Dolly Parton

Fresh Air

This episode of Fresh Air honors the late Dolly Parton, who passed away at age 80. The show revisits a 2001 interview with Parton, where she reflects on her

Key takeaways

• Dolly Parton's music is deeply rooted in her childhood experiences in the Smoky Mountains and traditional Appalachian folk songs.
• She began writing songs as a child, inspired by personal stories and everyday life, including early compositions about her doll Tassel Top.

Main topics

• Dolly Parton's early life and upbringing in rural Tennessee
• Her musical roots in Appalachian and bluegrass traditions

Notable quotes

"I've always believed that a part of my magic, if there was any, was the fact that I look so artificial — but I am so totally real."

"Little sparrow, little sparrow, fly so high and feels no pain. Never trust the hearts of men who cry, leaving you."

Conclusion

Dolly Parton's legacy endures not only through her iconic songs but also through her authenticity, emotional

Transcript preview

Speaker 7 (0:00) This season on Planet Money Summer School, we have drilled for oil in Norway, we've smuggled products into North Korea, and now we make it to our seventh continent, Antarctica. Speaker 4 (0:10) That's right. Speak for me. Mr. Penguin, speak for me. That's another sound Speaker 7 (0:14) 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. Speaker 5 (0:23) 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 saxophonist Sonny Rollins 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. Speaker 1 (1:24) Someone to take comfort from long before I from his eyes could have rekindled and hold it. Speaker 5 (2:41) Dolly Parton was a singer, songwriter, actress, entrepreneur, and philanthropist. She was successful enough and had a big enough personality to start her own theme park, Dollywood. 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 to 5, and I Will Always Love You, which was later a huge hit for Whitney Houston. When I spoke with Dolly Parton in 2001, her recording career had recently returned to the music she grew up with. Her 1999 recording, The Grass is Blue, won 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. Speaker 1 (3:40) Little sparrow, little sparrow, fly so high and feels no pain. Never trust the hearts of men who cry, leaving you. Speaker 4 (5:16) That's Dolly Parton with the title track from her new CD, Little Sparrow. Dolly Parton, welcome to Fresh Air. Speaker 6 (5:22) Well, thank you. Ain't you glad we started out with something upbeat? Like a broken heart. Speaker 6 (5:28) 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 costs a lot to make me look as cheap. Ha ha! Speaker 6 (5:41) But anyway, thanks for having me on, too. I'm looking forward to spending some time with you. Speaker 4 (5:46) 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, as opposed to a more almost like show business version of country music. Speaker 2 (6:01) 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 Smoky Mountains. And this music is really so now, people are really into the simplicity of it. And so just for fun for myself, there was a poll in the bluegrass community of what person they'd like to hear most do a bluegrass album 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 Grass is Blue, the album just before this one, I said, well, let's just do a bluegrass album. And lo and behold, Speaker 6 (6:37) we Speaker 2 (6:37) 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-blown bluegrass album and try to just do exactly what we did with the others. So we wanted to expand it. So we did a little more mountain music. We added a little bit of flavors Speaker 6 (6:52) 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. Speaker 4 (7:03) Now, you were born in 1946 in a one-room cabin in the Smoky Mountains of East Tennessee. What was the music you heard as a child? Speaker 6 (7:11) Well, a lot of the stuff that we heard was that old porch-picking music, old songs brought back from Speaker 2 (7:17) England and Ireland, that old Appalachian music, and a lot of the stuff that people up in the mountains wrote. So my mother was... And all my mama's people used to always play and sing. Speaker 6 (7:27) Mama 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, Speaker 2 (7:35) by a lot of my own people. Speaker 4 (7:36) Who was most musical in your family? Speaker 2 (7:39) All of us. My mother was very musical, and my grandpa Jake, I think. who's a preacher, a Pentecostal preacher, that I wrote a song about many years ago called Daddy Was an Old-Time Preacher Man. I think he was a music teacher of sorts back there in the hills. There's 12 of us Speaker 6 (7:55) kids, six girls and six boys, and we all sing and write and play. It's just that I... I think I've taken it farther. I don't know Speaker 2 (8:02) 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 do just because they wanted to have a family and do other things. But there's a lot of talent in this family. Speaker 4 (8:16) Do you remember the first songs that really meant something to you? Speaker 2 (8:20) Yeah, the songs that... I used to hear my folks sing back home and stuff. Mama used to sing about, she used to tell stories from the Bible and sing a lot of those old-timey songs. But the stuff I used to hear was at church. One of my favorite songs of all time is If We Never Meet Again, This Side of Heaven. And my dad passed away a few weeks ago, and he always loved that song. Of course, I was way too emotional. I'm Speaker 4 (8:44) very sorry. Speaker 2 (8:45) Thank you very much. But I was too emotional Speaker 6 (8:47) to sing at Daddy's funeral. So, like, later, I'll... went up to the grave and just Speaker 2 (8:52) sung it for myself and for Daddy. So anyway, those are the kind of songs that I always loved. And I recorded If We Never Meet Again on an album once from Dollywood, a live album. That album was called... Heart songs, Speaker 6 (9:05) and they are heart songs. So I grew up just loving all those old folk songs of Speaker 2 (9:10) tragedy, like the Two Little Orphans and all that sort of stuff. And someday I hope, and possibly even for my next album, to do an album of a lot of those old mountain true folk songs. Speaker 4 (9:22) When did you start writing songs and realizing that you had an ear for that as well as for singing? Speaker 2 (9:28) 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 before you could write, before you could write it down, and she used to write it down. So actually, I've been doing it all my life, seriously and professionally, since I was 10. Do Speaker 4 (9:59) you remember any of the songs you wrote as a girl? Speaker 6 (10:02) Oh, I used to write songs about... Cobb dolls. I had this little Speaker 2 (10:07) Cobb doll, the first song I remember writing. Her name was Tassel Top. It was a little doll that Mama, Daddy had burned poker hole eyes in to make eyes. Mama had put the corn silk hair back on her and made a little dress for Speaker 6 (10:19) her, and her name was Tassel Top. And I did, I think I was five or six, you know, somewhere in there, seven. And it's like, little Speaker 2 (10:27) tiny tassel top, I love you an awful lot. Hope you never go away. I want you to stay, and so on and so on. So I just Speaker 6 (10:35) wrote Speaker 2 (10:35) all about her dress and all about her Speaker 6 (10:37) hair. So, yeah, I just wrote about everything that, you know, that come to mind. Speaker 4 (10:42) Were you writing about tragic love and heartbreak by the time you were 10? Speaker 6 (10:46) Yes, I was, as a matter of fact. I wrote a song. I can't remember exactly how it goes, but it was about a 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. And that makes an impression on a little child. So 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. Speaker 4 (11:11) And I wonder how it sounded with you as a girl singing these tragic songs. Speaker 6 (11:15) About the same as it does now. My voice ain't changed a lot. Sometimes people say my voice sounds like a little girl singing all these Lord awful songs. It's like this little sparrow and the silver dagger from the other one and tender lie from this one. It's like I love to sing all those sad songs. Speaker 4 (11:31) Rare is the singer who can sing as much as you have and not have it roughen their voice. Speaker 2 (11:38) Well, my voice is of a high pitch, so Speaker 6 (11:42) I guess... I don't think my voice will ever deepen or lower itself in any way. But it's one of those voices I hope that will last a long time because I hope to be singing even when I'm old. I hope to sit out on my own 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 Speaker 2 (12:10) we can play that if you want to after this. I wrote this song, and it really uses a lot of the old English style, like fly ye away from my window, fly ye as far, like the yees and the yees. It sounds old-timey. So I had recorded this song numerous times, but some of my songs I Speaker 6 (12:27) like so well, I think, well, they just seem to fit here and fit there. So it kind of lended itself to that Irish. feel. So it's one of my favorites. You want to play that? Speaker 4 (12:36) Absolutely. But before we do, tell us when you wrote it and where you were in your performing career at the time. Well, I Speaker 6 (12:43) wrote