Music: Dolly Parton's Legacy

0:00This message comes from Odoo, the all-in-one business management software platform. Whether you're a small or large business, Odoo gives you one flexible platform built to grow with you. Try today for free at odoo.com slash NPR podcasts. Hi, it's Jen. On Tuesday, August 25th, American country musician, philanthropist, and icon Dolly Parton died at the age of 80 in Nashville, Tennessee. Years before her death, she asked her nephew and head of security, Brian Sieber, to make a video announcing her passing. In the video posted to social media yesterday, he shared this exchange with his aunt. Dolly called me and said she wants to rest in a beautiful bed of plush cotton because after a life wearing heavy rhinestones, she finally deserves to be comfortable and have some rest.

0:48In 2023, we celebrated the Queen of Rhinestones achievements in music here on 1A. Please enjoy this replay of that show in honor of Dolly Parton's legacy. This is the 1A Record Club. The 1A Record Club. This is 1A. 1A, 1A Record Club. Hey! Let's go! Welcome to the 1A Record Club. This is 1A. I'm Janine Herbst in for Jen White. Here you come again Just when I've begun to get Dolly Parton's resume is as big as her hair. And now at the age of 77, she's adding another title to her resume, Rockstar. On the stage, you all know my name. With many country accolades, country's in my veins. But since I heard the big news, I ain't never been the same.

1:44Cause they done gone and put me in the rock and roll. Dolly released her latest album this week, a mix of covers of classic rock songs featuring collaborations with a whopping list of who's who in rock and roll. We're also hearing from you, your thoughts on Dolly and her music. For this edition of the 1A Record Club, Dolly Parton's new album, Rockstar, and what her latest musical evolution represents. So grab yourself a cup of ambition and let's dive into Dolly Parton. Yeah, you can't take home.

2:28Rockstar has a total of 30 tracks, give or take a few, depending on the version of the album that you buy. 1A producer Barb Anguiano spoke with Associated Press music journalist Maria Sherman about Rockstar and her recent chat with Dolly Parton. Here's that conversation. First things first, what did you think of the album as a whole? I was incredibly charmed by it. I think Dolly has such an incredibly rich and distinctive vocal tone, as I imagine most people would agree. And hearing her perform in this way with these sort of big, anthemic, stadium-sized rock songs was really exciting. I'm charmed that it's sort of a collection of some of the biggest and most familiar rock and roll songs.

3:09And I imagine a lot that are just personal favorites and perhaps a few that she sings all the time and feels very comfortable performing and sort of makes her own. There are a lot of surprises here. I mean, 30 tracks is quite the volume. And when I interviewed her, she said, you know, this is going to be the first and only rock and roll album I do. So I might as well go big. And I thought I thought she took some big swings here. What were some of those big swings? Oh, gosh. In the instances where she's not recording with the original musician from the original track, I thought that there's kind of a lot of interesting decisions making that happened.

3:46I mean, Lizzo plays flute on Stairway to Heaven, which is not something I ever thought I would hear happen. uh i sort of it i i i think um doing i can't get no satisfaction with pink and brandy carlisle having it be these three powerful women kind of gives it this feminist reimagining whether that was intentional or not i didn't know that um dolly pardon doesn't mean linda perry i i thought what's up is maybe one of the better um songs on this album and i really enjoyed it thoroughly as a whole i guess was there anything that stood out uh for you as far as like the new material like this needs to go in the Dali repertoire of great songs in the greatest hits catalog?

4:26I feel that way about My Blue Tears. And I do wonder if that's a bit of a cop-out, because it's maybe the most country moment on this rock and roll album. And perhaps that's some of the appeal. But I just think it's this gorgeous... Go light your blue sky I'll shed my blue tears but maybe the emotional strength and center of this album is i think rock music maybe more so than some other genres is this incredible tool for expressing and communicating frustration and that is obviously something dolly is no stranger to in in her repertoire but i think it really kind of comes across on this collection in an interesting way and i think most of that conversation will probably center on the lead single, World on Fire, the moment everybody sort of assumed Dolly Parton was becoming political for the first time in her career.

