Dolly Parton

We've smuggled products in the North Korea, and now we make it to our 7th continent, Antarctica.

[laughter] That's right, big for me. Mr. Penguin, speak for me.

“I have another sound of Antarctica, that's a reporter trying to interview a Penguin.”

We'll explain on Planet Money Summer School, listen on the NPR app, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is fresh air, I'm Terry Gross, no matter what their taste is in music. People love Dolly Parton. Musicians and singers from all different genres have covered songs she wrote or made famous. From jazz saxophonists and Iranians to Beyonce.

And while politics divide our country, loving her is something that unites us. She died yesterday at the age of 80.

“Today as we mourn her death, we're going to feature the interview I recorded with her in 2001.”

She's been on my mind for the past couple of weeks. Ever since I heard one of her songs on the radio that I hadn't heard before, she didn't write it, but her voice is so gorgeous on it, I had to play it again when I got home and have played it several times since. It's called Old Flames, can't hold a candle to you. In 1980 it became one of her many number-one hits, here it is.

I used to take comfort from long before I met you. I caught a spark from his eyes, a forgotten design.

“The word 'artouch' I could have rekindled and fly.”

Old Flames, can't hold a candle to you. No one can light up the light like you do. Flickering in bursts of love, I don't want her to. Old Flames, can't hold a candle to you. Dalai Parton was a singer, songwriter, actress, entrepreneur, and philanthropist.

She was successfully enough and had a big enough personality to start her on theme park, Dalai Wood. She became a singer on Country Music Star, Porter Wagner's TV show in 1967. She went on to have a solo career with many hits, including Jolene, which Beyonce recorded on

her Country Music album, Cowboy Carter, 9-5, and I will always love you, which was later a huge hit

for Whitney Houston. When I spoke with Dalai Parton in 2001, her recording career had recently returned to the music she grew up with, her 1999 recording, The Grass as Blue, when the International Bluegrass Music Association's album of the Year Award. We spoke after the release of her follow-up album, Little Sparrow, that featured traditional

mountain music as well as her original songs in that vein. We started with the title track, which she wrote. Pain.

All ye maids heed my warning, never trust, heart to me.

They will crush you like a sparrow, leaving you to never be. They will bow to always love you, swear no love, but yours will do, then they'll leave you for another, break your little heart in it too, Little Sparrow, Little Sparrow,

that's Dalai Parton with the title track from her new CD Little Sparrow. Dalai Parton, welcome to Fresh Air. Well, thank you, ain't you glad we started out with something upbeat, like a broken heart. But anyway, I thought that would be a good one to start with, since it is the name of the album that I'm out trying to promote, because I need the money, because you know it because a lot

might look this cheap. Haha. But anyway, thanks for having me on to, I'm looking forward to spending some time with you. This new CD and your previous CD, the grass is blue. They're both traditional music. And I'm interested in why you're heading in that direction now. You know, as opposed to a more, almost like show business version of country music.

“Well, I have always loved this kind of music. I really think this style of music is”

more suited to my voice. This is the kind of music that I used to sing all my days growing up back in the Smokey Mountains. And this music is really so, so now, people are really into the simplicity of it. And so just for fun, for myself, there was a poll in bluegrass community of what person they'd like to hear most do, bluegrass albums that hadn't done one. And they said me. So I won, you know, hands down with that. So I said to Steve Buckingham, when we did the

grasses blue, they album just before this one. I said, well, let's just do a bluegrass album. And long behold, we won the bluegrass album of the year with that. So we thought, well, we need to do something along the same lines. But I didn't want to just do a full, long bluegrass album and try to just do exactly what we did with the other. So we wanted to expand it. So we did a little more mountain music. We added a little bit of flavors of some Irish sounds also. So I call this

blue mountain music. It's like bluegrass and mountain music. So that kind of seems to sum up what

“the style is, I think. Now, you were born in 1946 in a one-room cabin in the Smokey Mountains”

of East Tennessee. What was the music you heard as a child? Well, a lot of the stuff that we heard was that old porch pick and music, old songs brought back from England and Ireland that all Appalachian music and a lot of the stuff that people up in the mountains wrote. So my mother

was, and oh, my mom was people used to always play and saying, mommy used to sing a lot. So

we would sing like a lot of the old gospel songs, a lot of old gospel songs were written to sound old, like I say, by a lot of my own people. Who was most musical in your family? All of us, my mother was very musical and my grandpa Jake. I think it was a preacher, pinnacosta preacher, that I wrote a song about many years ago called Daddy, it was no time preacher man. I think he was he was a music teacher of sorts back there in the heels. I have, there's 12 of us kids, six girls

and six boys and we all sing and write and play. It's just that I think I've taken it farther. I don't know that I'm near as good as some of the others, but I've been more willing to sacrifice and work a little harder than some of the others might have been willing to, you know, to do just because they want to have a family and do other things, but there's a lot of talent in this

“family. Do you remember the first songs that really meant something to you?”

