SYSK Tribute: Why does everyone love Dolly Parton?

10:44Josh Clark:But she was born to a big family of 12 kids. And it's kind of fun to look up photos of Dolly and all her siblings because, you know, a few of her sisters look a lot like her. All her brothers look like, you know, they should be like shooting pool down at the pool hall. You know, all very just sort of genuine article, Smoky Mountain, Tennessee, Foothills people.

11:07Chuck Bryant:Yeah, for sure. And there were 12 of them, did you say?

11:10Josh Clark:12 sibs, including her. She's the fourth.

11:13Chuck Bryant:Yeah, the fourth of 12. And all 14 people in her family lived in a two-room cabin. And I've seen a replica of this cabin. And it is no joke, a two-room cabin and 14 people lived in it in the Smoky Mountains.

11:30Josh Clark:You mean two bedrooms with an office, right? Right.

11:33Chuck Bryant:I mean two rooms, my friend, with the outhouse, no running water, no electricity. Like she grew up as a Smoky Mountain person can grow up. Like even people in other parts of Tennessee are like, wow. Yeah. But she said she had a great childhood running around, just being outside. And because she was the fourth of 12, she wasn't particularly like paid attention to. so she could just kind of go off and do her own thing.

12:00Josh Clark:Yeah, I get the idea that they were semi-feral sort of mountain kids. Her granddad was a Pentecostal minister, very fiery and brimstone-y, and she still mentions God a lot. I get the sense that she's a little less overtly religious, but spirituality is still very much a mainstay in her life.

12:21Chuck Bryant:Yeah, I think it's more of a personal relationship between her and God.

12:24Josh Clark:Yeah, which is how it's supposed to be.

12:25Chuck Bryant:So she really lucked out because she had an uncle named Bill Owens, who was a musician, a songwriter, who noticed that she wanted to get into music from a very young age and was maybe the only person in her entire life or her early life that noticed and then nurtured it. And she later said when he died a few years back at his funeral, like, she wouldn't be here today if it wasn't him. Like, she owed him everything because he nurtured it in her. He encouraged her. He supported her when she got rejected. And he helped her break into the business. So Bill Owens was a huge influence in her life. But he noticed, like I said, from a very early age, I think she wrote her first song when she was five.

13:08Josh Clark:Yeah, Little Tiny Tassel Top about her homemade corn husk doll. and she would pretend, you know, she would get a tobacco stick and a tin can and act like it was her microphone and mic stand and she would sing for the chickens in her yard and had obviously a real talent from the beginning. If you listen to her very first recording, Puppy Love from 1959, it sounds like, you know, 13-year-old Dolly Parton. You know, you can hear Dolly in that young voice. And like I said, she was 13, and that was the same year that she made her very first appearance at the Grand Ole Opry, introduced by none other than Johnny Cash.

13:48Chuck Bryant:Yeah, who was her first big crush, so it was even more amazing for her. Unbelievable. Her family didn't get to see it, though, because Dolly Parton was on TV before her family had a TV at home. Yeah. Which is pretty cool. Was it on TV back then? I believe there was a TV appearance, yes. Okay. And if that one wasn't the first, whenever it was, she was on TV first, her family still didn't have a TV back then. Gotcha. So thanks to Uncle Billy taking her around and banging on doors, she ended up making her debut on Mercury Records in 1962, which is nothing to sneeze at. But I get the impression that it wasn't like her, it wasn't like, okay, this is a serious recording contract.

14:34Chuck Bryant:It's like, OK, let's let's test this girl out. Back then they called any woman in country music a girl singer.

14:41Josh Clark:Right.

14:41Chuck Bryant:So she was a bit of a novelty, not just because of her age, but because she was a woman as well. But she had her sights set on becoming a country music star. And so the day after she graduated high school, the day after she graduated high school, she got on a bus for Nashville and moved there.

14:58Josh Clark:Yeah, amazing. 1964. And very soon after she moved there, she met a man that would become her husband and a mainstay in her life to this day who is remarkably hard to find stuff about. His name is Carl Dean. They met very famously at a laundromat when she was 18 and he was 21, married a couple of years later. And I think a lot of people that don't know a lot about Dolly Parton think she might be single or something because she never had kids. But she's been married to Carl Dean since 1966, and he just doesn't want to be in the limelight. He never did. He's her biggest fan and supporter, she's always said, off the stage.

15:41Josh Clark:But he just doesn't want any part of the limelight. and it's hard to even find a lot of pictures of this guy. There's a handful out there, but he started an asphalt laying business in the late 70s, still runs that business today. Oh, really? Which is just amazing. And I read an article from a couple of years ago. She was like, you know, Carl and I, we like to run errands. She said, we go to the 24-hour stores, you know, in the middle of the night, like Walmart and places. And she said, and there are fewer people there to come up to me. And she said, no, I don't mind it. I love people. She said, I just don't want it to get in the way of our shopping.

16:15Chuck Bryant:Right.

16:15Josh Clark:And, you know, Carl's not wild about it. So they just live a very simple kind of pure life together, I think, outside the limelight.

16:22Chuck Bryant:Yeah, I read an interview with her somewhere, and she said that, in her opinion, if she's out in public, that time belongs to her fans. So she doesn't have a problem with people coming up to her, asking for autographs. She knows that she's out in public, and that's a risk that she runs, right? Sure. But her leisure time, her time away is like secluded off with Carl, just the two of them usually. Maybe she has a very close best friend. I can't remember her name. They go everywhere together. So she's almost like a stand-in for Carl when Dolly's traveling around.