5:22Did she hint at anything political in it? She does chastise politicians, but doesn't say which politicians. And I think it's worth noting that Dolly Parton has been fiercely apolitical her entire career. She sort of famously turned down presidential medals from both President Biden and President Trump to not appear partisan.

6:03So do we know how she chose who she collaborated with? I know your article noted for example, you know, she really wanted to work with Mick Jagger and that just didn't happen, but she got some other pretty big names. So was it really like a years and years of planning or was it just kind of like a mass text message or something? The way that she explained it to me is that she found the songs that she wanted to sing and then would ask the performer who wrote or recorded the song if they wanted to do it with her. In some instances, there was a little bit more collaboration she did try to get mick jagger for for this album and said hey can i do i can't get no satisfaction and apparently mick said um i'd rather do another song i've recorded this one a million times um but then because of just you know timing and getting in the studio and all of that it didn't end up happening but i really love the sort of reimagining with pink and brandy carlisle um but mostly across the board these are the songs that she loves and she asked if people would sing them with her and uh and it kind of went from there in the instances where the collaborator is not um the original performer she was just kind of thinking of like who would sound good on this kind of track um which is interesting in the case of night moves which features chris stapleton who is you know one of the great sort of country music success stories of the last couple of years and you know dolly one of the best known most iconic country musicians of all time performing this rock song um and and it works because they both can sort of access whatever the secret spice of of a great rock track is i i tend to think it's a sort of feeling of of a raw sort of emotional energy um so in those cases it was primarily you know who who would sound great on it um and then you know there are so many surprises within that um i don't necessarily know if most people would classify miley cyrus's wrecking ball as this sort of capital R rock and roll track.

7:57Obviously, Miley has like a certain rock and roll ethos to her. There's something a little bit rebellious and creative and fully formed within her performance, but it tends to work. So it's just it's very interesting how how the kind of the sequencing and the track listing came together as well. There are, again, 30 songs on this. So I think there was probably a lot of like, OK, we need to put the microphone down or else this album is going to go on forever. But the decision making within that was all very intentional and pointed. Are there any other songs that come to mind for you that could fit into this rock and roll genre?

8:35And could we have called her a rock star three years ago already? Oh, gosh, that's a great question. I tend to think I'm struggling to think of a specific song, but I tend to think, you know, when Dolly Parton published a note, when she found out she was up for induction in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and said that she felt she didn't deserve it. She hadn't earned the title, particularly because there were so many rock and roll artists she thought were deserving who have not been included. So just Pat Benatar is the example she uses quite a bit and who is on Rockstar. I was sort of shocked by that because in my mind, Dolly Parton is, of course, a rock star.

9:14I think that phrase, you know, even how it's used colloquially, it usually just is in reference to somebody who is this fabulous, larger-than-life, incredibly influential musician. And I think she has absolutely done that. And in many ways and across many different genres. We call her a country music star, but obviously she is well and above beyond that. So I was sort of shocked by that initial note because in my mind, of course Dolly Parton's a rock star. The only person who would say she's not is apparently Dolly Parton. And certainly has this incredible discography to prove that, to validate that.

9:52Also, she's covered rock songs live in the past. There's certainly a shared lineage and history there. But I do sort of love that whatever that feeling was within her, that she had to sort of earn her place in the rock, how led to this album, that feels in some ways kind of rock and roll to me, where she's like, okay, well, now I'm going to experiment and figure out what being a rock star looks like to me, and that's what the album's going to be called. And this is my rock star era, though, you know, again, I think most of us would agree the bulk of her career could be deemed rock star worthy.

