Dolly Parton's America: Sad Ass Songs

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Dolly Parton right now taking this moment to look back and an incredible songwriter musician icon. You know, we've told stories here at the show about all kinds of topics and ideas and people.

Dolly has been sort of an interesting touch point for us in a lot of ways. Back in 2008 in the pop music episode we talked about the global impact of her music. We featured a song that she wrote for our sister show, more perfect about the 19th amendment. And as many of you know, our founder and original host Jada Rod produced a whole nine part series about her, her life, her music. And about her uniquely expansive appeal to people of all walks of life around the world. And one of the amazing things about Dolly Parton is how she was able to connect with so many millions of people in such an intimate and meaningful way.

“And I think we're all seeing that this week as stories come out about her and we reflect on her life. And as someone who's worked on those stories, it's impossible not to be sort of knocked on your ass by what she has done.”

And the example that she set as a person standing in the same world that we're all standing in and speaking out about it with a poetic clarity and honesty and resilience and dance and smile. So, as you might have guessed, I wanted to play you one of the episodes from the series, the first one in fact. But before I get to that, I want to share one small, let me be very telling example of the way Dolly has impacted this show and the people who work here, because we very recently hired a new producer on staff, Joe Strogas, and she told me a little story about Dolly that I want to share with you here.

How old are you in this picture? I was 12 and I have, I still have my braces. I have a little shock of green hair. Yeah, which I died with cool aid. So, given the story, you were in a band? No, no, no, I am. So, my voice teacher had a band and I recorded some songs with them, one of the songs being a cover of Joe Lean. And we had this recording, which my mom didn't even tell me, but she must have found like Dolly's foundation or team online where you can just send fan mail. And she mailed them or emailed them a link to my cover, and must have said something like, "My 12-year-old daughter's such a big fan of you. Here's her kind of feeling."

So your mom sends off a link. Send it behind my back, and then we get this huge piece of mail a few months later, and one of those big orange envelopes opened it up, and there's this autographed photo of Dolly Parton.

She's wearing this awesome green outfit, her boobs look amazing. I don't think I can say that on here.

And like, it's so funny to receive that as a 12-year-old, too, because I'm like in this pure awkward phase, and she looks like an icon and a diva. She is an icon and a diva. It's like hearing, it's like getting a letter from a god or god.

“And that's, that's honestly what it felt like, and so then I read the letter and meet.”

So you get a picture, a signed picture, and a letter. And a letter, I get a letter from her. Do you read, can you read me the letter? Okay, so in her letter, October 13th 2014, she says, "Dear canon," that was my stage name at the time. Dear canon, thanks for sending me your version of Jolene. You are awfully young to be singing a song like that, but your rendition is beautiful and original.

From the information, it sounds as if you also have a great soft heart.

“I wish you the very best, keep chasing those dreams. One day, our paths will cross.”

Love, and then she signs it. Dolly.

Yeah. Yeah. That's so amazing.

Oh my god, I love it. It was so special to me. It was so beyond special, and... I just think, I mean, I don't know what you were like as a 12-year-old, but just got to be something about that little, the way your sense of self is influx at that age. And then it can go so many different directions, and then it's so sensitive to the world around it,

and to what other people have to say, and what other people might think, or how other people see you, or especially to put yourself on stage and use your voice to do something in the world,

feels honestly sort of hard to... Yeah. I mean, it just feels like it could set you on a completely different emotional, spiritual cognitive trajectory as a teenager than if you hadn't gotten it.

“I think it was one of those things was too big to process.”

I mean, it made sense to me. The more I learned about her, it made sense that she... is the type of person that would take 10 minutes out of her day to listen to some random 12-year-old cover one of her songs. It just everything aligned with that idea that she was... She was the type of person that really felt she wasn't above anyone, even though she had this gift. She... She would take the time for anyone. That was clear.

That's beautiful.

So, as I said, I'm going to play for you the first episode of the series of "Dolly Partons America,"

which was hosted by our very own "Jaddam Rod," reported and produced by Shima Oliai, is called "Sad Assongs." What is "Dolly Partons America?" Well, "Dolly Partons America" would be the same as "Dolly Partons" which is "Dolly Partons World." Hey, I'm "Jaddam Rod."

Let me explain how I got here to a podcast about "Dolly Partons."

“I grew up in Tennessee, which means I grew up in...”

"Dolly Partons World." "Dolly's World." She was everywhere. She was looking down at you from Billboard. It's coming out of car radio. She was on commercials. She just... ...infused the air. So, as a consequence, I didn't really think about her a lot.

It's a little bit like that joke. One fish says to another fish. "How's the water today?" And the other fish says, "What's water?"

I was that second fish. She'd created this world.

And I was just swimming through it. But then... A few things happened. In 2016, I'm living in New York. "Dolly is on tour."

And she comes and does a stadium show here in Flushing Queens. "Here we come again." And just the level of excitement of people around me was like... ...otherworldly. Everybody around me was like...

"Dolly Parton is a goddess."

She's a saint. "To me, Dolly's a superstar brings her sail to the level of the people." I was like, "Whoa, I missed this." So, I was sitting in my home office. I was on Twitter.

"Rider Sarah Smarsh told me that her woe moment came around the same time when she was in Austin, online watching people live tweet that same dolly show." The people who were tweeting were all women. And one woman in particular, she said, "That majestic bit's just started playing a goddamn pan flute."

[laughs] "That's the best tweet."

“Pan flute was in all caps, which seemed important.”