Yeah, the songs that I used to hear, my folks sing back home and stuff, mommy used to sing about Jesus' tell stories from the Bible and sing a lot of those old timey songs, but the stuff I

used to hear was a church. One of my favorite songs of all time is if we never meet again

the side of heaven and my dad passed away a few weeks ago and he always loved that song. Of course, I was a way to a very sorry. I thank you very much. But I was too emotional to sing in that is funeral. So like later, I went up to the grave and just sung it for myself and for daddy. So anyway, those are the kind of songs that I always loved. They're not recorded if we never meet again on an album once from Dollarwood, a live album that album was called Heart Songs and they are

heart songs. So I grew up just to love and all those old folk songs of tragedy. You're like the two little orphans and all that sort of stuff. And someday I hope and possibly even from my next album to do an album of a lot of those old mountain true folk songs. When did you start writing songs and realizing that you had an ear for that as well as for singing? Well, I started singing already on television when I was 10 years old, but I started playing guitar and writing serious songs

when I was about 7. And my mother was always fascinated with the fact that I could rhyme

so much stuff. So she used to keep stuff that I didn't remember. I had written and she has stuff in a trunk and many years ago. She said, "Here's some stuff you might want to look at." This is stuff you used to write for you could write. If we could write it down, it's used to write it down. So actually I've been doing it all my life seriously and professionally since I was 10. Do you remember any of the songs you wrote as a girl? Oh, I used to write songs about

It was a little doll that Mama Daddy had burned poker hole eyes in to make eyes and Mama had put the corn silk hair back on her made a little dress for and her name was TasselTop and I

“did. I think I was five or six, you know, somewhere in there seven. And he's like little tiny TasselTop.”

I love you and I feel like hope you never go away. I will do two stay and so on. So I just wrote all

about her dress. No, about her hair. So yeah, I just wrote about everything that, you know, they come to mind. Well, you're writing about tragic love and heartbreak by the time you were 10. Yes, I was. As a matter of fact, I wrote a song. I came to remember exactly how it goes. But it was a bad boy getting killed in the war because we used to hear all those stories. Back home, and if they weren't singing those sad ass songs, they were telling stories about it.

You know, it's like, and that makes an impression on a little child. So we thought we, you know, I thought that you needed to write some really songs of tragedy. I thought you had to do that in order to be a mountain singer. And I wonder how it sounds that with you as a girl singing these tragic songs. About the same as it does. Now my voice ain't changed a lot. Sometimes people say my voice has like a little girl singing at least Lord off of songs. It's like this little sparrow in the

silver dagger from the other one in tender life from this one. It's like I love to sing all those sad songs. Well, you know, rare is the singer who can sing as much as you have and not have it roughened their voice. Well, my voice is of a high pitch. So I guess I don't think my voice will ever deepen or lower itself in any way. But it's, you know, it's one of those voices. I hope that last long time because I hope to be singing even when I'm old. I hope to sit at home,

porch, and sing those old folk songs, and maybe put them down on tapes and sell them. But anyhow, I just love and a lot of the songs I write, like for instance, on my blue tears,

“a song that's on this album that I wrote many years ago. And we can play that if you want to”

have to this. But I wrote the song and it really uses a lot of the only English style, like Fly Ye away from my window, Fly Ye is far like the Ye's and the Ye's. It sounds old timey. So I had recorded the song numerous times. But some of my songs, I like so well. I think well, they just seem to fit here and fit there. So it kind of landed itself to that Irish feel. So it's one of my favorites. You want to play that? Absolutely. But before we do tell us when you wrote it and where

you were in your performing career at the time? Well, I wrote it about the old 25, 30 years ago, I guess. And I was sitting at owner couch in a place where I lived over in any

opportunity. And one of the first houses that I had after I moved to Nashville and had gotten married.