16:53Josh Clark:Yeah, and she's always been very, her persona is very flirty. And she's always sort of flirted around with, in fact, no friends that have worked on like commercial shoots with her. And they were like, man, she's the biggest flirt you would ever know. And that's just her personality, and she said that Carl understands that, and that's just how she sort of has fun and relates to people, and it's always very innocent, and I just think it's kind of cute and fun. Yeah, for sure. I want her to flirt with me, you know, I think is what I'm saying.

17:23Chuck Bryant:This episode might be your big break, Chuck.

17:26Josh Clark:Yeah.

17:28Chuck Bryant:So would you just, like, turn bright red and, like, dig the toe of your foot into the dirt? I kind of am a little bright red.

17:34Josh Clark:I thought it was the Stuff You Should Know sign in here casting a red beam on my face.

17:38Chuck Bryant:No, it's you thinking about being flirted with by Dolly Part.

17:41Josh Clark:I know. Well, dude, I grew up as you did, but I'm a little bit older. The heyday of early Dolly was when I was a kid, and of course my dad was in love with her. She was one of the biggest stars in the world, and my parents were kind of into country music. So she was just sort of prevalent in our household somehow.

18:00Chuck Bryant:Yeah, my introduction to her was through 9 to 5. and my mom, that whole message and the idea behind it was right up my mom's alley. So she would watch it with her hands clasped together at the side of her face. Oh, I love that. Just an adoration of everybody, including Dolly Parton too. I think my family was never really into country music. So I think that that was like a big introduction and probably a win over for my family was 9 to 5.

18:26Josh Clark:All right. Well, we'll talk about 9 to 5 and crossover success more. It's a good setup, but how about we take a break? Yes. And we'll be right back with more Dolly Parton.

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19:20Josh Clark:That's right, and everything is 100 % online through HERS. You'll connect with a licensed provider who will determine if treatment is right for you, And if prescribed, your medication is delivered right to your door, no insurance necessary.

19:32Chuck Bryant:So are you ready to reach your goals? Visit 4hers.com slash S-Y-S-K to get personalized, affordable care that gets you.

19:40Josh Clark:That's F-O-R-H-E-R-S dot com slash S-Y-S-K. 4hers.com slash S-Y-S-K. Weight loss by HERS is not available in all 50 states. Wegovi is the registered trademark of Novo Nordisk AS. To get started and learn more, including important safety information, Wagovi clinical study information, and restrictions, visit 4hers.com.

20:07Chuck Bryant:We've all done it, tumble down an internet rabbit hole trying to self-diagnose, and sometimes doing our own research can leave us more anxious than informed. Your feed is packed with wellness trends telling you to cold plunge, protein max, detox, track your sleep. But what's actually real? What's exaggerated? What's just wrong?

20:24Josh Clark:That's exactly what Health vs. Hype from the American Medical Association and iHeart Media's Ruby Studio is here to find out. Each episode, Emmy-nominated science communicator Trace Dominguez, who's racked up billions of views across PBS, Discovery Channel, and YouTube, talks to doctors, influencers, and real people trying these trends.

20:43Chuck Bryant:Not to cancel them, not to hype them more, but to actually understand them. Because when it comes to your health, who you listen to matters. Start asking better questions and listen to Health vs. Hype on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

21:19Josh Clark:It can connect your symptoms with your medical history to offer personalized care 24-7. So call off the search. Amazon Health AI is here. Healthcare just got less painful.

21:43Chuck Bryant:Okay, so we're talking about Dolly becoming a star. Like, she's had a couple record contracts, nothing serious, though. But then in 1965, she signed with Monument Records. That was her first big record contract I read. But they wanted her to be a pop singer, which is kind of ironic because she actually would kind of become a pop singer later on in her career. But at first she was like, no way. Like, have you seen my house and do you know how many people are in my family? I'm not a pop singer. I'm a country singer, right? So she persisted and hung in there, and they ended up folding and giving in, and she went on to become a full-fledged country singer.

22:24Josh Clark:Yeah, in 1967, her first record, Hello, I'm Dolly, which is just great how they used to do records like that and title them like that when you introduce her to the world. But as would become a thing in her career, most of the songs that she's well-known for, Most of the songs she's recorded, she's done plenty of covers because everyone does that, especially in country music. But she is most well known as a songwriter. And we'll get into that more in a little bit. But she wrote two. Now, Libya has a number 24, but I saw that they were both top 20 on the country charts. Dumb Blonde, which is written by a guy named Curly Putman.

23:08Josh Clark:Great name. And Something Fishy written by Dolly. And I think the album itself was a top 20 hit. Her debut right off, you know, in the country charts, right off out of the gate.

23:21Chuck Bryant:Yes. I was looking up something fishy and it's about a woman who's become convinced that her husband's fishing trips aren't actually fishing trips and that he's running around on her. So one of the lines is, I guess some largemouth bass left that lipstick on your shirt. I don't think you're a fisherman, honey. I think you're a flirt. that's like perfect debut dolly like at what age like 19 i think is how old she is yeah that's

23:46Josh Clark:pretty great uh and porter wagoner is someone that we talked about on our grand old opry show um and he had the porter wagoner show he hires young dolly to replace his other uh young woman sidekick singer uh and basically she elevated the show to the point where it was a number one the number one syndicated show in the country, radio show.

24:09Chuck Bryant:Right.

24:10Josh Clark:And they started doing duets together and albums together, including their first one, Just Between You and Me, in 1968.

24:17Chuck Bryant:Yeah, and they started touring a lot, too. And she learned a tremendous amount about touring, performing live, the music business, everything she needed to learn early on came from touring with Porter Wagner. But he was also really well aware that he had like a real cash register on his hands. Yeah. And he kept her under his thumb as much as he could, both emotionally blackmailing her, I get the impression, but also locking her into just really exploitive contracts because she might not have known what she was signing. She probably did and just figured like, OK, at least it's going to help me get to where I'm going.