In all this was happening, the pan flute, the tweeting, the touring. It exactly the moment when the 2016 election was turning very ugly. "The racist sexes, homophobic, xenophobic." "How do you like to the FBI?" "And now you're running for prison."

Like, she took her right through all of that noise through the general election and beyond. And I kept bumping into people who had described the experience of being at a dolly show is like standing in an alternate vision of America in what was unfolding on the TV. "I remember just standing out in the lobby." And just people watching because it was the most diverse place I've ever been.

I was seeing multiracial audience view people wearing cowboy hats and boots. I was seeing people in drag, church ladies, lesbians, holding hands, little girls who were there with their families. "You had a whole audience of people who absolutely their philosophies were in opposition to each other. Coping, and everybody is polite to each other."

So that was one thing that caught my attention. That in this very divided moment, Dolly seems to maybe be a kind of unifier. And after doing a little poking around, the data does kind of bear this out. If you look at her global cue score, this is a measure of how well people think about your brand globally. What they do is they assemble a very diverse sample of people, they ask them a bunch of questions.

she is in the top 10 globally in terms of everybody's favorites.

“But she's almost number one when it comes to lack of negatives.”

If that makes any sense, like people have the least amount of negative things to say about Dolly Parton, then anyone besides maybe Adele. And by the way, this cue score data is fascinating. I haven't dug into it too much, so I can't claim to fully understand it. But beyond say, number 52, what?

Lady Gaga, number 41, wild.

Anyhow, the second thing that happened that made this series possible, I'll be honest with you guys,

was a strange twist of fate. Dolly Parton suffered a few minor injuries in a car crash. The accident happened just after noon in Nashville on Monday. 2013, Dolly gets into a minor car accident, ends up at Vanderbilt Hospital, and one of the people who ends up giving her medical advice is my dad.

And they became friends. She shared this with me by the way, I'm totally fine with me sharing it. But it was very unexpected. My dad is not a doctor to the stars kind of person. He's just a Lebanese guy in Tennessee, but they were friends suddenly.

And so when I started getting curious about Dolly as maybe the subject of a story, I was like, you know what, dad? I need you to introduce me. And he did. I sat down to talk with her to ask her about this Dolly moment, how she thinks about it.

“Does she consider herself the grand unifier? Does that include everyone?”

Well, all these questions, I thought maybe I would get a story out of it or two. But what ended up happening this simply talking with her about her life, and talking with people about her, I fell into so many different rabbit holes. Perfound questions of America kind of rabbit holes. And I was like, you know what?

I think we got to make nine. We're going to take nine trips into the Dollyverse. This is Dolly Part in America. I'm Chad Abumrod. Let's start. [music playing]

I first spoke to Dolly Part in November of 2017.

My chair squeaking. It's just squeaky. Oh, I know the squeaky chair gets the grace, but we don't have time for a little job this day. We got a show to do.

We sat down in a studio in Nashville in a squeaky chair. In front of a mic that unfortunately had a little bit of a buzz in it. [music playing] Dolly had just come off of her pure and simple tour. She captured the hearts of generations.

That was the tour where she famously played the Pan Flute. Yeah, just for show. [music playing] I'm not great at any of it, but I can make a good show. Okay.

That's good. Better take up the jewels for a humor-miss-up-lug-and-take.

“I'd heard you play a 20-something instrument, does that right?”

Oh, I play Adam. Okay. I don't play any of them. Well, they get dark in my best one. But I play a lot of mountains, too.

[music playing] Dolly's humor. [music playing] A lot of heart. [music playing]

Banjo that coaster. And you play wind, too, you play beat. Well, that's the pinnuous, so we do a little bit of an Appalachian thing that we just a little would win,

but it's just the mountain sound. It's not like something you'd learn or play in an orchestra. It's just got that old mountain sound. Gotcha. [music playing]

Yeah, anyhow. Well, you know what I mean?

You just ask and I always tell it.

Okay. As I know it, or as I feel it, or what I want you to hear. [laughs] So, it started to start the interview

by playing your some stuff of hers. I'd love to play some of your early stuff. Okay. This one, just tell me what comes to mind when you hear it. [music playing]

[music playing] Wow. [laughs] What is that first line? Oh, being born was worth the sake I ever made.

The doctor didn't... Spank me, he just slapped me in the face. [laughs] Well, as a writer, you want to come up with all those. You want to come up with a really good line.

If you're really good, so great. Where does that come from? That was really, really early on in those early days. Oh, I used to write a lot of sad ice songs. [music playing]

Let me explain the reason I wanted to start with the sad ice songs. Growing up in the early '80s, I mean, one of my main associations with Dolly Before this project was that she was sort of a punchline.

Or like, she was her own punchline. You know, like, I remember she would go on Leno or Letterman. You look terrific. And upstairs earlier today, we were discussing your weight. They talk about her weight for a little while.

They didn't talk about how she looks. And then inevitably...

People are always asking if they're real and...

Oh, I know I wouldn't be there. They start talking about her breasts. They would give a body years paid to be under their church. They'd chuck about her breasts, but then she would make it even better joke about her breasts.

“Do you know what's worse than a giraffe with a sore throat?”

And there's no odd. And the answer is, "Dolly part, with a chest coat." [laughter] Here's another example. The headline on the other major news story today,

to which we intended about some time, is very simple. Hello, Dolly. Yes. The first cloned sheep was known as Dolly the sheep. This is Helen Morales, author of the book Pilgrimage to Dollywood.

