Dolly Parton's America: Sad Ass Songs

Radiolab

Radiolab pays tribute to Dolly Parton with a re-release of the first episode from the 'Dolly Parton's America' series, exploring her evolution from a country music icon

Key takeaways

• Dolly Parton's early songs contain powerful narratives of women's suffering and resilience, challenging the perception of her as merely a sex symbol.

Main topics

• Dolly Parton's early songwriting ('sad ass songs')
• Appalachian murder ballads and their cultural legacy

Notable quotes

'You are awfully young to be singing a song like that, but your rendition is beautiful and original.' – Dolly Parton letter to a 12-year-old fan.

Conclusion

Dolly Parton's music, especially her early 'sad ass songs,' reveals a deep emotional and social

Transcript preview

Speaker 6 (0:01) Wait, Speaker 8 (0:02) you're listening? Okay. Okay. Alright. You're listening to Speaker 5 (0:10) Radiolab. Speaker 8 (0:11) Radiolab. From WNYC. Speaker 3 (0:17) Rewind. Speaker 8 (0:21) Hey, this is Radiolab. I'm Soren Wheeler. We here at the show, like so many other people out there, are thinking about Dolly Parton right now, taking this moment to look back at an incredible songwriter, musician, icon. You know, we've told stories here at the show about all kinds of topics and ideas and people, and Dolly has been sort of an interesting touchpoint 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, Jad Abumrad, 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. Speaker 8 (1:39) dance and smile. So as you might've 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, but maybe a 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. Speaker 8 (2:07) How old are you in this picture? I Speaker 1 (2:09) was 12. And I still have my braces. And you've got a little Speaker 8 (2:13) shock of green hair. Speaker 1 (2:14) Yeah, which I dyed with Kool-Aid. That's a great picture. So Speaker 8 (2:17) given the story, you were in a band? No, no, Speaker 1 (2:21) no. So my voice teacher had a band, and I recorded some songs with them. One of the songs being a cover of Jolene. Speaker 7 (2:32) Okay. Speaker 1 (2:33) 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. Speaker 8 (2:43) And Speaker 1 (2:44) she mailed them or emailed them a link to my cover. And must have said something like, my 12 year old daughter is such a big fan of you. Here's her cover. Speaker 8 (2:54) So Speaker 1 (2:54) your mom sends off a Speaker 8 (2:57) link. Speaker 1 (2:57) Sends it behind my back. And then we get this huge. piece of mail a few months later in one of those big orange envelopes open 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 Speaker 1 (3:22) 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 Speaker 8 (3:32) icon and a diva. It's like hearing, it's like getting a letter from a god or goddess. And Speaker 1 (3:37) that's honestly what it felt like. And so then I read the letter and let me. Speaker 8 (3:42) So you get a picture, a signed picture and a letter. Speaker 1 (3:45) And a letter. I get. a letter from her. Can Speaker 8 (3:48) you read? Can you read me the letter? Speaker 1 (3:50) 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. Speaker 8 (4:24) That's so amazing. Speaker 1 (4:25) Oh my God. I love it. It was so special to me. It was so beyond special. And Speaker 8 (4:32) I just think, I mean, I don't know what you were like as a 12 year old, but, um, there's just gotta be something about that little, that the, the way your sense of self is in flux in a, at that age and that it can go so many different directions and that 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 and then just sit back and wait to see how people react and to get that feels like the weight of it feels honestly sort of hard to yeah I mean yeah 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 Speaker 1 (5:26) 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 the type of person that really felt she wasn't above anyone, even though she had this gift. She would take the time for anyone. That was clear. Speaker 8 (6:02) That's beautiful. Speaker 8 (6:05) So, as I said, I'm going to play for you the first episode of the series of Dolly Parton's America, which was hosted by our very own Jad Abumrad, reported and produced by Ashima Olayai, and it's called Sad Ass Songs. Speaker 2 (6:19) What is Dolly Parton's America? Speaker 3 (6:23) Well, Dolly Parton's America would be the same as Dolly Parton's world. Speaker 2 (6:30) Hey, I'm Jad Abumrad. Let me explain how I got here to a podcast about Dolly Parton. I grew up in Tennessee. Which means I grew up in Dolly Speaker 3 (6:42) Parton's world. Speaker 2 (6:43) Dolly's world. She was everywhere. She was looking down at you from billboards, 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. Speaker 2 (7:14) But then a few things happened. 