24:56Chuck Bryant:That's the likelier explanation if you ask me. But he was definitely in charge for the first many years of her serious career.

25:05Josh Clark:Yeah, but because she's Dolly Parton and so beloved, when they eventually broke up their relationship, I think it was kind of rough. And she ended up writing a song, I Will Always Love You, about that relationship. And ultimately, they worked it out and she reconciled and was at his deathbed with his family. And it was kind of one of those no hard feelings kind of situations.

25:28Chuck Bryant:Oh, really? I read that his last dying words were, I'll never forgive you. That's what I'm going to say on my deathbed. No. I'm just going to wave my finger around the room to everybody standing there.

25:40Josh Clark:And we're all going to be like, is he talking about me?

25:42Chuck Bryant:Exactly. You guys can spend the rest of your lives figuring it out.

25:46Josh Clark:And Yumi will just look at me and say, he's talking about you. Totally. So they, while they were a duet, she also.

25:56Chuck Bryant:Wait, wait, hold on. One more thing. You brought up I Will Always Love You, which everybody knows. One of her most famous songs. Arguably her other most famous song, Jolene.

26:06Josh Clark:Ugh, great song.

26:07Chuck Bryant:She apparently wrote those songs on the same day, start to finish. Isn't that amazing?

26:13Josh Clark:Yeah. I mean, she now says, like, you know, if it wasn't the same day, it was within a couple of days of each other. But like either way, it's remarkable.

26:24Chuck Bryant:Yeah. And it's possible it was the same day. She just doesn't remember. Yeah. That really like kind of goes to show what kind of she she was drinking cups of ambition left and right, apparently. Because not only is that story potentially true, she also put out 25 albums. Yeah. Both duets with Porter Wagner and then some solo albums in the five year period between 1968 and 1973.

26:50Josh Clark:Yeah, I mean, that's remarkable. She started, and that's kind of where I was headed anyway, she kind of started recording her own solo stuff as she was, you know, it was kind of obvious. She was too prolific of a songwriter. I mean, supposedly her quote is that she's written more than 3 ,000 songs and three of them are good. She's also humble, another reason people love Dolly Parton. But she had too much to say early on, And so started making solo records while she was still with Wagner. And it was in that time period, I think in the early 70s is when, you know, those iconic songs, Jolene and I Will Always Love You came out.

27:28Chuck Bryant:Right. But still under the tutelage of Porter Wagner, right?

27:32Josh Clark:Yeah. I mean, those are solo albums. And I think I Will Always Love You was about them splitting apart. So it was sort of right there at the end, I think.

27:40Chuck Bryant:It definitely was. And I heard a story years back that he said, OK, I'll let you out of your contract. if you let me produce this amazing song. Oh, that song? Yeah, I Will Always Love You, right? And then apparently he turned around and sued her anyway for breach of contract. But she got out of it. She got out of this terrible contract, this exploitive contract. She got out from under a very domineering mentor. And this is a really big time of transition for her because not only did she get away from Porter Wagner, which was enormous because in a sense she was like a pinball that had just been plunged when she was released from Porter Wagner, just looking for like the next bumper to just shoot her off in another direction.

28:26Chuck Bryant:That's my analogy, buddy. And that's exactly what happened. But she also had to break up with her family band. Like they were her original backing band. She had to be like, I got to get better musicians, you guys. And she made some really hard decisions, but they ended up paying off. And from what I understand, there were no lasting hard feelings from it.

28:48Josh Clark:Yeah, that's pretty great. She hosted a TV show for one season, just like us. It was called Dolly. You know, back then they had all those great variety shows. This was 76 into 77. And then a very important man comes into her life by the name of Sandy Gallin, who was a Uber manager, got the Beatles on Ed Sullivan, would later manage Michael Jackson and Barbra Streisand and Cher. And Sandy Gallin was a pretty instrumental person for a couple of reasons. One is kind of encouraging the crossover success. Yeah. Like he booked her at the bottom line in the Greenwich Village who, you know, everyone from Springsteen to Lou Reed were playing there.

29:33Chuck Bryant:Like Andy Warhol came and watched her show. There's an awesome picture of them sitting together.

29:38Josh Clark:Yeah. Talk about crossover.

29:40Chuck Bryant:Yeah, exactly. And she was nervous. I saw that she was nervous on the way to being scared. I'm sure.

29:48Josh Clark:Yeah. He had her tour Europe, exposed her internationally. he took her to Studio 54 which is probably where she also hung out with Andy Warhol but the other big reason is that Sandy Gallin was gay he died like five years ago and this was a very instrumental relationship and I get the impression Dolly is very famous for being sort of an icon in the LGTBQ community

30:15Chuck Bryant:yeah from very early on

30:17Josh Clark:yeah and it seems like this is kind of where it all started was having this relationship with Sandy and, you know, just the gay community wrapping their arms around her early on, not necessarily because, you know, she had a gay manager, but, you know, I don't think it hurt.

30:35Chuck Bryant:Right. And the New York Times wrote that she got a warm welcome in San Francisco from transgender fans and, quote, other exotic urban cult audiences.

30:47Josh Clark:Well, Dolly's always said, you know, she's one of those love is love types. And, you know, it's just like it's the way to live life. Like she doesn't judge people and she never has. And she's always just embraced like whatever community wants to love her music. Like, why would she? I never get it when people like intentionally sort of turn audiences off.

31:10Chuck Bryant:Right.

31:11Josh Clark:You know?

31:12Chuck Bryant:Yeah, no, for sure. For sure. But also, like, that's so true, and it's so prevalent when you read about her or watch interviews with her or just listen to her talk. You're almost like, what's your angle, Dolly? Right. What are you really up to here?