Scientists managed to clone a cell. A single memory cell from a six-year-old youth. Well, and that cell was from a memory gland. So, these men thought it'd be a good idea. I thought it would be a good idea to call a Dolly after Dolly parting.

It's a cool it Dolly. I don't think I need to explain any more than that. But the stinging that in that story is uncharacteristically Dolly Parton. Is that when she heard about this, she invited the sheep when it had served its scientific purpose to come and live at Dollywood.

So, when you go on these shows and they make a joke about you and you double the joke, what is that? Pardon me things. Pardon me loves that. Pardon me things.

When you just tell these people, like, "Come on, I've written 5,000 songs. Asked me about my songs." So, I don't know. I have two thoughts on it. Well, when I go out with my kids hanging out,

show on them, pushing them out there, and not expect somebody to make some kind of a comment on it. And I know what they're thinking. So, I'd rather say it before they do. And then we get that off our chest, so to speak, right up front.

That's a good pun, by the way. Yeah, no, I've said it before. But I really do, like, I just think, "Well, this is how I look. Of course you're going to notice it." So, I do that too for the public.

I mean, it's like a little comedy thing. In that last sentence, by the way, Dollywood was actually referencing something she'd once told Barbara Walters, like, years ago.

Show business is a money-making joke, and I've just always liked Tom Jobs.

But do you ever feel that you're a joke? But people make fun of you. Oh, I know they make fun of me. But actually, all these years, the people, you know, haven't just thought the joke was on me,

but it's actually been on the public.

“So, yeah, growing up, and I think I speak for many people”

of my generation when I say this. At least many men. Dollywood was seen as this kind of joke maker. This cloud of jokes always swirling around her. You know, jokes people would make about her,

that you would make about herself, maybe on the public. I don't know, but her persona was so big that often is the only thing that got noticed. But then, I'll be honest, one of the first bits of guidance that we got, as we were embarking on this series,

and by we, I mean, myself and producer Shima Oliai, is Shima was talking with writer Helen Morales, who you heard earlier.

Helen was basically telling Shima,

"Look, you can talk about the persona and the jokes." But it would be a pity if somewhere in your series, there was something about her songwriting. The only thing I would say is, treat her lyrics seriously,

in a way that Johnny Cashins had written about his lyrics, "Hang Williams has been taken seriously, but Dolly Parton hasn't." Which brings us back to? I used to write a lot of sad songs.

That's what was really surprising. There's some darkness in those early songs. Well, you as a songwriter,

“and so you gotta remember, too, that's how I grew up.”

Now, hardcore Dolly fans will know this, but Dolly's biography goes back all the way to 1967, and the songs on those first four albums. It's an ocean of pain. Those songs, which many people don't know about,

they're not the ones that have made the charts. They provide an insistent witnessing of women's lives. That's how Helomer Alice puts it. Women being treated really badly by men. Let me just play you another one.

Do you remember this one?

That was actually a song I wrote.

“That was based on something that really happened in our family.”

Really? Yes, I need help, but nothing's come. I have an idea. I love this man, and he just drove her crazy. What do you do?

Cheaton and all that put her in an insect. Well, I can't say who. No, no, no, I don't need to do that. But I can't call names. But it was a relative, and she would beg her.

She would beg in her daddy trying to get a message to her daddy to come and get her out. Wait, so-- That her husband had put her in there. So he was cheating on her, and then what happened? Well, she had an girlfriend out.

So he just called and had her put away. This is something, by the way, that if you Google it, you will fall down a rabbit hole. Well, into the 20th century, this was a common thing.

“Husbands would commit their wives for things like, quote,”

nagging, excitement, disagreeing with their husbands' religious beliefs. So he wanted her out of his life. Wow. So that's, you just, I grew up with that. And I was very, you know, impressionable.

Another theme that is impossible to miss from Dali's sad-ass song period is, well, this next song pretty much captures it. This is a song that she wrote in 1967 called The Bridge. ♪ The bridge ♪ ♪ So high ♪

♪ The bridge ♪ ♪ So tall ♪ ♪ Here is where it started ♪ ♪ On the bridge ♪ It tells the story of a woman falling in love with a man.

♪ Big and yellow ♪

They have their first kiss under the full moon on a bridge.

He gets her pregnant and he bolts. And month later, as she's pregnant, she returns to that bridge. ♪ Tonight ♪ ♪ What standing on the bridge ♪ ♪ My heart is beating wild ♪

“♪ To think that you could leave me here ♪”

♪ With her unborn child ♪ ♪ My feet are moving slowly ♪ ♪ Closer to the edge ♪ ♪ Here is where it started ♪ ♪ And here is where I live ♪

Damn that ending. A couple of your songs in this period deal with suicide. Is that something that you've thought about ever? Yeah, years ago, I don't think I got to that place, but I understood exactly how people do.

I was, this was back in the, oh, I don't know, many years ago. Early eighties, I think. She was in her late thirties at this point. She just had a movie, which caused her a ton of stress. And she was having health problems.

I got overweight. I was going through the change of life. I was having a lot of female problems. I had been going through a whole lot of family. I just, the stress with a heartache.

You know, there was just several things going on at that time. And I was just broken down. You know, I really was having some serious conversations with God during that time. Well, with this conversation. Well, I just said things like, look, this is just ridiculous.

I am not happy arguing about what, you know, why we can't, when they say you shouldn't commit suicide, because that's a sin you can't get forgiven for, but then it was just all everything was just confusing to me. And I was just angry and I was hurt and I was unhappy.