And I just remember wanting to write something old time because I was probably homesick or thinking

“about the old days. And I just started, you know, just singing it. And I was at that time already,”

probably pretty big name with the Porto Wagner show. And that's where I had started. So I was trying to write songs that would make good records. And when I first did this one, it was more up tempo. But on this version of it, I slowed it down. Well, let's hear my blue tears written by Dally Martin, as featured on her new CD, Little Sparrow. And let not your song for the whole life. Go spread your blue wings and I shed my blue tears for the ones that I have.

Dally, Martin, in your autobiography, you said that when you were young, you read everything you could get your hands on. The Bible, the Farmer's Almanac fairy tales, the funeral home directory, is that about all there was in the way of books? No, well, there were books at school, but there were so many of us kids. We didn't dare take school books home because the kids just chew

up or pee on them or tear them. You know, the pages out of them, so that always tell us not to

bring books home because that didn't have to pay for. But I used to read everything I get my hands on at school and fairy tales I love. So I would, you know, anytime there was a break at school, I could get my hands on a book, you know, on the desk or something, I would read that. I still love books. I read everything. I read all the, whatever the hip books are on the, on the best seller list. I try to read that people give me gifts because I'd rather read when I travel

on the bus and when I fly, I'd rather read than to watch television when I'm home. So I just enjoy that. There were 12 kids in your family looking at your mother and the life that she was leading and the other women in the family. What did you think the life of an adult woman was going

I wasn't proud of who I was and who I was from. But I had a dream. I just couldn't imagine myself.

I was a, I was babysitting from the time. I have a sister and two brothers older and there's eight children younger me. So I had a house full of kids because mom was sick a lot. She had one owner and

“one owner for as long as I remember. So those of us that, you know, were home, we had to kind of”

to do the chores. So I had kids. I had a house full of kids and I just knew that I wanted to do something with my music and I knew that I was going to leave when I was 18 years old and I graduated from high school on a Friday night and I left for Nashville the next Saturday morning. I was ready to go and then I met my husband the first day I got there. We've been married for 34 years and

been together 36 years. I met him 36 years ago and unfortunately we never were able to have children

of our own but that's okay too because after I moved to Nashville I brought five of my younger brothers and sisters to Nashville that lived with me. We sent them to school. Now they have kids and those kids call me Aunt Granny and my husband, Elca Peepaw. So we were the grandparents that they were so I've still been saddened with a bunch of kids. We're no kids, my own. And then you said that your

“grandfather was a preacher. Your mother was devout. What was church like when you were young?”

Oh well, we were one of those shout and healing, holy roller churches, you know, and it was high powered which was great. I really learned to sing in church. I think really with with the emotion and we were free you know it was a free spirited church and if you'd wrote a song a gospel song of course you could get up and sing it and play you guitar and whatever. So it was really it was a lot of that hell fire brimstone and scaring you to death if you go out unprepared which you know it's true

but I used to think well it's got to be more to that they had me so scared to God. I afraid talk to him, I afraid he'd talk back and I afraid he'd punish me so much you know it's stepping up. I really threw the years, found my own place with God. Now when you were young and singing in church did you sing about God in church and then sing about sinning at home? Why used to stand at church

and stand at home and I'd talk about him. I used to always sit and church looking out the windows

at the boys when I could make an excuse to go out and you know go to the bathroom because all of our door to all is but anyhow I was only going out to see the boys but anyhow I had a deep faith in God and but I also you know was a was high spirited and fun loving and I of course was led to believe that everything you did you know what I was saying but I don't believe that now I think it's a sin if you believe it to be and if it hurts somebody else it's a sin but I'm very

deep in my faith in fact there's not an album that that I do that I don't do something that is spiritual in fact to song I used to sing in church years ago that we did up tempo one of the songs we sang every time I went church was a song called in the sweet by and by

“that's on your NCD too. Yes it is and that's why I was going to say and when I I wanted to do”

one of those gospel songs on this album so I slowed this down and and it landed it's effort or nice to some more of that Irish feel so at some point if you want to play that when I think that would be a good choice and what are we for that now okay let's do me to prepare us in place there in the sweet by and by we shall meet on that beautiful song in the sweet by and by we shall meet on that beautiful song we shall see on that

that's on the sweet by and by from Dalai Parton's new CD Little Sparrow now now when you were young you sang on the radio and then you sang on TV and it was before your family even owned a TV didn't make it any more or less momentous to be on TV knowing that your family and probably a lot of the other people you knew as well didn't even own one to watch you on well I don't think a lot that registered on me at that time my purpose was to go sing I was singing on radio

to me it was the same as singing on the radio I didn't even know really what all it meant about singing on television I just knew it was another place to go sing they had microphones and it was

somebody couldn't watch me but after I did start being like a regular and bought our TV I wanted