31:31Josh Clark:Her big crossover hit was Here You Come Again, which was considered a pop song. I mean, I've always kind of thought it was a country song, I guess, because her voice is in it. And she insisted on steel guitar. So it still had a little country tinge to it. But it's like a perfect song.

31:49Chuck Bryant:It's a perfect crossover. Like it's exactly perfectly balanced. Like there couldn't have been a better song to transition from full on country singer to country pop singer.

32:00Josh Clark:Yeah. And it went number one on the country chart, number three on the pop charts. Album went platinum. And this is, you know, the late 70s when she really, really, really blew up.

32:11Chuck Bryant:Yeah, that was that. She just took off like a rocket from there. One of the things that she did very wisely in the late 70s, early 80s, right around this time, was just hop on the TV circuit. She's been on at least a few hundred TV appearances. But a lot of them took place in the 70s and 80s when she was just making herself known, making herself a household name. And none of this was by accident. Like she's wanted to be a megastar since she was a kid. And this was part of – she apparently makes a lot of lists. And they turn out to kind of be five-year plans. And I'm sure getting on the talk show circuit was part of one of those lists.

32:55Josh Clark:And that explains why as a kid growing up in the 70s, I saw a lot of Dolly Parton.

32:59Chuck Bryant:Exactly. She was everywhere. Dolly wanted you to see a lot of Dolly Parton.

33:04Josh Clark:In the 80s is when she continued some of her collaborations with other artists, very famously with Kenny Rogers with Islands in the Stream. Huge, massive hit.

33:15Chuck Bryant:Haven't heard it.

33:17Josh Clark:And then 1987, my favorite collaboration at least came out, and maybe my favorite Dolly stuff, period. Oh, yeah? Was the album Trio, yeah, that she recorded with Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris. Just three of the best voices in the history of music coming together to sing together. They ended up making three albums over the years together. So if you haven't listened to any of this stuff, highly recommend Trio from 1987.

33:42Chuck Bryant:She also released some bluegrass albums in the late 90s. The Grass is Blue, Little Sparrow, Halos and Horns. And then she released her first Christmas album in 30 years back in 2020, A Holly Dolly Christmas. which is pretty good. It's cute. But I think the best Christmas album she released was Once Upon a Christmas in 1984. There's a lot of Kenny Rogers on it.

34:07Josh Clark:I made a joke this last Christmas on Instagram. I think that like probably 50 % of Dolly Parton's Christmas songs are about sex.

34:17Chuck Bryant:It's true.

34:19Josh Clark:Or there's like sexual overtones. It's kind of funny. Right, exactly. Yeah. Yeah, it's good stuff.

34:23Chuck Bryant:But that 1984 album has Hard Candy Christmas on it, which is, I mean, maybe her best one, if you ask me.

34:33Josh Clark:Great song. All right, so now let's talk a little bit more about her songwriting. I think that's the thing that she's sort of most proud of. She said in a 2020 book, if I had to choose just one thing to be, I would choose to be a songwriter. She's always said that she loves writing from the male point of view. She loves writing songs for men because a lot of her songs are sort of narrative story type songs. And she's written a lot of big, huge hits for people like Merle Haggard and Kenny Rogers and Hank Williams Jr. and all kinds of dudes. Right.

35:08Chuck Bryant:She also plays a bunch of instruments. The guitar, she says, is her strongest. And there's a lot of other string instruments that she can play. I saw a video of one of her concerts. She's got a banjo slung around her. like she's got a strap hanging from a strap while she's playing a fiddle really fast. It's pretty amazing. But if you really want to be amazed by Dolly, you should watch her play the saxophone. And in particular, at the Glastonbury Music Festival in 2014 in the UK, in front of a crowd of 100 ,000, she busted out Yakety Sax, the Benny Hill theme song. And it just killed, killed. It did.

35:48Josh Clark:That whole show is a fun watch because it's at the Glastonbury Festival, and it's like, I don't know. I think her legendary status just grew with that appearance.

35:58Chuck Bryant:Oh, yeah. She was kind of a cult favorite in the UK, and then she became a pop culture favorite after that show.

36:06Josh Clark:Yeah. 9 to 5, the movie that you mentioned before in 1980, is when she got into movie making. And it is a movie, boy, not only does it hold up today, but it was ahead of its time, and, like, even more relevant today than it probably was then.

36:22Chuck Bryant:Which is sad, if you stop and think about it.

36:24Josh Clark:No, no, totally sad.

36:25Chuck Bryant:But it was based on an actual movement called 9 to 5, the 9 to 5 movement from the early 70s that I guess Jane Fonda was aware of because she was one of the creators behind the movie 9 to 5. And that was an actual, like, movement led by secretaries starting in Boston, and it spread around the country. And they were protesting sexual harassment, low pay, getting passed over promotions. And they had a great slogan that I saw, raises not roses.

36:54Josh Clark:Raises not roses, yeah. I love that.

36:57Chuck Bryant:I love it too. I don't need your flowers. Talk about a great t-shirt. Exactly.

36:59Josh Clark:How about some money?

37:01Chuck Bryant:Exactly.

37:01Josh Clark:I'll buy my own flowers.

37:03Chuck Bryant:Right. I can buy my own flowers.

37:05Josh Clark:Yeah, that's what the back of the t-shirt said. And then parentheses, quit pinching my butt.

37:11Chuck Bryant:Plus also that's a Miley Cyrus song, Who is Dolly Parton's Goddaughter?

37:16Josh Clark:That's right. Yeah. And Dolly credits that relationship with the fact that millennials love Dolly.

37:23Chuck Bryant:Yeah, I wasn't aware of this. So everybody knows, even I know, that Miley Cyrus was Hannah Montana on Nickelodeon from, I think, 2006 to 2011, right? And she would have Dolly on here or there as Aunt Dolly, like her aunt, Hannah Montana's aunt. And I guess, like, millennials just grew up watching that, and she just exposed herself, not literally, but figuratively, to an entirely new generation, and it stuck. Like, that's how they met Dolly, and they just kept following her and loving her from that point on.