And so I just said, you're going to have to give me some answers. Or I'm getting out of here. And then we'll both deal with it. How close did you get when you-- I don't know.

I don't know how close I got. She says there was a moment sort of at the low point when she was sitting on her bed. And her dog jumped up on the bed. I felt like a sign. My little dog popped out at that time.

He jumped up on the bed. About the time I was right in my, you know, so God, G-O-D, D-O-G, G-O-D. Dog, God, spell backwards.

I always thought, you know, that might have been the very thing that--

You were right in your suicide note or-- I was thinking about it all. Well, he said heartache. I mean, was it what was the heartache? Well, it was personal.

Fair enough. We started talking about how a lot of her early songs are about women losing children. I never lost a baby. I've never been pregnant in my life.

But I've seen a lot of people that have had to go through that. I've seen it. I've seen the, you know, like I always say,

The kind of get married and have a lot of kids.

And the kind of stuff they single and have a lot of kids. But I would also write, but I would also write things about people's lives and topics that I knew that matter. I was writing about abortion.

I was writing about adoption. I was writing about all sorts of things. Back before it was when I even wrote a song called "Down From Dover" about a girl that got pregnant and got sent away from home because she was pregnant because they wouldn't accept it.

“I know this dress somewhere and doesn't have the secret I have tried concealing.”

The song is written from the perspective of a young teenager who's pregnant trying to conceal it and waiting for her manager return. If he comes back in time, she basically won't be shamed by her community. But of course... My body aches the time is here.

It's lonely in this place where I'm alive. She doesn't. She's ostracized from her family. And then the baby's born. Our baby has been born, but something's wrong. It's much too steal.

I ain't no cry. And the baby died. Stillborn.

I guess in some strange ways she knew she'd never have a father's arms to hold her.

And dying was her way of telling me he wasn't coming down from door. And so she felt like that God had done her a favor. God had taken the baby back. In my mind, the baby was better off back with God than it would have been with me. And they wouldn't play it on the radio back at that time.

It's one of my best songs ever. They wouldn't play it on the radio. They wouldn't play it on the radio, and not because kid died. But because she got pregnant. Because it was a note that that time.

See, that was when I first wrote that. That was in my early days of my career. And I wanted to put it out as a single. And RCA wouldn't do it. Keep in mind, this song was written five years before Rovey Wade.

But I suggest it's a dolly that maybe one of the reasons RCA didn't want to put it out. Is it it's just too dark?

“Well, you as a songwriter, and see you got to remember, too.”

That's how I grew up. All those old mountain songs and all those old songs from the old world. All those old English Irish Scottish welts balance about the Knoxville girl. Getting killed and thrown in the Knoxville river. And I was very, you know, impressionable.

Okay, okay, okay. Let me just take a digression here because that song, the dolly just mentioned, sent me down another rabbit hole. In the review, I didn't catch it when she said. The Knoxville girl getting killed and thrown in the Knoxville river.

But listening back, I was like, wait, what? A Knoxville girl thrown in a river? It turns out this is a very old Appalachian ballad that is sung from the perspective of a man who goes to meet his young wife or girlfriend, I guess. And they're taking a walk along the river. And then all of a sudden.

Picks up a stick, beats her. She begs for mercy. This is the song. She begs for mercy, but he keeps beating over the stick to his unconscious. And then...

Drags are by her hair. And then he throws her in the river.

“I was like, wait, this is what she was talking about?”

I grew up with that. What is this twisted song? Who's the girl? Why does the guy murder her? So I ended up calling this journalist.

Can I speak to Paul, please? You're doing so hard, yeah. His name is Paul Slade. He's a music writer based in London. And he recently wrote a book all about this.

He's called Unprepared to Die, which looks at the real murder stories behind Knoxville Girl and a range of other American murder ballots. First thing you told me is that there are tons of these songs. Stap her with my name. So many.

Almost always about a man.

I shot her through the head. Killing a woman, often his wife, by shooting her or... Drowning her, that's a big one. But with a Knoxville Girl song, what Paul did was he traced it back. From East Tennessee, where Dolly would have heard it back to England.

We can't be precisely sure about that.

The song was originally called the Bloody Miller. So I went looking for surviving copies of the Bloody Miller's Ballad Sheet. Now, obviously, there are no original recordings of the song. But he did manage to find a copy of the Sheet music from the original printing 330 years ago.

And at the top of that Sheet music, there was like a little intro. And says this. A true unjust account of one Francis Cooper of Hogstone near Schroesbury, who kept company with one Anne Nichols for the space of two years. And being urged by her father to marry her,

was wickedly unbably murdered her. Oh, wow. So it lays it all out right there. Well, yes.

We've got the name of the killer.

His victim. And we've got a location, which is Schroesbury. Paul goes to Schroesbury digs around in the archives. Finds a copy of a diary from a shoekeeper at the time. Confirms that yes.

There was a murder that happened right at the time that the song was written. He visits the grave of the murder victim. Confirms that yes. She was a real person. He checks the burial records to confirm that yes.

Her death was actually very violent. And it was the age old story. The woman and Nichols was pregnant. And the guy, Francis Cooper. He's got this girl pregnant.

And he doesn't want to marry her. Though that is why he's killed. As for how it ended up in a song, Paul says what likely happened is that this guy, Francis Cooper, the killer, gets caught. And on the day of his execution, a songwriter showed up to witness the hanging.

