Dolly Parton: why the queen of country was so beloved – The Latest

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0:10Meeting Dolly Parton, it's like, the only way I could describe it, it must be like meeting the Pope if you're Catholic. She recorded over 3 ,000 songs. Whoa, really? And I've been writing songs all of my life and this beats the heck out of standing up on a hill above the barn singing to the cows and the chickens and the pigs. 49 albums. I mean, the body of work. I think it's important to say that the fashion was very much an armour, essentially performed in drag. I think her songs from the very beginning were just deeply political and I think most of her kind of rawness and honesty came through in her songwriting.

0:42From the Guardians today on Focus, this is The Latest with me, Lucy Hoth. Dolly Parton, an icon and one of our greatest ever singer-songwriters, has died very suddenly at the age of 80 after what we're told was a short battle with cancer. Jenny Stephens, you're our Deputy Features Editor. You are known in Guardian Towers as possibly the biggest Dolly Parton superfan, is that fair to say? I mean, there are bigger Dolly superfans for what it's worth, But yes, I am an enormous fan of her. It's very hard to talk about her in the past tense already. But yes, I mean, in 2018, I got a ping from Spotify telling me that I was in the top 1 % of Dolly Parton listeners globally, which I mean, I'm just going to paint.

1:31Just imagine how many hours of Dolly Parton that is that you have to listen to. Yes. So I do greatly love and admire her. I guess. We were all at the pub, the latest team having a drink last night in the sunshine and got a notification. We so often get these celebrity death notifications, don't we? But this one really stopped us in our tracks and kind of everybody had a little moment, little cry. What does she mean to you? Why does she mean so much to people? I mean, God, counting the ways. I think for me, she, sorry, it's still really hard to talk about her in the past tense, but she was this just, I mean she was our great one of our greatest living songwriters and I mean that in a lyrical sense in a musical sense you know she was a multi-instrumentalist she was incredible incredible singer with an extraordinary range Jolene Jolene Jolene Jolene I'm begging of you please don't take my money but her back catalogue you know she she recorded over 3 ,000 songs whoa really she put out 49 albums I mean the body of work I mean I'm thinking of um surviving musicians with that kind of back catalogue now and the only ones I could think of are kind of Stevie Wonder Bob Dylan maybe Neil Young you know she was not only prolific but absolutely prodigious as well and it's just an extraordinary body of work yeah I got I had no idea about that I obviously loved the songs that I knew but you know like I knew only really the the sort of hits that we all know about um Jolene nine to five yeah kind of thing so that is extraordinary to hear you are definitely not alone in feeling a great sense of mourning today in America flags are being flown at half mast we've got sort of tributes being posted from her from like massive global superstars Beyonce Taylor Swift she had this quite moving relationship with Eminem she was a real supporter of his work and she liked the lyrics you know um but what that shows i think is how influential she was as a you know and respected as a musical artist but also how kind of at the core of the music industry she was and her kindness to other artists yeah i mean she was a great mentor um i think when cowboy carter came out you know dolly partner's all over that album um she's in it a lot i think her work with younger artists and her sort of mentorship I think the Miley Cyrus relationship is really interesting there was a song called Rainbowland that Miley put out a few years ago and it's got this amazing like I don't know if it's real or not but it's this amazing answer machine message being like hi it's your godmother Dolly and she sings over Miley's vocal and it's just this incredibly warm beautiful song and I think she had this great like lightness of touch she was a great mentor but also she was just an incredible incredible artist and I think that she never kind of locked anyone out in that way you know Beyonce wants to return to her roots and do a country album you know on the land where she was from and it is part of her heritage and I think there's been a big conversation about sort of black artists being locked out of country music and Dolly's just there being like I'm so happy you're making this album do your cover of Jolene let me be on this album it's kind of amazing yeah Yeah, that is really amazing.

4:56You had the opportunity to meet and interview her. What was that like for you? Did you hold it together? No, and I'm outraged you asked because I felt like I told you this in confidence. But I have to say on a professional level, it's possibly one of my biggest professional faux pas because I interviewed Dolly Parton at Glastonbury. I had had a late night. It was about six in the morning I got an email from her PR being like can you come to her trailer and interview her at like nine so I sort of literally like wiped the dirt off my face and I got to her trailer and I think I was just so overstimulated because meeting Dolly Parton is like the only way I could describe it is must be what people who are like deeply religious feel when they meet like a spiritual leader it must be like being the pope if you're catholic it was like but it was kind of a sensory overload her perfume was so strong her bodyguards were these two very large men who were cowboys and like full outfit like the hats like everything she was wearing this like leather corset I think I was so hot overwhelmed sort of a bit high on perfume that when I left the trailer I fainted and I just remember coming around and having two cowboys like one under each arm just like hoisting me up and just sort of carrying me away.

6:16I'm imagining that's not the first time someone has got a bit overwhelmed interviewing Dolly Parton. Yeah I mean frankly I think that's iconic that you fainting Dolly Parton. Not a great professional look loser I have to say. But I think that sort of aesthetic that you're describing I saw that Glastonbury set it was incredible but you know the hair the rhinestone encrusted corsets that's sort of what we came to know of her in the sort of later years but her background was really interesting wasn't it because she was born into really quite extreme poverty and she wrote a lot about that in her music yeah she did I think it's important to say that the fashion was very much an armour you know she essentially performed in drag you know she had this um persona you know the nails the hair the outfits she was actually an incredibly private woman right you know she did a lot of interviews but you're not you're never you were never going to get dolly parton to say something she didn't want to say she had great control over her image you know all of her merchandise was licensed you can't you're not getting like you know when you go to nashville you're not getting um bootleg dolly parton t-shirts okay interesting you're just not and um so she had this great level of control over it um so i think the image is important in that way but it also talks about her kind of class ascension you know she never felt good enough she had she wrote a lot about her insecurities with her appearance and you know how she would never leave the house without makeup and stuff and this was an armor it really really was because I think most of her kind of rawness and honesty came through in her songwriting she never wanted to be political she said that she wasn't a political person but her politics did come through in her music and also in the way that she lived I mean you mentioned her costumes were sort of like drag but she also was a huge gay icon a huge champion of gay rights of marriage equality, of trans rights.

