That was a gift

56:27From one of my sweethearts Mmm You know It's heartbreaking to me To think about her Enduring something like that But I also kind of thought Like what a bad bitch You know But as far as You know Ever Letting on Like just By an inch That she Had been hurt Or had any Sense of victimhood Is like No She said that was just Totally taboo But Sarah says There was always This one moment

56:58Where she'd Get to see What was happening Underneath It was when They'd be driving To the groceries And her grandma Would pop in a cassette tape Of Dolly Pardons Coat of Many Colors I just like Never saw this woman Crack And that song Damn Can we play it? Yeah Sure Okay We sat and listened to it In the living room Coat of Many Colors

57:43Is of course about A little girl Who is so proud Of this coat That her mother Sews for her From scraps That's the only way That she's going to Have warmth In the winter She's proud of the coat It's beautiful to her And when she I hurried off To school Um Enters School She is shamed For it And I'm making fun Of me And my coat Of many colors My mama made me It's about poverty Yes

58:13But it's also about A little girl Who is being told To be ashamed And she's saying I refuse to be ashamed My mama made for me Made just for me Thanks Sorry guys

58:46No It just brings back So many memories What is it What do you think of I think about My grandma Sewing Sewing my dresses And you know Kids making fun of it And I think That's why I became Such a badass Because you know It's hurtful When people Make fun of you And My way to react

59:17Was knock the hell Out of them You know Yeah You're crying too It's my story Yeah When grandma Betty Would listen to Dolly's music Dolly was singing The song She didn't have The space in her life To sing It's hailing outside Is it? It's hailing Oh welcome to Kansas It's sunny and it's hailing That means That means We're a month away

59:48From tornado season And then towards The end of the interview She surprised us And told us something else She said that after Her seventh husband died Arnie He was the one guy Who treated her well By the way After he died She decided to sell the farm And then as she's Packing up her stuff Moving all the things out And we had 50 gallon barrels That we burnt trash in And I think An old bathtub And I Took my nylons And my tight fitting bras And threw them in the barrel And threw a match

1:00:18She burned her bra Did you really? I really did That's legit feminism That That's by the book Yeah That's what it was Hi Charlie Hello Charlie God that is Charlie is Sarah's cat And she sort of Walked in to be like Okay y'all Interview's over now And as we were Walking away I kept thinking Clearly the lenses We have to see each other The words that we use To describe each other They're just not good enough And maybe Dolly

1:00:49Moves in that space Where those words fail My friends call me The Dolly Mama You know And I'm gonna write A whole book On just sayings And just how to By the way

Feminists in practice

1:01:02After our Kansas adventure We went back to Dolly One more time And I took that question That I asked her And reframed it In light of something That we had seen And that Sarah Smarsh Had told us That there are Feminists in theory But there are also The feminists in practice And she puts you That's me That's me Like it's about how you live Yes That's a good way to say it I think that's a good way Of saying it I live it

1:01:32I work it And I I think there's power in it For me Yeah Love is like a butterfly A rare and gentle Love is like a butterfly Love is like a butterfly A rare and gentle Love is like a butterfly By the way The idea that feminists Burn their bras Total myth Didn't happen Never happened They almost did They Yeah They couldn't get the fire started

1:02:02Is that right No It was They needed a permit To light the bra On fire And they didn't have the permit Really And that's why They were like Oh I guess we can't do that So they just threw the bras In the trash Never set it on fire Wow Grandma Betty's the only one Excellent I'm gonna go burn bras Right now Okay I'm gonna read the credits then

Credits

1:02:22Dolly Parton's America Was produced Written and edited by me And Shima Oliayi Brought to you by Awesome Audio That's OSM Audio And WNYC Studios We had production help From W. Harry Fortuna And original music From Alex Overington And huge thanks To the folks at Sony For allowing us To use some of Dolly's early music Thanks also to The Everett Corbin Collection At the Center for Popular Music Special thanks to

1:02:54Lynn Sacco Danny Nozell Kyle McClain Teresa Hughes Randy Schmidt Pat Walters Lulu Miller Susie Lechtenberg And Soren Wheeler And a very special thanks To my dad Najee And of course Thank you Jad Abumrad Thank you Dolly There are Eight more episodes Of this series Dolly Parton's America You can find them all At DollyParton'sAmerica.com Or wherever you Get your podcasts I highly recommend Listening to the whole thing I'm Soren Wheeler And we'll be back Next week

1:03:24With more Radio Lab Hi I'm Eva And I'm from Brooklyn, New York And here are the staff credits Radio Lab is hosted by Lulu Miller And Latif Nasser Soren Wheeler Is our executive editor Sarah Sandback Is our executive director Our managing editor Is Pat Walters Dylan Keefe Is our director Of sound design Our staff includes Jeremy Bloom W. Harry Fortuna David Gable Maria Paz Gutierrez Sindhu Nainasambandam

1:03:55Matt Kielty Mona McGawker Annie McEwen Alex Neeson Sarah Kari Natalia Ramirez Joanna Strogotz Anissa Vitsa Arian Wack Molly Webster And Jessica Young With help from Gabby Santos And Maya Appleby Malamed Our fact checkers are Nora Belblidia Hilary Elkins Rachel Gross Diane Kelly Emily Krieger Natalie Middleton And Sophie Semai

1:04:25Hi, I'm Aubrey Calling from Salt Lake City, Utah Leadership support For Radiolab's Science programming Is provided by The Simons Foundation And the John Templeton Foundation Foundational support For Radiolab Was provided by The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation The Arte Need for Radiolab's The Simons Foundation The Sour

1:05:01The Sour The Sour The Sour The Sour The Sour The Sour The Sour The Sour The Sour The Sour