And then immediately documented it in song, which was a common practice at the time. Very often the sheets themselves were actually sold at public hanging. While the condemned man was still swinging. There'd be people wandering around selling ballad sheets, telling the story of that particular crime. So it really was like almost journalism.

Yeah, yeah, that's a big part of it.

“Are these songs usually sung from the perspective of the murderer?”

Yeah, it's much more common to tell them in the words of the murderer. Paul says these songs were actually pretty big business. Songwriters would go to the hangings and then travel from town to town singing the songs from money. They would change the name of the song to match the town that they were in. And that's probably what happened.

At some point, one of the songwriters hopped on a boat came to East Tennessee, changed the song to Knoxville girl. And that was the song that got sung to Little Dolly Parton on her porch. Perhaps one way to see Dolly's early sat-ass song's period. Is it she was taking these songs that she'd heard as a girl? You know, these pulpy ballads of men brutally killing nameless women,

sung almost always from the perspective of the men.

And she was flipping it. So that you finally heard from the victim. Now Dolly was not the only person to do this to sink from the victim's point of view. When we spoke with longtime journalism historian Robert Orman, he told us you got to add that caveat.

It's not that she's the only one that she's better than anybody else. He said she just had a knack for imagining lives that weren't being seen.

“Like what's it like to be that woman at the bottom of the river?”

Let me tell her story. There are a few finer songwriters male or female. My new she's writing all these songs when she's 21. I started singing, mom said, "I'm a squall and I'm a squall and I'm a squall and I'm a squall." But I started singing in church, my grandfather was preacher.

And that started singing in church when I was all sort of far back back to remember. I would imagine five six years old. I believe this is the earliest recorded interview that exists of Dolly Parton. It's 1967 Nashville. She's been interviewed by a guy named Everett Corbin from the music city news.

I suppose that helped me if we could go back to the beginning. I was born, which was when I was born, okay? I was born on January the 19th and 19th, '46 in Savio County. It's Savio County in Savio County. It's from the time between Nuffleton and Savio County and Gettlinburg in Savio County.

And you might shorten it by saying, it's pretty over the great smoking mountains.

“She talks about her family, how there were 12 kids?”

The six girls and six boys. How they grew up in this little cabin in the mountains, the mountains worked the fields piled into the same bed tonight. What kind of songs do you prefer? I like families real strong, beautiful, sad, crying families.

I don't love sad songs, and I just try to about things that maybe I've seen happen or things that have been in the family.

It's this will be out, but it should be out there in this month.

But it's called Hello On Dollys.

“Now, there's no earth-shattering information on that tape,”

but what I take from it is just, wow, that's a very different human being. Coming to us from a very different world. That interview is 52 years ago in Dollys' part to still making music, so I think it would be a disservice to her to just focus on the sad-ass songs.

And one of the things you see over the next couple of decades is a really interesting shift. And for this, I want to bring back Helen Morales. Hi, Dad. If you recall, she was the one who wrote the book Pilgrimage to Dollywood.

She was the one who urges, don't focus on the boob jokes. Look at the lyrics. And one of the things that you do see, she says, if you look at the lyrics from the sad-ass songs of 67, 68, 69, 70, up until now, you see a progression that is the progression of women in America.

“Um, you know, Helloerex go from songs like The Only Way.”

The only way out is to walk over me. Just to prove that I love you, I'll crawl at your feet. And just to prove that I love you. Oh, I still can't believe that. That's a little BDSM, actually.

It will exactly. The pleasure is in being treated badly. And then she moves on to songs that really are calling men out for cheating on women for behaving badly. You don't know love from Shino Lord.

One of the great lyrics. You ain't worth assaulting my tears. Women are angry about what the place is. In leaving men or in being angry. And then in the final one, she moves on to songs where men are less important.

And it's just about women improving their lives.

And what's a good example of that, first?

Well, things like, you know, some of her most recent music changes. I know you've got a world of problems. And you think you can't do anything to yourself. And you think you can't do anything to solve them. But I'm here to tell you you can.

Something got you down. Got you chained and bound. We're afraid of you. If you've built a world, and know it needs to fall.

Let me shake it. Yes. Replace it. Open that you know. Turn the damn down, damn down.

Let me explain it. Yes. If you don't take the rain. It's going to stay the same. Nothing's going to change.

If you don't change it.

So the progression is basically from these very vivid portraits of misery, to fight songs,

to this third phase, which is our songs that maybe they're a little more self-helpy. They're certainly not just about men and women anymore. Oftentimes, there's no men involved. And sometimes you don't get the vivid detail of the saddest song. But what you get instead is a kind of relentless optimism.

A relentless hope. That you can't bring me down. You can joke about me all you want to, but I'm going to keep going. It's partly for this reason that Helen Morales refers to Dahlie's music in her book, as not just music, but as a toolkit for a living.

I mean, her song "Light of a Clear Blue Morning" has really helped me out of many a blue period. And what is it about that song? The lyrics just convey a sense of being very confident that things are not okay now, but they will be okay.

“Can you describe a moment or the time in your life where that song served you or helped you?”

That's pretty sure she'm all AI by the way. You want me to go back to my worst moments? Yes, please. It's very undolly part and light. That's very dally part and light.

So the weather was... I'm not sure I want to talk about that or not. I'm not going to give you a specific example.

I talk about when my sister was caught cheating at Oxford.

And I just played that song on a loop.

“I'm not sure that that's going to go down very well in the book.”