10:40What do you think she'll do next? I think that this musical that she has forthcoming to Broadway in 2025 is going to certainly take up a lot of her time and attention. But I really hope that, you know, this incredible experience. And she says she thinks it's like one of her favorite things she's ever done really unlocks her desire to pursue music and other genres, because obviously she's such an incredible singer songwriter. Her songs have been performed by, you know, artists outside of the country music genre. I would love to see her do an R &B album And I would love to see her do a blues album Which is what she said she was also sort of interested in doing But whatever she does I will be listening Thank you so much Maria, that was great Thank you, this was a lot of fun, I appreciate it Just something ordinary I don't wanna be ordinary I wanna be a rock star Rock star Don't you ever give up on your dreams No matter how perfect they seem It may not be all that extreme, but I dream, I dream, I dream, I dream, I dream.

11:45That was 1A producer Barb Anguiano discussing Dolly Parton's newest album, Rockstar, with Maria Sherman, music journalist with the Associated Press. Coming up, a closer look at Dolly's craft and how she's become a prolific songwriter. We'll also hear from one of the co-creators of the podcast Dolly Parton's America and how the song Jolene breaks all the rules on writing about other women. I'm Janine Herbst. This is 1A from WAMU and NPR. Jolene, Jolene, please don't take him just because you can. Your beauty is beyond compare with flaming locks of auburn hair with ivory skin and eyes of emerald green.

12:34Your smile is like a breath of spring. Your voice is soft like summer rain and I cannot compete with you, Jolene. He talks about you in his sleep and there's nothing I can do to keep from crying when he calls your name Jolene.

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14:06I'm Janine Herbst in for Jen White. And we're talking Dolly Parton's career and her latest album, Rockstar, for this month's edition of the 1A Record Club. The album features at least 30 songs, including covers with some of the biggest names in rock and roll. And we want to hear from you. If you could hear Dolly collaborate with any artist, who would it be? Send us an email at 1a at wamu.org. If the more than 20 rock star covers weren't enough, there are also nine new original songs. Dolly initially declined an induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2020 because she said she wasn't a rock star.

14:44But music professor and Dollyologist Linda Hammesley says while Dolly may look like a rock star recently right down to those black studded outfits, glimmers of rock and roll have always existed in her previous incarnations. Dolly actually was a rock star from her very first recording she made when she was 13. She wrote a little song when she was 11 with her uncle Bill Owens, and it's called Puppy Love. And it's a little rockabilly song. You can hear little 13-year-old Dolly singing, puppy love, puppy love.

15:24It's a real upbeat, quick little rockabilly number. So I think that's interesting, given where we are now, that she starts out singing that. And over the past 50 years, Dolly has won awards and accolades for her songwriting. WNYC's podcast, Dolly Parton's America, explores her songwriting through Jolene, one of Dolly's biggest hits, and it's where she completely recreates what it means to be a woman scorned. What Nadine argues is that Dolly is taking this trope that is typically all about women hating on women. Instead, she snuck in a song that is all about women loving other women. Instead of hating this woman or vilifying her for being able to take her man, she's exalting her for all the reasons that she's able to take her man.

16:21Dolly has in this song a really novel, revolutionary approach to the other woman. And joining us now to talk about Dolly's songwriting is Shima Oliaghi. She's the co-creator and producer of Dolly Parton's America. Shima, thanks for being here. Thank you for having me. Well, we just heard a clip from the podcast where you and host Jad Abumrad discuss the 1973 song Jolene and the idea of Dolly as a progressive songwriter. And later, with the help of Nadine Hubbs from the University of Michigan, you break down that song and add a fourth verse. What struck you about Nadine's assessment of the song?

17:05Nadine really tapped into kind of the way that Dolly approaches a song and how she's approached all her songwriting through looking at this particular song, Jolene, which is that part of Dolly's writing process that she told me in an interview was that she'll wake up at 2 a.m. each morning. She'll pray for about an hour to kind of just hone in to the world and to people around the world. And it's her spiritual practice. And then before anyone wakes up, she starts writing. And so one of the things she became a genius at over time is really connecting to the suffering of ordinary women and her own suffering.