“my folks to watch it but I bought the TV but it didn't last long in the house because nobody”

around their area had a television so everybody would come down and set in our floor and said don't ever couch watch guns smoking wagon train would it would pick and all the shows that we're on daddy couldn't get him out of the house to get ready to go to work so he said this damn television is out of here so that didn't last long so it didn't matter if I was on television or not you know it's like me and Woody Woodpecker had to go that's funny we're listening to the

interview I recorded with Dolly Parton in January of 2001 she died yesterday at the age of 80 will hear more of the interview after a break I'm Terry Gross and this is fresh air fall is right around the corner that means the midterms hey it's miles parks from the MPR politics podcast now is the perfect time to calibrate your news diet for the fall follow our show

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on NPR's all songs considered it's not the news it's not work or whatever else is weighing you down it's just a good time with good friends and great tunes listen to all songs considered every two-state in the NPR music podcast this is fresh air I'm Terry Gross let's get back to our remembrance of Dolly Parton she died yesterday at the age of 80 here's more of the interview we recorded in 2001 your first record it was a 45 one side was puppy love and the other side was

girl left alone how old were you in this came out I was about 10 or 11 I think when I cut that and that came out on go band records probably several months here so after that that was my very first record and that was a very exciting thing for me the first time I ever heard that played on the radio

it was on a local radio show back home it never did do anything of than just it was the first

but it did play locally and I about kill myself I've sitting on a cabinet sitting up on the sink cabinet with my I was at my aunt was cooking in the kitchen and the radio was on and my song came on and I jumped off of the thing and slid on the floor slid on the rug and fail and trying to get to work at the radio so I almost killed myself trying to get to hear my first record

“you know but it was fun it was I'll never forget the thrill of of hearing myself the first time”

on on the radio I thought well I've made it now could you sing I hadn't could you sing a few bars of one of those songs I want to sing puppy love yeah puppy love puppy love they all call it puppy love I'm old enough now to kiss and hug and I like it it's puppy love it's way it's got one of those silly song you know you put my pig tail to make me mad then you kiss me make me mad sometimes we even make me sad still you had three to sweet are I ever had a puppy love puppy love and I was trying to get all those little

bebop 50s sounds in there too but anyhow needless to say it didn't it didn't say much but it was a start now these were songs you co-wrote I think with your uncle my aunt Dorothy Joe co-wrote the other side the girl left alone oh yeah that's when you was talking earlier about singing those sad song I was 10 years old singing I'm a girl left alone there's no hope for me I'm toast to and throw like a ship on a sea I made my mistakes and now I must pay now how many mistakes could I make 10 years

so now I can see that there's no hope for me it's like a 10 years old so I wrote Michael Bill who was also my manager at the time that also produced that record the A&B side of we wrote puppy love together so those were just you know like I said you got to start somewhere

I got on a major label which was Mercury and I had a song called it may not kill me but it's

“sure going hurt I don't know how it's the bad that's about it it may not kill me but it's sure”

going hurt and it goes into fast tempo and it's just about like losing somebody's like you're you're gonna walk away and I'm gonna stay and you know and I don't like it may not kill me but it's sure going hurt so when you were 18 and you took a bus to Nashville left home were you hoping to be a performer a songwriter both yeah I was going to be all that I was going to be everything I could be but definitely I was going to be a songwriter and a singer

and that was what I hit it out to be with the BSTR and I vowed that I wouldn't go home until I had some show for it and I didn't but I was very very homesick and it was a I actually got really lucky but it was about a year before I really had enough to show for it to think I could go home and I got lucky too I had a top 10 record on a song called "Dumb Blonde" like just because

I'm blonde don't think I'm dumb because this dumb blonde ain't nobody's full that was my first

top 10 record and I was I guess that was in about 66 no that was in about 65 I guess somewhere