37:56Josh Clark:I love it. Me too. She was in a bunch of movies over the years. Best Little Whorehouse in Texas with Burt Reynolds, of course. Part of the ensemble in Steel Magnolias. very disappointingly, Livia doesn't mention my favorite Dolly, second favorite Dolly Parton movie, which was Rhinestone with Sylvester Stallone. One of my big HBO movies early on. I watched that thing over and over again. Stallone Sings. Have you ever seen it?

38:23Chuck Bryant:No, I never have. I turned the TV off after Life Force.

38:28Josh Clark:You should check out Rhinestone because the premise is And she's to make a country star out of Sylvester Stallone. And he has a song in there called Drinkenstein instead of Frankenstein. And the chorus is Budweiser, you've created a monster. And they call him Drinkenstein. Wow. But Stallone really sings. And it's just, I think it's known probably as a bad movie. But it has a very special place in my heart.

38:55Chuck Bryant:It sounds like the prequel to Tulsa King. Right. So she also, did you mention Sand Dollar yet?

39:03Josh Clark:No.

39:04Chuck Bryant:She founded a production company with Sandy Gallin, her longtime manager and friend. And they went on to produce movies like Father of the Bride.

39:14Josh Clark:Yeah.

39:14Chuck Bryant:Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the movie.

39:17Josh Clark:Yeah.

39:17Chuck Bryant:She also did Straight Talk, which she was in, where she plays a woman who accidentally becomes a radio host and, of course, just shoots into the stratosphere and popularity. I never saw that. Oh, yeah. It was okay. Okay. Not her best work, but still. She was amazing at Steel Magnolias. I mean, like, if you go back and, yeah, if you go back and watch some of those scenes between her and her husband in particular, she's a really good actress

39:48Josh Clark:no she's good but the Shelby I just did was more Sally Field

39:53Chuck Bryant:now that I think about it I detected a hint of Sally Field

39:57Josh Clark:alright I think let's take another break and then we'll this one's going to go a little long but that's okay because we're about to dive into Dollywood right after this

40:06Chuck Bryant:Shelby

40:42Chuck Bryant:We'll see you next time.

40:45Chuck Bryant:eat less, and keep weight off. Plus, Wagovi is the first ever GLP-1 pill for weight loss, so there are no needles needed.

40:52Josh Clark:That's right, and everything is 100 % online through HERS. You'll connect with a licensed provider who will determine if treatment is right for you, and if prescribed, your medication is delivered right to your door, no insurance necessary.

41:04Chuck Bryant:So are you ready to reach your goals? Visit 4hers.com slash S-Y-S-K to get personalized, affordable care that gets you.

41:12Josh Clark:That's F-O-R-H-E-R-S dot com slash S-Y-S-K. ForHERS dot com slash S-Y-S-K. Weight loss by HERS is not available in all 50 states. Wigovi is the registered trademark of Novo Nordisk AS. To get started and learn more, including important safety information, Wigovi clinical study information and restrictions, visit ForHERS dot com.

41:39Chuck Bryant:We've all done it. tumble down an internet rabbit hole trying to self-diagnose. And sometimes doing our own research can leave us more anxious than informed. Your feed is packed with wellness trends telling you to cold plunge, protein max, detox, track your sleep. But what's actually real? What's exaggerated? What's just wrong?

41:57Josh Clark:That's exactly what Health vs. Hype from the American Medical Association and iHeart Media's Ruby Studio is here to find out. Each episode, Emmy-nominated science communicator Trace Dominguez, who's racked up billions of views across PBS, Discovery Channel, and YouTube, talks to doctors, influencers, and real people trying these trends.

42:15Chuck Bryant:Not to cancel them, not to hype them more, but to actually understand them. Because when it comes to your health, who you listen to matters. Start asking better questions and listen to Health vs. Hype on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

42:33Chuck Bryant:Guys, we got to talk about your secret late-night internet searches. You know, the ones, bumpy leg rash, hair loss, itchy bum. Trying to figure out your body by endlessly searching for answers. We all do it, and it never works. Thankfully, there's Amazon Health AI. It can connect your symptoms with your medical history to offer personalized care 24-7.

42:57Josh Clark:So call off the search. Amazon Health AI is here. Healthcare just got less painful.

43:15Josh Clark:All right, my friend, here we are. I'll set it up with how it starts, and then you can just take over because you've actually been there. But in an interview in 1982 with Barbara Walters, Dolly Parton said something about being interested in opening up a theme park back home. Yeah. And there was a theme park, Silver Dollar City in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. And the owners, Jack and Pete Hershend, heard this interview, gave her a call and was like, let's get together on this. And they did to great success.

43:49Chuck Bryant:Yeah, four years later, Dollywood opened. It reopened as Dollywood, I should say. Just that first year, they doubled their entries to 1.3 million people coming. Yeah. And that's not just a full year. Like it snows and everything kind of shuts down in the wintertime in Pigeon Forger and the Smokies. So I'm guessing they crammed a lot of those people in in a very short amount of time, probably summer. I don't know why I'm going off on this tangent, but it just seemed important when I started. It's called how theme parks work. Right. They close in the winter. Be quiet, you. So it was a success right out of the gate, I should say.

44:24Chuck Bryant:And little known fact, or it's a rumor that a lot of people don't realize is actual fact. They buried a time capsule there on opening day, and it contains an unreleased Dolly song.

44:37Josh Clark:No way.

44:37Chuck Bryant:That is not to be open until I think she's 99 years old.