17:54in those early morning sessions of prayer and then being able to transmit those memories or those experiences into lyrics. And so the way that this particular song, Jolene, is so revolutionary is that it just changed perspectives on who is singing the song and what they are singing about when it comes to the genre of the cheating song, which is a very popular genre in country music. So, yeah, so there were already so many songs about men singing about how their woman is with another man. And then as women artists came up in country music, they started singing about their man being taken by another woman.

18:38And what Jolene did was instead of hating on the other woman, which was basically what those songs were about at that time, she instead praises the other woman and she appeals to the woman's humanity. You know, please don't take him. Please don't hurt me. And I think that's kind of what's so amazing about a lot of her music, especially her early songs, is that she was so forthright about her feelings of powerlessness, which you don't hear in a lot of music. and that was actually at the end of that episode that you just played I was able to speak to a man who was in prison next to Nelson Mandela at Robben Island and he told me that Nelson was able to play songs at a certain point.

19:26He was able to request songs because he had been in prison so long that the guards would allow that and his favorite song was Jolene. So I think it was again, yeah, go ahead. I know. Sorry. I was going to say it really is a song that changed the way young women listen to the song and experience their own heartbreak or their own relationships that came to an end. As you said, it was different in two different genres. And Dolly took it and she turned that on its head. That really changed the path going forward for those kind of songs. yeah the the depth of that understanding right and and how she was able to change the perspective um i think allowed this very specific story about this woman auburn-haired woman named jolene um coming like coming on to her man or having the opportunity to take her her love away um The specificity of the pain of that was able to be communicated to many people feeling pain, whether it was social justice pain or pain about losing a loved one.

20:38It is the most covered song of all time. Including by her goddaughter, Miley Cyrus. Amazing job. Dolly's known for different things to different people, of course. They know her for Whitney Houston's cover of I Will Always Love You or hit songs like Jolene and Nine to Five. But one part of her career that keeps coming up during our research is her bluegrass era. Here's more of what music professor Hamelsy had to say about the period. Several songs on her bluegrass albums were rock songs, which I think is really interesting that she went through a period where she was really focusing on bluegrass.

21:14Almost like now where she's focusing on rock. She was focusing on bluegrass from 1999 to about 2003. For instance, on her album The Grass is Blue, she recorded Billy Joel's Travel and Prayer. And she really got quite a lot of acclaim for her recordings on her album Little Sparrow from 2001. She recorded one of my favorites, Shine by Collective Soul. and that actually won her a Grammy for Best Female Country Vocal Performance. Her album Halos and Horns in 2003, she covered Stairway to Heaven and it's in a bluegrass style. I love it, but I'm sure that the hardcore Led Zeppelin fans probably may not love it, but it's really a terrific cover.

22:13There's still some time to change

22:42at a time when no one was doing that. I really like her early catalog. I love the sad ass songs. So I like Just Because I'm a Woman, The Bargain Store, where she likens women's value in society to items at a bargain store. There's another song that's The Only Way Out Is To Walk Over Me. And then Daddy Come and Get Me is about a woman being thrown into a mental institution by her lover. And she's asking for her father to legally take her out. He's the only legal person who can do that. She was like a journalist about everyday life for decades. She's been a journalist on the front lines of life for decades.

23:30But I think the Sadass songs are really poignant. And they're like mini short stories or novels. Like the specificity and the storytelling is really quite profound. And I was surprised by that because I knew her from her most famous hits like 9 to 5 and actually her more recent songs. Yeah, but that is my favorite era of hers. I think it really connects her to women around the world as well. It really seems to. And also that really is at the base of really good songwriting. And she seems to lead the pact on that. yeah she's very i think what's hard about you know any kind of artistic endeavor is how to be honest and also how to have the person hearing this brutal honesty about what it is like to be a human how how to get the audience to enjoy listening to that like that is the constant struggle of figuring out how do i make this catchy but also how do i tell the truth that no one has told yet and touch on something that no one else has touched on.