8:06So that does feel political. Yeah, I mean, I think that for me, you know, she always said, I don't do politics, I don't do feminism. You know, after 9 to 5 came out, the film, she was quite uncomfortable with sort of, you know, doing promotional stuff with Jane Fonda and them talking about feminism. Use your mind and you never get ready. It's enough to drive you crazy if you let it. 9 to 5, yeah. I think her songs from the very beginning were just deeply political. And I think one of the interesting areas in that is her writing about kind of female autonomy over their reproductive rights and their bodies.

8:43You know, these early songs, Down from Dover, which is about a young woman who gets pregnant. And it's a really deeply traumatic song, as is a song called The Bridge. And in Just Because I'm a Woman, she, you know, this is 1968. This is five years before Roe v. Wade. you know these aren't christian morality songs about staying a virgin they are songs that are like this man has just wrecked this woman's life and left her with a baby and you know what happens here and then just because i'm a woman she kind of directly addresses that she says to men um my mistakes are no worse than yours just because i'm a woman and i think it's hard to look at that and not see that as a direct political statement about that women should have control of their bodies and And she, you know, the sort of double standard was alarming and shocking to her.

9:34And that is through many of her songs. Yeah, she was just such a pioneer in terms of being a powerful music female artist. But she did collaborate with powerful male artists. But if she didn't like something, she wouldn't get pushed around as she famously did with Elvis Presley. Yeah, I mean, it's one of my favourite stories about her. I think if we go back to her early career with Porter Wagner, who was a huge, huge country star. He had his own TV show. You know, I mean, Dolly had been performing and writing since she was 11. You know, she was signed at 16. And when she was 21, he sort of handpicked her, mentored her on this huge TV program, the Porter Wagner show.

10:15And she was his, you know, collaborator, co-songwriter, sang with him. And, you know, as the years went on, her star really outshone his. I mean, it was quite clear that she was a, you know, prodigious songwriter, an incredible lyricist, an incredible musician. He did not like it, you know, and he really tried to claw that power back from her. And, you know, I mean, it was heartbreaking to her. She always talked about it with quite grace and dignity, I think. But she wrote songs about it. You know, I Will Always Love You, Light of a Clear Blue Morning is all about that, like, fracturing. I think one of my favorite sort of deep cuts is a Dolly and Porter Wagner song called The Pain of Loving You.

10:53And my God, that is a song about a fracturing, intense relationship. And with the Elvis stuff, you know, she, I think she wrote I Will Always Love You age 26, 27, something like that. And she was about 27 when Elvis, the king of rock and roll, approaches her and says, I want to record this song.

11:26Just going back to Dali's history, you know, she grew up in absolute poverty in one room with 12 brothers and sisters with newspaper plastered on the walls. You know, she, her songs were her currency and Elvis's manager said he wants half the copyright. You know, he was essentially stealing her creative work from her. And at the age of kind of 27, she was like, no, you can't have it. It's mine. And it's my work. So pioneering at that time. You're telling Elvis Presley? No. I mean, at the age of like 27, it's extraordinary. And I think that she, you know, she had an incredibly strong sense of self and also sense of her own creative worth, which I think was absolutely inspirational to lots of artists that came after her.

12:09So obviously there's this incredible musical legacy and this legacy for kind of artists, particularly female artists, really standing up for protecting their work that will live on obviously has been inspirational to Taylor Swift. But there was also a real philanthropic aspect to Dolly as well, wasn't there? Tell me about how much she did because it was really meaningful and substantial. It was absolutely incredible. I mean, I will say about Dolly, she says, I don't do politics, but her approach, her sort of small C political approach was all about unity. She never, ever said anything divisive.

12:47And with Dolly's background, you know, her father couldn't read or write. She made an entire career out of being an incredible lyricist and writer. and I think that dedication and passion to literacy, she saw literacy as a kind of means of emancipation and imagination as a kind of way of unity and imagining other people's lives. She had this incredible charity project called the Imagination Library in which she provided books to children all across America and she also launched it in the UK as well. There's a stat that like one in seven children in America get a Dolly Parton funded book. Wow. You know, this was, this is politics, right?

13:29This is what she wanted. She wanted this unity. She wanted this kind of emancipation of kids that couldn't read or write to be able to. And I think that is an extraordinary legacy. Jenny Stephens, thank you so much for your literal encyclopedic knowledge of Dolly Parton. And I hope the rest of the day of grieving is OK for you. Thank you. It does feel like the sun's gone out. I'm not going to lie. That's it for today. My huge thanks again to Jenny Stevens, possibly the number one Dolly Parton fan in the world and deputy features editor at The Guardian. You can keep up with all our coverage on the death of Dolly Parton and her legacy over at TheGuardian.com.

14:06Thanks for listening to this episode of The Latest. We'll be back with you at the same time tomorrow evening. This episode was produced by Rosie Peters MacDonald and Bryony Moore. The senior producer was Roanne Ramgobin. The executive producer was Zoe Hitch. And it was presented by me, Lucy Hoff.

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