“in there so I just knew that that's what I had to do and that was my destiny I know now how”

lucky I was because I know a lot of people that got there about the same time I did had to ask talent still I made it so I know how lucky I've been and I'm grateful for it every day because I love what I do you know another thing you did early on is that you sent songs to buddy Killing the head of tree publishing which is a big country music publisher and did you get other people to record

your songs well I wrote a song with my uncle be alone to say I'm uncle that I was talking about

we had the song of the year the BMI song of the year in 1966 and Bill Phillips had a song called the put it off until tomorrow you've heard many of today and a lot of people through the years have recorded that song so yes I had a different song recorded by different artists that be in the

“biggest at that time and I did write for tree for a while but he told him it was very good to me and”

anybody I mean Fred Foster who owned monument records took me over and I started to write for combine music and and recorded for monument records and that's where I had done blonde and something fishy had I had two or three top ten records before I started with Porto Agno show in 1967 well since you mentioned Porto Wagner let me play a recording that you made with him in 1968 and then we'll talk about that period of your life and the song is just between you and

me who wrote the song did you write that no I didn't write that and and come thank you but I don't know who wrote that I've taught my head that's been a few years okay so this is dollar part and with Porto Wagner recorded in 1968 so I feel so blue sometimes I want to die and so I've got a broken heart so what they say that time will heal all wounds in my stomach and I know that's something I'll forget and love again just between you and me I've got my dance about it

just between you and me you're too much to forgive that's dollar part and with Porto Wagner you performed on his popular TV show for a while and you know made several recordings with him how did you start working with him well Porto had the number one syndicated country television show in the country at that time he had a girl on there for many years named Norma Jean who had become a very big country star in her own right and she got married was getting married and moving

back to Oklahoma City and left to show and that left the spot so Porto was looking for a girl singer and I had people been talking about me in town you know the new girl in town and that I had something fishy dumb blonde and a couple of other songs and so Porto had just got win the that and he'd just calm it down to his office for an interview and so I sat down with my guitar and started singing songs that I written and he was very impressed and I got the job and

that's how that happened then we started doing duets together which we were very successful I was

well you have to learn a lot of things not just the weekly TV show but we also went out on the road together did stage shows I learned a lot from Porto watching professional people work like that as far as how to talk to an audience and how to be comfortable in front of a camera and it's and I had done TV back home when I was kid I had grown up singing already on TV back

“in Knoxville Tennessee but you have to learn how to not do silly things because cameras on you”

not pick your nose and stuff like that or not to scratch your head or nothing no other part of your body so you have to kind of just learn how to be aware that you're all because people are aware of you so it's amazing how you really I'm just like a sponge I just gather up everything you you don't really realize what all you are learning just by watching professional people work because a lot of the artists and stars that would come on Porto show all the time every week

you learn something from everybody well I thought we could hear your original version of I will

always love you which was used again in the movie The Body Guard and was a huge hit for Whitney

Houston do you remember writing this song and what you were thinking of when you wrote it oh

“absolutely I remember that one that one was about when I was leaving Porto Wagner because I”

had been with him seven years I had told him because the I had had plans to have a solo career of my own a hadn't planned get caught up with another group but Porto show was very successful and it was a thing to do and when I had told him I would stay I told him I would stay for five years because I wanted to go on but I stayed two years longer but I kept staying and staying and I kept wanting to go because I felt like I really needed to go out on my own if I was ever really going to have a solo

career and Porto was dead against it he wouldn't hear of it and he had a fit we fought a lot there was a lot of problems going on no matter how it tried to talk to him to make I could not make him understand and I thought well won't you just write a song about him to say you appreciate him

and you appreciate everything he does and that you'll always love him for everything he's done

that you'll always love him period so I just out of a broken heart of not being heard or anything no one had to make major decisions that would ultimately change my life forever and here's for that matter I wrote that song one night out of great grief and depth and just trying to say the right things to say goodbye well what don't we hear your version your original version of I will always love you okay if I should stay I would only be in your way so I'll go but I know I'll think of your each step

of the way that I will always love you will always love you that's doubly part and recorded in 1974 so do you know how this song ended up being used in the bodyguard well they had told me that when Kevin Costner and Whitney Houston were doing this movie