I'm not sure I want to talk about the two more ideas. I'd be happy to read some out of the book if you wanted a snapshot of where I used to lyrics. Do you mind? I mean, I don't mind if you want that. I'm happy to do that.

Which one would you like?

You mentioned your sister, maybe that one. Okay. It's true that one of the reasons Dolly part and matters so much to me is that her songs of underscored special moments or heightened episodes in my life.

“One snapshot is of a weekend in July 1998.”

Newspaper journalists are laying siege outside my mother's home. One of my younger sisters has been caught cheating in her final exams at Oxford University. And because she is also president-elect of the student union on a free education for all ticket, the press is out for blood. My mother is not taking it well and insists that this scandal will devastate my brother, her youngest child. My brother is sitting at the computer enthusiastically looking at famous alleged exam cheats and announcing them in thrills, tones.

Jeffrey Archer. We open the newspapers. One has a photo of our mum's house which in reality is a nice three-bedroom Victorian terrace house. The photo has the adjoining houses edited out so that it looks like a mansion. The spin in the accompanying article is how the mighty have fallen.

The photograph in the next paper makes a house look like a slum. The spin in of this article is look what happens when you let Greek separate immigrants into the country. Richard Branson yells my brother, "It's not a calm summer. My mother develops agrofobia. I put light of a clear blue morning on my stereo and wear out the cassette tape, playing it over and over." I can't see in the light of a clear blue morning.

Morning everything's gonna be all right. It's going to be all right. It's going to be all right. Oh my god, that sounds horrible. Oh yeah, it was, it was sometimes having a song.

That you can play over and over is really helpful. Coming up, we meet someone who not only listen to the sad-ass songs but live them and turned out to be a real life. Dolly doppelganger. And why see, listen wherever you get your podcast. You know, when beautiful thing that happened to me in Nashville is one of my Uber drivers, gave me a charger from my phone portable.

And she had a Wonder Woman sticker on it and it was just a beautiful moment. They take it. I'm like, "Really? No!" She's like, "It's yours." Wow, that's Dolly parts of America right there. Yeah. Okay, this is Dolly parts of America. I'm John Abundron here with Producer Shima Oliai,

where at the beginning of a nine-part series where we dive into the life and music of the one and only Dolly Parton. What can she tell us about America? That's sort of the question. And then we started this episode by saying that a lot of people of my generation men, mostly, tended to see Dolly Parton one way.

What I would give about a year's paid a peek under there. In one of the reasons I wanted to do this series, and by the way, Shima is going to help me narrow it this segment.

“Hey, hello. So one of the reasons why I wanted to do this wouldn't be you should just take it from here.”

Well, yeah, one of the big things that first got us thinking about Dolly Parton to begin with is that in the last couple of years,

to mean something much deeper and much more hopeful for a new generation of women. I think Dolly Parton is an angel. I'm not going to say she's God, but she's definitely a haven't sent,

“and I think that she makes the world a better place.”

She just exudes amazingness. We don't deserve her. Is that, I don't even know if that's a word. Dolly for me is like when I think of her, I feel more confident in myself. She's like the epitome of female power.

Because everything, she's the greatest person on earth. I truly think that she is one of the most underrated feminist icons of our time. So, one of the big questions for us was, how do we even start to explain this shift? Well, I have a little bit of a theory. This is Sarah Smarsh. She wrote a book called Heartland, and she's written a lot about Dolly, a lot about class.

And just to add, Sarah has been kind of a spirit guide for us in our journeys into the Dolly verse. Definitely.

My vague theory is that she was like the OG third wave feminist.

Let me give some context to that. Please. First wave feminism. When people talk about that, they usually mean the script of women in the 1800s and early 1900s who are fighting for their rights.

Second wave feminism. Welcome to the new wave of feminism. Welcome to each other. Welcome home. This was sort of Dolly's era.

It was the feminism of the 1970s and '80s. It's where you had a lot of women start rejecting traditional roles and built the workplace in the home. That's a moment when women who had her business ambitions were being encouraged to sort of downplay their own quote unquote femininity.

You don't need to wear makeup. You can cut your hair short. But on the pants.

And Sarah says that during the second wave, Dolly is one of the first

to represent the future third wave. She went like in the opposite direction. It was like, you have a problem with my tips. Then here they are hanging out. I did hanging out, pushing them out there.

Course applied it up. And you can deal with it while I make you my employee. And there is something about that that is sort of like,

“I think a more kind of millennial spirit of approach to feminism.”

One of the women I spoke to red sagalo talked about it this way. There's this idea of what feminists are supposed to look like. They're supposed to not shave. They're supposed to burn their bras and all this bullshit. And it's like, no, feminism can be whatever the f*** it is.

You want it to be as a woman. You want to have big hair and big boobs and wear rhinestones. Then do it. She, I believe, was the pioneer on that one. Sort of like, you know, the way that the way that evolution happens.

There's at any given moment. There's like some deviation. And then it takes, it takes time for that to swell and natural selection to take place.

Like, among a field of second generation flowers,

she was like a third generation spirit. The way that Sarah tells it, Dolly was kind of like the mutation. One of the first special flowers in this field. And then her flower power spread to all the other flowers

until the entire field was filled with third wave Dolly flowers. Yeah, brings us to present day. Sarah was curious to see what Dolly thought of this idea. So in one of our conversations, I asked her. Do you think of yourself as a feminist?

No, I do not. She shot that right down.

“I think of myself as a woman in business.”