44:41Josh Clark:Wow. Mm-hmm. Which is, what is she now, 76? 78, I think. Okay. So it's close. Yeah. We can wait. She sees it, yeah. We'll wait. So tell me about Dollywood. I want to know more.

44:55Chuck Bryant:So it is a you can definitely believe that it used to be a silver dollar city. They preserved a lot of stuff. There's a coal fired train that kind of takes you around on some neat vistas and everything. There's we went we went around Christmas time, which kind of undermines my argument about shutting down in the winter. We went for Yumi's birthday, actually, like one year. and there was like a Christmas show where there was like singing and dancing, but it was so corny that I was waiting for everybody to be like, oh, you know, we're just joking. Here's the real show. It never happened. It was just that like kitschy and American and earnest.

45:32Chuck Bryant:Yeah, and just corny. But it was very sweet in retrospect especially. Hard to sit through, but very sweet. And then there's just a lot of like people dipping candles. There's tons of food to eat. There's a roller coaster that neither Yumi nor I went on. But there's a museum there that's closed temporarily because apparently they're reimagining it. But it was originally called the Chasing Rainbows Museum. And Dolly Parton is a just self-professed pack rat. She saved everything, Chuck. Everything. The coat of many colors that she sings about, it's there. You can see it in real life right there. And it's the tiniest, cutest little thing you've ever seen in your entire life.

46:14Chuck Bryant:It's so tiny.

46:15Josh Clark:This is a coat her mom made for her when she was a kid, right, out of old rags?

46:19Chuck Bryant:That she sang about in that coat of many colors. And what a great song. But then just to love that song and then see the actual coat and then just see how dinky it is, it was just amazing. Those lists I told you she used to keep, she kept those. Those are on display. Wigs, rhinestones everywhere. But it's not just like this ode or tribute to Dolly. It's a genuine, like, curated look into her whole career. And it was one of the best museums I've ever been to in my life of any kind.

46:48Josh Clark:Why didn't you guys ride the roller coaster?

46:50Chuck Bryant:We were both scared of roller coasters.

46:52Josh Clark:Oh, I don't think I remembered that.

46:55Chuck Bryant:Yes, I've been scared of roller coasters for decades, but I feel like I'm starting to come out of it. Okay. And I might go challenge myself and ride a few roller coasters this summer and see if I'm correct or if I'm really, really wrong.

47:08Josh Clark:Well, you should go to Six Flags with Ruby and I because there's nothing like getting your courage worked up than a seven-year-old who will ride anything.

47:17Chuck Bryant:Okay.

47:18Josh Clark:Staring you in the face. Okay.

47:19Chuck Bryant:All right. I may use that. That's just the elixir I'm looking for.

47:23Josh Clark:Yeah, yeah. Because she'll go on whatever. She wouldn't understand. She'd be like, why don't you want to go on it? What do you mean you're scared?

47:29Chuck Bryant:I don't. You're kind of ruining things for me.

47:33Josh Clark:Well, I want to go to Dollywood. So maybe we can go to Six Flags and then Dollywood and just do a theme park roundup.

47:39Chuck Bryant:I strongly recommend it because there's like all sorts of stuff in nearby Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge. Yeah, of course. I've been to Gatlinburg. Ripley's Museums and just all sorts of just cool, super kitschy touristy stuff. Yeah. Oh, what's his name? The guy who sings Proud to be an American? Lee Greenwood. Lee Greenwood. Cafe where they, no joke, play that song on a loop over and over again. The whole time you're like, where's the next song? They don't play the next song.

48:11Josh Clark:I heard that song every night of the summer for like five summers when I worked at the Stone Mountain Laser Show. Oh, yeah, I'll bet. I got my fill of it. Yeah. So we can talk a little bit more about her politics. And this is where the sociologists and anthropologists come in. there's a sociologist named Tressie McMillan Cottom that has written about how black women have always looked up to Dolly Parton as a role model even though she is like it's a very specific sort of white southern thing that she embodies again just you know testifies to her crossover appeal that she is to be admired by anybody her Q score if you don't know what a Q score is it's a marketing tool that basically there's a bunch of things that go into your Q score, but it's basically how much people like you, how much they recognize your name.

48:59Josh Clark:And her Q score is like legendarily one of the top Q scores of all time, celebrity-wise.

49:04Chuck Bryant:She has a high positive Q score. They also do a negative Q score. And she has a very low negative Q score. So she's among the most beloved and among the least disliked people in the entire world.

49:16Josh Clark:Yeah, I don't want to know my Q score.

49:18Chuck Bryant:I looked it up. We don't have one yet.

49:20Josh Clark:Okay, good.

49:20Chuck Bryant:But I was reading this article on the conversation and these two Australian marketing people were trying to figure out who would have been Australia's dolly, and they landed on Hugh Jackman. And I'm like, I can't disagree with that. He's pretty likable. Sure, everybody likes Hugh Jackman. Yeah, I would agree with that. Even though he did The Greatest Showman, people still like Hugh Jackman.

49:44Josh Clark:The anthropologist comes in, a man named Jonathan Zilberg in 1995 talked about how she was loved in Zimbabwe. of all places. And again, it's just like, you know, pick a country and chances are people there love Dolly Parton.

50:01Chuck Bryant:And in Dolly Parton's America, then they talk about how Nelson Mandela, while he was in prison in South Africa, got his jailers to play Jolene for the whole jail. Basically all a Shawshank Redemption. Pretty cool.

50:17Josh Clark:Pretty cool. And like you said earlier, she basically just avoids politics. She doesn't let any politician on either side use her music. If a Democrat uses it, she shuts him down. If a Republican uses it, she shuts him down. She just sort of sidesteps all that stuff. She's always been, you know, growing up, of course, in the 70s, there were a lot of playground jokes about Dolly Parton's breast size. She was very well known for it. And she's always been the first one to jump in and joke about it herself. instead of being like the butt of the joke, she can just go along with it. And that's just that's another really likable quality is someone who can and can laugh at themselves and not take things too seriously.