“Kevin also I think produced this movie and put all this stuff together there was a song they”

had wanted to use that they had planned to use as the theme song instead of I'll always love you and then come find out like a few weeks before that they had I don't know what the song was but a few weeks before the song they had planned to use someone else recorded it and put it out

so they were in desperate need of a song to say basically what I will always love you said

and from what I understand Kevin Costner's secretary said did you ever hear a song that Dolly part in that country star you know the one with the big boobs and the big hair seriously she said Dolly part in that country star she said she had a song called I will always love and I think it'd be perfect and she brought it into him and they said he loved it and so they chose it we're listening to the interview I recorded with Dolly part in in 2001 we'll hear more

of it after a break this is fresh air how do products end up on big box shelves well we plan a money pitch deep on it money board game sorry not to think how much of a big deal it is and how much work has gone into it's really big is it helpful if I remind you how big it is it's sort of the whole thing we go inside the minds of the people who decide what goes on store shelves listen to plan money on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts how will a historically unpopular

caught up on the latest news with Trump's term the podcast where we curate NPR's coverage of president Trump in short episodes focused on a single story follow Trump's terms on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts this is fresh air let's get back to the interview I recorded with Dolly part in January of 2001 you said that when you were young you knew you wanted to be a big star what why did you want to be a star because I wanted to be rich I wanted to travel I

wanted to be famous I wanted to do stuff I wanted to be seen I guess I need a lot of attention being brought up the family of twelve you don't get much attention unless you're in trouble you know it's

“like so I think it was just I just had a very outgoing personality and I wanted to be going all”

the time you've joked that if you were a man you would have been a drag queen I always say that

it's a good thing I was a woman because if I had a bit of a man I would have been a drag queen just because I'm so damn guilty because I like all the flesh and the glitter and you know I just love you know just I love playing in my clothes I love playing you know and all in my life it's like I love makeup I love clothes and I got the kind of personality component off and I just I just love you know what what I do I'm comfortable being myself even if I'm make other people

I'm comfortable with the way I look if I'm comfortable with it then it you know it's it's okay with me how did you first start dressing in that what's the word I'm looking for almost oh gosh I go away oversized kind of way where if your hair was big it was going to be real big well I think a lot of that came though from a very serious place that's that was a country girl's idea of what glamour was and when I you know I didn't have any money to have stuff and

and I've often joked about it but it's the real truth that I patterned myself after what they considered the trash in our hometown there was just one woman I thought she was beautiful and you know she had the procs out of her and she you know had it all piled up on her head and had red fingernails and red lipstick and you know wore her powder and I just thought she was a pretty thing I'd ever seen and Mom said I would quit looking at her and shaking on the trash

“and I thought that's what I want to be when I grow up trash so that's where I kind of my look”

came from and then have the glamour girls and the movie stars and all that you know it's really like

like that but it was still you know I mean I enjoyed I still like doing it and I've always just

like when they say less is more that's not my motto mine is more is more and the more I can get the more I want of life and of everything and it's like but in addition to me being all that god you know I take my music and my writing very very serious and hopefully people know that my heart is true and I've always believed that part of my magic if there was any was the fact that I looked so artificial but I am so totally real and I think when you hear these kinds of songs

I think you know that has to come from the heart we're talking about this really oversized image that you've created but you're new CD and the CD before that are really kind of scaled down you know they're they're traditional songs and bluegrass songs sung sung you know with with with a really good band behind you but they're they're very unshow busy do you almost feel like

“you need to change how you look on stage when you're singing these kinds of songs with the kind of”

band that you have no I know I don't think so because I think people have come to know me

as I am and some people will never accept the fact that I'm a serious writer and a serious singer

and the ones that do accept it they know it for a fact and they overlook the image which I've enjoyed playing in the image so the only change I would make only just from from a show business fashion statement I I may wear some things it may be cut a little bit more country western you know like if I but it'll still be beaded it'll still have shine and glitter on it so it's not that I don't think I have to wear overall to know to sing about a farmer I don't think I have to you know I don't

think I have to I think people would really be more disappointed if I dress down because they're so used to seeing me be the way that I am I think that that would bother them more they think why I wish you the one one they run stone races instead of that old colony looking behind so if I if I dress down as as plain as real as some of this music is I would definitely look like Farms daughter the only part in a pleasure to talk with you thank you so much thank you

my interview with Dolly Parton was recorded in January 2001 she died yesterday at the age of 80 she's gone but will always have her music one of her most famous songs was Jolene beyond say introduced even more people to it when she recorded it on her country music album cowboy Carter here's Dally Parton's 1973 recording of Jolene

of often hair with ivory skin and eyes of immoral green your smile is like a breath of spring