I love men. And I really, 'cause I have a dad. I have all those brothers. All my uncles are loved. My grandfather's are loved.

And I relate to them. And I write a lot of songs about women because I am a woman. Or I just write songs that women experience. But I write a lot of songs for men.

In fact, I've had hit songs. By me and I write songs about my dad. The dinner bucket song. Every time I hear a sound of a train coming down real old track. Here a big jet plane flying high.

I like to throw my hammer down. Right off to some distant town. Not even take the time. Say goodbye. But I got to think about my babies.

About my wife, my old ladies. And about how much she had missed me. If I was gone. So I write about working men. I write bad gamblers.

I write about. But I write songs for men. And about men in their feelings too. 'Cause I know how they feel. I look like a woman.

But I think like a man. But I think like a woman too. But the idea of of of Dolly Parton, the feminist.

That word film.

I guess when you say feminist.

It's just when I think at the time. Like everybody goes to extreme sometimes. I do not like extreme things. I do believe in making a point and making it well. I don't believe in crucifying a whole group.

Just because a few people have made mistakes. To me when you say just the word feminist is like, I hate all men. So did she say no or she just like was evasive? No, she like, recoiled.

Like which surprised me. You know, I thought I don't know. It was like I dropped a word bomb in the room. Well, I think she knows. Of course, I can't speculate.

“But I think that let me put it through my own experience.”

I had a very complicated relationship to the term feminist when I was a teenager in rural Kansas. Fox News wasn't kind of a new phenomenon in the 90s. Feminists now apparently stand for nothing. We didn't have cable news in our farmhouse.

But families are disintegrating. Men are disconnected. You know, like the culture was starting to shed. The big picture here is women do earn less in America. Because they choose to.

The sort of backlash that is full-throated now was like burgeoning when I was a teenager. And I could feel it. And I, I had absorbed the just using the word feminism. It had some kind of, I don't know.

It felt vaguely negative and I was hesitant about the term. So you would, you would now identify the feminist. Of course. Does it bother you a tiny bit that she won't? Yeah, but I want to say like the part of me that's pissed off

is the part of me that got to go to college.

“The thing to know about Sarah is that she grew up poor.”

Forty miles outside of Wichita, Kansas. She said one of her chores growing up was quote unquote, "slop in the hogs."

She ultimately was able to scrape together enough money from four jobs

in the scholarship to enter the University of Kansas. Which was just a few hours up the road. But she told us that you can't overstate how far those two worlds feel from each other. The world she came from, of farmers and laborers,

who mistrust the systems that have ultimately failed them, and the world of people who live in cities who run those systems. And she says certain words, "They have a different life in those two worlds." But there are women who, as we speak, are living the tenets of feminism more strongly and in a more badass manner than women who wear the word on a t-shirt

and march in the marches. And yet... What do you think of the word even? No. I don't think that, no.

No. Would not take that term on themselves. Maybe example of a grandma.

“I think that men and women should be paid equally.”

There's just a lot of things. No. But I don't necessarily agree with. And you're going to ask me how it is, and I can't tell you. But we just introduced yourself to me who you are.

I'm grandma, fatty. In talking with Sarah about... This is distance and about dolly. She kept bringing up her grandma. And she's like, "If you met my grandma, you'd know what I mean."

I'm a little nervous. Oh yeah. No, that's great. This is great.

You're first time being interviewed by any other than me.

I believe. She totally didn't want to be interviewed. She did, I think, as a favorite of Sarah. And mostly because she loves dolly. She seems like an angel.

In my case, Betty was born just a few months before dolly pardon. Oh, I slower than 45. So... What is this? Well, that's an oldie.

She showed us pictures of her from 1967. The same year that dolly did that interview you heard earlier. "I just made up my mind. I thought I wanted to do it. I didn't find it.

I've made it my mind." "Not me." "And that's your beehive." And in the pictures... So you look just like dolly.

My hair did. Oh my God. That's... It's identical. Betty told us she was a really rebellious kid going up.

She skipped school a lot. She got into fights. Mostly with rich kids who bullied her in her cousins. Oh, yeah. I mean, that's the way that I dealt with things back then.

You know, somebody gave me a crap. You know, you shoot it right back. You didn't walk away. She told us about this one time when she was 17. And she was at home.

He was strong, of course.

They had broken up. And he came to the house one night. And he was drinking. Drunk. And I was...

I had already gone to bed. I could hear him in there arguing. And he called my mother a pig. And I got out of the bed.

“And I went in there and said don't call my mother a pig.”

Ever. And I went back to the bedroom. And then they continued arguing.

And I heard him call her a pig again.

And I got up. And then I learned said this is it. I picked up a cast iron skillet that had grease in it. And I blamed him upside the head and knocked him down. But he got up.

And he staggered to the front porch. And then he fell off the porch. And that's how it happened. Because he called my mother a pig. And I told him not to do that.

Wow. That's... That's amazing. You're left the brings me sunshine. Every day is printed.

“My grandma grew up working on factory floors,”

waiting tables and diners on interstates and highways. And so, you know, she didn't take any lip. Sarah says that her grandma was the person that all the women in the family would come to when they had problems. Nonetheless, by the time Betty was 30 years old, she'd been married seven times.

Most of those husbands had beaten her a booster. But one had even shorter in the shoulder. Sarah told us about this one time when they were together. And her grandma kind of popped her jaw in and out. Like clicked her jaw.

And then said matter of faculty. That was a gift from one of my sweet hearts. Hmm. You know, it's heartbreaking to me to think about her and during something like that.