51:00Chuck Bryant:I also saw it put that she she knows that these jokes are going to be made anyway, so she can diffuse them by getting out in front of them and topping, you know, the lame jokes that like old talk show hosts would make. Yeah. I saw once she said that she burned her bra and it took the fire department three days to put it out. Like that kind of stuff. That's hilarious.

51:22Josh Clark:That was her joke? Yeah. Oh, that's good. That's very funny.

51:26Chuck Bryant:So I think we mentioned this before. Do you know that Dolly the sheep, the first cloned animal on the planet, was named Dolly because she was grown from a mammary gland cell?

51:37Josh Clark:Yeah.

51:38Chuck Bryant:I can't remember where we talked about that. But it really just goes to show, like, that's how ubiquitous Dolly Parton's boobs were in the 20th century. I know. Like, they were as big as she was, basically.

51:50Josh Clark:Yeah. No pun intended.

51:52Chuck Bryant:They were definitely part of her brand, for sure.

51:55Josh Clark:Yeah. You know, she was smart enough to lean into it. Another thing that she had done over the years is there are a lot of really dark songs that she's written about. even though she's never kind of outright considered herself a feminist, she very much is. And a lot of the songs she's written over the years have been very dark songs about women who are either abandoned or suffering from sexual double standards, or there's one brutal song from 1970 called Daddy Come and Get Me about a true story of a relative in her family that was basically institutionalized by her husband. So she's never been afraid to go down sort of in the tradition of the old sort of dark country murder ballad thing, go down these darker roads with some of the songs she's written.

52:39Chuck Bryant:Yeah, I saw that she considers herself not a feminist, but in favor of all women. She's for all women. So it's like she doesn't subscribe to the movement part, but what the movement's ultimately about, she's totally in favor with. And that's super her. She made a very rare overt statement when she came out in support of Black Lives Matter. Yeah. At a time where it was like you're casting your lot one way or another. And she stood up for it, which is pretty cool.

53:13Josh Clark:She did. She also, in 2018, there was at Dollywood, the Dixie Stampede. She changed the name to Dolly Parton Stampede after people complained about the whole Dixie connotation and Civil War theme. She changed that up. And she was just like, you know, I never really thought about, you know, the Confederate imagery meaning what it meant to people. And so she was happily changed it. And that's just the kind of person she is, I think.

53:41Chuck Bryant:And she got guff for that. And she got guff for supporting Black Lives Matter from some of her her right leaning fans. But she she can always explain herself, you know, and she does so in such a great way that you're just kind of like, well, fine. It's hard to be. You can't keep a grudge against her even if she goes against you politically. But she just so rarely does it.

54:02Josh Clark:Yeah, agreed. We're going to wind it down with her business and philanthropy. Very savvy business person from the very beginning. She was smart enough to hang on to the rights to her own music and never give them up. Even when Elvis Presley came, Colin, and wanted to cover I Will Always Love You, he wanted half the publishing rights. And she was like, no way. take a walk, Elvis Presley.

54:26Chuck Bryant:He didn't. Apparently, Colonel Tom called her up on the morning of the scheduled recording session and sprung that on her, and she turned him down. And she said she was hoping that Elvis was as disappointed as she was. But that took a lot of gumption, especially to have it sprung on you like that. And she said, nope, not doing it. But that's one of the things that made her so incredibly wealthy. Like, apparently her music catalog has a net worth of about$150 million and brings in about$6 to$8 million a year for her, according to, I think, Forbes. And then her stake in Dollywood is her most valuable asset.

55:03Chuck Bryant:I think it's like$165 million. Pretty neat.

55:07Josh Clark:She has done quite well for herself. Yeah. I mean, these days, she's not stopping either. She's on Duncan Hines' buttermilk biscuit mix with her little cartoon face. They have fragrances branded by Dolly. They have pet clothes that she's branded with. Like just all kinds of things. She's not afraid to license her image.

55:32Chuck Bryant:No.

55:32Josh Clark:For sure.

55:33Chuck Bryant:We've got that, the Duncan Hines frosting in our pantry. Do you? The chocolate cream frosting. And then one other thing I saw, Chuck, she wrote a book, co-wrote a book with James Patterson, one of the best, most favorite novelists in the entire world. It's called Run, Rose, Run, and it's a thriller based kind of loosely on Dolly's story of making it in the music biz.

55:53Josh Clark:Oh, wow. Yeah, I think it just came out. Okay, I might have to check that out. Yeah. She is very charitable as well. She started the Dollywood Foundation in 1988 just to get literacy going in her home county. and it grew and grew and grew to the point where it is now in the U.S., Canada, Australia, the U.K., and Ireland. And to date, the program has given out more than 204 million books across these countries. And, you know, she helped build a hospital in her county. Anytime there's like wildfires nearby, she's chipping in. And she very famously donated a million dollars to Vanderbilt University Medical Center for COVID-19 vaccine research.

56:40Josh Clark:And, you know, people don't credit her with the Moderna vaccine, but they're like that million dollars was instrumental in getting that vaccine to trial.

56:50Chuck Bryant:Well, yeah, she also was like, everybody go get jabbed. There was a video at one around of her getting her own vaccine, the first one, I think. and she was singing Vaccine to the tune of Jolene.

57:04Josh Clark:Pretty nice tie-in.

57:05Chuck Bryant:Yeah, exactly. It was great. So one other thing, though, about her foundation, one reason she got into literacy programs was because her father never learned to read. And apparently he told her just before he died that he was most proud of her for that work that she'd done with promoting literacy around the world. It's pretty cool. It makes it even neater.