24:40Like what songs are necessary? And she just is able to do both at once. Like you don't understand, like the pain feels so good and you don't, she's, you don't have to like wallow in it because the music is so beautiful, but you can also hear things that maybe you've never heard before. And you can hear perspectives that maybe no one else has given a voice to, which I think is very profound. We're talking to Shima Oliayi. She's the co-creator of the podcast Dolly Parton's America. A good chunk of the Rockstar album, as we heard from Maria at the start of the show, is covers. And here's one we got from Laura in Oregon.

25:21Our band, Jam Wagon, actually covers Dolly Parton's 9 to 5 song. And here's a little version that we do. Tumble out of bed and I stumble to the kitchen. Pour myself a cup of ambition.

25:51And there's Dolly singing this song. Sheema, Dolly's songs really live in a whole wide variety of people. What do you think she's doing to make her songs so instantly recognizable to her fans and to some new people who haven't heard of her? Oh, I don't know. I think she is just a very gifted songwriter. So I think that's part of it. She's just very talented and she's been writing songs since she could talk. So even she would make up songs about like a can of corn or like random, you know, toys she had as a child. So I think that that muscle has been strengthened over time. And that is her genius.

26:37She knows how to make a song that's very catchy and that it becomes very popular. I think what's also interesting about her that I don't think we give her enough credit for is she is an incredible businesswoman. And she understood how to capture public attention, how to step into the public imagination, even based on her persona and her beautiful over-the-top look and the story she tells about her life. I think she is able to not just write incredible music, but also she is able to, you know, give you everything else that comes with it, the full package, you know, the rhinestones, the big hair, you know, the persona is really part of the way she's able to basically stay popular over so many decades as well.

27:37I think she was also one of the first singer-songwriters to really own her own music, to own her performance and be in charge of everything and set up a business. At a time when women couldn't own a checking account without their husband's approval or a father's approval or couldn't get a credit card, women were so restricted at the time that she was doing it. it was just amazing. And now later artists like Taylor Swift and Beyonce are fully in charge of their own careers. Dolly really set the stage for that. Yeah. And it was unheard of at the time. And even now, as those big artists are in a re-recording album so they can take back the rights, that Dolly never quite had to let up from the start.

28:25Part of that was the time that she came up. But the second part is her gumption. She really believed in her own talent at a time when most people did not. I think that is hard for us to recognize now, but they likened her voice to Minnie Mouse. It was hard for her to get a record deal. And a lot of her training came under a mentor who was somewhat abusive, Porter Wagner. And for years, she just took a lot of, You know, she got first-class training in how to be a music star and all of the ins and outs of the business aspect of the music industry. And I think that that time really fortified her.

29:08So that helped her navigate a much longer career once she was able to leave a very bad situation that she had while she was working on his show. And Ashley emailed us all the reasons she loves Dolly. She says she advocates for herself and her community. She's smart and she's a critical businesswoman and she's an optimist and she brings people together. What do you think Dolly will explore next, Jima? I always thought she – well, she actually did do this. She wrote a novel recently, but she loves books so much that, you know, with her imagination library, I thought maybe she would go into literature and start maybe even writing poems or more books.

29:55I think that she's very focused on her philanthropy. And right now she's solidifying her legacy once she passes. That was not something that I did not very openly ask her. Like, what is the plan 100 years, 200 years from now? she is very clear about what message she wants to continue to be sending even after her death she is about unity and love and togetherness i think she's also about um social justice but she has come up through decades of a lot of turmoil and so i think she's really smart about when to share what um but i think for her it's about really helping the world and being a light in dark times.

30:41I think that is, I think she's racking her brain on how to continue that legacy and how to be a symbol of hope after she passes. So anything she does in that realm, I think that includes her book projects and any other pieces of art she wants to put out. I think that's what she focuses on day in and day out, every morning when she wakes up early and prays about her mission. That was Shima Oliyai, co-creator of the podcast Dolly Parton's America. Shima, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you so much for having me. Still to come on this edition of the 1A Record Club, How Dolly Parton Became a Cultural Icon Outside of Songwriting.