But I also kind of thought like, what a bad bitch. You know. Just far as, you know, ever letting on, like, just by an inch that she had been hurt or had any sense of victimhood is like, no. She said that was just totally taboo.

But Sarah says there was always this one moment where she'd get to see what was happening

underneath. It was when they'd be driving to the groceries and her grandma would pop in a cassette tape of Dolly Parton's "Coat of Many Colors." I'd just like never saw this woman crack. And that song "Damn."

Good play. Sure. We sat and listened to it in the living room. "Coat of Many Colors" is of course a fount. A little girl who is so proud of this coat that her mother shows for her

from scraps. That's the only way that she's going to have warmth in the winter. She's proud of the coat. It's beautiful to her and when she enters, school she is shamed for it.

It's about poverty, yes. But it's also about a little girl who is being told to be ashamed and she's saying I refuse to be ashamed. "My mother made for me, made just for me." Thanks.

Sorry guys. You don't bring back so many memories. "Tucked out. What is it? What do you think of?" I think about my grandma so soon. I'm showing my dresses and kids making fun of it.

“And I think that's why I became such a badass because it's hurtful”

when people make fun of you. And my way to react was not to hell out of them. You're crying too. It's my story. When Grandma Betty would listen to dolly's music,

dolly was singing the song. She didn't have the space in her life to sing. "It's Hayley now. Is it Hayley?"

"It's sunny and it's Hayley."

“"That means we're a month away from tornado season."”

And then towards the end of the interview, she surprised us and told us something else. She said that after her seventh husband died, Arnie, he was the one guy who treated her well by the way. After he died, she decided to sell the farm.

And then as she's packing up our stuff, moving all the things out. "And we had 50 gallon barrels that we burnt trash. I think it all backed up." And I took my nine lungs and my tight fitting brawls

and them in the barrel and they were matched. She burned her brawls. "I really did." "That's legit." "Time it isn't that."

"Yeah." "That's by the book." "Yeah." "That's what it was." "Hi, Charlie."

"I had a little Charlie."

"Cathas." Charlie is Sarah's cat and she sort of walked in to be like, "Okay, y'all, interviews over now." And as we were walking away, I kept thinking,

“clearly the lenses we have to see each other.”

The words that we used to describe each other. They're just not good enough. "And maybe dolly moves in that space with those words fail." "My friends called me the dolly mama." "And I'm gonna ride a whole book on just saying,

and just how to." By the way, after our cancer adventure, we went back to dolly one more time. And I took that question that I asked her and reframed it in light of something that we had seen

and that Sarah's march had told us that there are feminists in theory. But there are also the feminist in practice. "That's me." "That's me."

"That's me." "That's me."

"That's about how you live."

"Yes, that's a good way to say it." "That's a good way of saying it. I'll live it." "I work it." "And I think there's power for me." "I wish I could butterfly a rare end gentle day."

By the way, the idea that feminist burn their bras, total myth. "Didn't happen." "Never happened." "They almost did." "Yeah, they couldn't get the fire started, is that right?"

"No, it was they needed a permit to light the bra on fire and they didn't have the permit." "Really?"

“"And that's why they were like, oh, I guess we can't do that."”

"So they just threw the bras on the trash." "Never said it on fire." "Wow." "Gram, I bet he's the only one." "Excellent."

"I'm going to go burn bras right now." "Okay, I'm going to read the credits." "Dolly part in America was produced," "written and edited by me," "and she'm Oli."

"Brought to you by Osmodio," "that's OSM audio," "and WNYC studios." "We had production help from W Harry Fortuna," "and original music from Alex Overington."

"In huge thanks to the folks at Sony," "for allowing us to use some of dollies early music," "thanks also to the Everett Corbin collection at the Center for Pocket and Music." "Special thanks to Lynsaco, Dan and Azale, Kyle McLean," "Tree Se Hughes, Randy Schmidt, Pat Walters,

"Lulu Miller, Susie, Leptonburg, and Soren Wheeler," "and a very special thanks to my dad," "Nodgy." "And of course, thank you," "Jad Abund Rod, thank you, Dolly."

"There are eight more episodes of this series, "Dolly part in America." "You can find them all at DollyPartonsAmerica.com," "or wherever you get your podcasts." "I highly recommend listening to the whole thing."

"I'm Soren Wheeler," "and we'll be back next week with more radio lab." "Hi, I'm Eva," "and I'm from Brooklyn, New York," "and here are the staff credits."

"Radio lab is hosted by Loulo Miller and Latif Nasser." "Soren Wheeler is our executive editor," Sarah Sandback is our executive director. Our managing editor is Pat Walters. Dylan Keefe is our director of Sound Design.

Our staff includes Jeremy Bloom, W Harry Fortuna, David Gable, Maria Pazcutiades, Sindhu, Nanna Sambundam, Matt Kilti, Mona McGawker,

Annie McEwen, Alex Nison, Sarah Carrie, Natalia Ramirez, Joanna Strogots, Anisa Vizza, Arian Wack,

Molly Webster, and Jessica Young. With help from Gabby Santas and Maya Applebe Malamid, our fact-checkers are Nora Belblidia, Hillary Elkins, Rachel Gross, Diane Kelly, Emily Criker,

Natalie Middleton, and Sophie Simey. "Hi, I'm Aubrey, calling from Salt Lake City, Utah. Leadership support for radio apps, science programming,

is provided by the Simon Foundation and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundation support for radio lab