57:27Josh Clark:And in addition to the vaccine Jolene song, she also did a version of I Will Always Jab You.

57:33Chuck Bryant:That was less popular. Less popular. Sounds a little aggressive.

57:38Josh Clark:She's been nominated for 53 Grammys. 53. She's won 10, which I think that number should be higher. But, you know, they have given her, like, Lifetime Achievement Awards. And Jolene and I Will Always Love You were inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. So they have like heaped awards on her even when she has not won the actual Grammy. And she's also won an Emmy, right?

58:03Chuck Bryant:Yeah. She was also up for two Oscars for best song for Traveling Through for Transamerica in I think 2006. And then 9 to 5, the song. Did 9 to 5 not win? No, it was beaten by Fame. Oh, boy.

58:20Josh Clark:That's a tough year.

58:22Chuck Bryant:Traveling Through was beaten by Hard Out There for a Pimp from Hustle and Flow.

58:27Josh Clark:That's a good song, too.

58:28Chuck Bryant:How are you going to top that?

58:29Josh Clark:It's really hard. I was getting ready to trash whatever beat out 9 to 5, but Fame is a great song. That's a tough year.

58:36Chuck Bryant:That was a very tough year. But she also has two Guinness World Records to her name, one of which is Most Decades with a top 20 hit, which really just goes to show how long she's been around and how long she's been huge.

58:50Josh Clark:You know what else she has two of? What? Stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Two. I know. Is there anybody else who has that? I think so. People in different media, although probably not a lot of people. I bet it's a pretty short list. One in 1984 and then one in 2018 when, I guess, the final trio of trio albums came out.

59:13Chuck Bryant:So if you think Dolly's slowing down, friend, you are dead wrong. Yep. She's got a new album coming out. So she was inducted in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame despite her protests. She's like, I'm not a rocker. Apparently she's like, all right, well, I better go be a rocker and earn that honor. So her next studio album, her 49th, is coming out, I think, this fall. And it's called Rockstar. And she's going to be singing with some other rock stars, too.

59:40Josh Clark:Yeah. Stevie Nicks, Paul McCartney, Cher. I love it.

59:43Chuck Bryant:Yep. Vince Neil?

59:46Josh Clark:No, not Vince Neil.

59:48Chuck Bryant:That's correct. Not Vince Neil. Oh, okay.

59:51Josh Clark:That'd be pretty amazing, actually.

59:54Chuck Bryant:You got anything else about Dolly Parton? Oh, I've got one other thing. Let's hear it. Before you answer, she wakes up at 3 a.m. every day.

1:00:01Josh Clark:Oh. And just... Daughter of a sharecropper.

1:00:04Chuck Bryant:Yeah, I guess so.

1:00:06Josh Clark:That's amazing.

1:00:07Chuck Bryant:Okay, you got anything else? I got nothing else.

1:00:10Josh Clark:Okay.

1:00:11Chuck Bryant:I don't either. I don't think. But I'm going to think of 10 things after we're done recording.

1:00:16Josh Clark:I know. I've been listening to Dolly Parton all day. it's going to continue on.

1:00:20Chuck Bryant:Yeah, it's not hard to do. If you want to know more about Dolly Parton, friend, go listen to Dolly Parton. Go watch videos of Dolly Parton. Go read interviews with Dolly Parton. She was once described as a black belt interviewee, so you'll never be disappointed with a Dolly Parton interview. And since I said you'll never be disappointed by a Dolly Parton interview, that has opened up listener mail.

1:00:43Josh Clark:I'm going to call this great email. Follow up from Arcades. Hey guys, I just want to tell you a story of my very traditional grandmother. She was very traditional in the Midwestern sense and she was a homemaker. Oh yeah. Kept books for my grandfather's iron working concern. She didn't tolerate cussing or fussing and was a conservative dresser. She liked the calico. She didn't have any obvious vices save one. Pac-Man. Oh yeah. To hear her tell it there was a time where she would wake up before her husband and five children, power up the Atari and start a Pac-Man game. After 30 minutes or so she would get breakfast on the table, get her family out the door and do the books, clean the house, and then finally get back to her paused Pac-Man game, which she would play until it was time to start dinner when her family came back home.

1:01:28Chuck Bryant:That's awesome. She had Pac-Man fever.

1:01:31Josh Clark:That's good. Wouldn't be much of a story, guys, except here's the thing. She was really, really good at Pac-Man.

1:01:37Chuck Bryant:Oh, yeah.

1:01:37Josh Clark:She once told me she had the first 40-something levels memorized and could use them to rack up points and then thus extra lives. She got to a point where she could play the same game all day long. Eventually she would describe getting to a high enough level where the game would freeze. And what she was describing was level 256, the kill screen. But since she was home alone every time she reached it and the internet wasn't a household thing, no one ever knew what she was talking about. She'd just round the door and be like, somebody, anybody, come look. It was until many years later that I saw King of Kong and saw the footage of the kill screen my grandmother had described.

1:02:13Josh Clark:Couldn't believe my eyes or the fact that my conservative grandmother was such an early skilled gamer.

1:02:19Chuck Bryant:That's neat.

1:02:19Josh Clark:She's since passed away, but every time the subject of Pac-Man comes up, brings a smile to my face, and I remember her and her high scores. That is from Aaron Miller of Kansas City, the Kansas side.

1:02:31Chuck Bryant:Oh, that's rare. You don't usually hear from those people. Kansas side. Well, thanks a lot, Aaron. That's a fantastic story. I'm glad you could smuggle that message out of the Kansas side of Kansas City to us. And if you want to be like Aaron and get in touch however way you can, try putting it in an email, sending it off to stuffpodcasts at iheartradio.com.

1:02:56Josh Clark:Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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