“your voice is soft like summer rain and I cannot compete with you Jolene”

he talks about to any sleep and there's nothing I'm coming up jazz critic Martin Johnson reviews the new album by singer Cecil McLore and so on this is fresh air test starrone maybe you've been here and more about it that low tea can be dangerous that higher levels could help you work out better live longer there's a really compelling and like strong marketing messages but they aren't actually what the evidence supports it's not some drug to promise peak performance

or this longevity what the science really says about testosterone on shortwave listen on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts hi there I'm Brittany loose and not to brag but I host a

“really fabulous podcast it's called it's been a minute I love making it and I think you'll”

love listening to it over the last year hundreds of thousands of listeners have been tuning in and I got to say if you haven't yet you're missing out listen to the it's been a minute podcast from NPR today this is fresh air our jazz critic Martin Johnson says all 20th century jazz grades have cast long shadows that their 21st century protege is must escape but few musicians

have a heart attack than vocalists evading the extraordinary grounds set by first name legends like

Ella Billy and Sarah an establishing a distinctive style of her own is a daunting task yet he says

“Cecil McLore and Salvant has accomplished just that a mid-a-remarkable series of recordings and”

live shows she's created a unique vocal style and curatorial skills that make each new recording and event her latest recording with every breath I take is her most daring yet a traditional recording with an orchestra and a program of ballads yet Martin says that although rooted in the classics

self out always sounds in the moment they say into your daily life romance game

and in this heart of yours burned a flame the flame that flickered one day and died away due gallington sophisticated lady has been a classic for so long that it's often referred to as a warhorse yet when Cecil McLore and Salvant sings it she embues it with curiosity she's convinced that there are new aspects in the song to redeem and highlight her singing as a quest to find

and celebrate them all you really want that spirit of the inquiries what makes McLaren Salvant special and without peer even in an era of great young jazz vocalist like Samara Joy Veronica Swift and so me Cecil yes she's on a

first name basis with the jazz community has amazing range and astonishing technique but she

employs them purely in the investigation of a song send in the clowns is already a slow number but Cecil decelerates it to communicate all of the longing hope and dismay in the lyrics the emotions of a song are Cecil's focus on previous recording she's made songs by Stevie Wonder and Kate Bush her own with this style but on her new

take on the buddy johnson classic ever since the one I love's pincon

“answered the phone but the phone didn't ring”

I'm all confused about every little thing Cecil records with the Dutch metropolitan or cast under the direction of tools buckley the arrangements are by Canadian big band leader Darcy James argue with whom she created an oratorial called Ogress that is being made into a film one of the most remarkable aspects of the

recording demonstrated there on ever since the one I love's pincon is how Cecil who

often reports interest duo or even solo settings makes our castor recording sound intimate as if more than a dozen musicians comfortably squeezed into your living room to get the feeling of life from jazz and cocktails Cecil's spirit of inquiry and formidable technique make her music contemporary and her talent as a storyteller makes it affecting Billy Strayhorn's lush life has been in the canon

of american songs for many decades yet McLaren Salvant's take feels new and fresh and makes the

wistful reflections of song much more potent it's music with an extraordinary past and an amazing

“present life is lonely again and don't leave last year everything seems so short”

now life is awful again a truffle of hearts could only be a boar Martin Johnson writes for the Wall Street Journal and downbeat he reviewed with every breath I take by Cecil McLaren Salvant tomorrow on fresh air will feature tanya's interview with riz Ahmed he's nominated for an Emmy for his performance in the prime video series beat he plays the British Pakistani actor auditioning to be the next James Bond Ahmed is also a writer and creator of the series

he started a film adaptation of Shakespeare's Hamlet and he'll explain why he believes the most famous speech in the English language has been misunderstood for centuries I hope you'll join us to keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews follow us on Instagram at NPR fresh air fresh air's executive producer is Sam Brigger our technical director in engineer is Audrey Bentham our engineer today is Adam Stenashewski our interviews and reviews are

produced and edited by Philis Myers and rebuild a noddle Lauren Crenzel Theresa Madden Monique Nazareth they a challenger season yukundi and abamin and niko Gonzalez-Wisler our digital media producer is Molly C.V. Nespar Roberta sure up directs the show our co-host is tanya Mosley I'm Terry Gross billionaire mark Cuban has stared into the belly of the beast of America's health care system I mean it's so bad you can go through a long list of really quality hospitals and they don't know

their costs so can medicare for all be a solution we take a hard look at the cost of the program along with us health care itself find this and hear more stories from the indicator from planet money on the NPR app at NPR there's a little something for everyone if you need advice for that big

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