2016, I'm living in New York. Dolly is on tour. And she comes and does a stadium show here in Flushing, Queens. And just the level of excitement of people around me was like otherworldly. Speaker 2 (7:43) Everybody around me was like, Dolly Parton is a goddess. She's a saint. To me, Dolly is a superstar who brings Speaker 4 (7:50) herself to the level of the people. Speaker 2 (7:52) I was like, whoa, I missed this. So Speaker 4 (7:55) I was sitting in my home office. I was on Twitter. Speaker 2 (7:59) Writer Sarah Smarsh told me that her whoa moment came around the same time when she was in Austin, online, watching people live tweet. That same Dolly show. The Speaker 4 (8:08) people who were tweeting were all women, and one woman in particular. She said, that majestic bitch just started playing a goddamn pan flute. That's the best tweet. Pan flute was in all caps, which seemed important. Speaker 2 (8:26) And all this was happening, the pan flute, the tweeting, the touring, at exactly the moment when the 2016 election was turning very ugly. Speaker 6 (8:34) The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic. How do you lie to the FBI? And now you're running for president. Speaker 2 (8:43) Like she tore right through all of that noise, through the general election and beyond. And I kept bumping into people who would describe the experience of being at a Dolly show as like standing in an alternate. vision of America than what was unfolding on the TV. I Speaker 4 (8:57) remember just standing out in the lobby. Speaker 7 (9:03) and just people watching because it was the most diverse place I've ever been. I was seeing a multiracial audience, Speaker 5 (9:12) 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 Speaker 8 (9:25) had a whole audience of people who were absolutely there. philosophies were in opposition to each other co-mingling and everybody is polite to each other Speaker 2 (9:40) 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 Q 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 him a bunch of questions. And out of all of these different brands that are out there, all these different performers, 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 than anyone besides maybe Adele. And by the way, this Q score data is fascinating. I haven't dug into it too much, so I can't claim to fully understand it, but Beyonce, 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. Speaker 8 (10:49) Dolly Parton suffered a few minor injuries in a car crash. The accident happened just after noon in Nashville on Monday. Speaker 2 (10:57) 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, and was totally fine with me sharing it, but it was very unexpected. Speaker 2 (11:15) 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 Dali as maybe the subject of a story, I was like, you know what, Dad? I need you to introduce me. Speaker 2 (11:35) 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? A lot of these questions. I thought maybe I would get a story out of it or two. But what ended up happening is simply talking with her about her life and talking with people about her, I fell into so many different rabbit holes. Profound 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 Parton's America. I'm Chad Abumrad. Let's start. Speaker 2 (12:24) I first spoke to Dolly Parton in November of 2017. My Speaker 3 (12:28) chair's squeaking. It's the Speaker 6 (12:30) squeaky one, right? Speaker 3 (12:31) Oh, I know the squeaky chair gets the grease, but we don't have time for a lube job today. We got a show to do. Speaker 2 (12:37) 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. Speaker 2 (12:48) Dolly had just come off of her Pure and Simple tour. She captured Speaker 3 (12:52) the hearts of generations. That Speaker 2 (12:54) was the tour where she famously played the pan flute. Speaker 3 (12:57) Oh, yeah, just for show. I'm not great at any of it, but I can make a good show. Okay, that's good. Better take off the jewels before I hammer and mess up a good take. Speaker 2 (13:14) I had heard you play 20-something instruments. Is that right? Speaker 3 (13:16) Oh, I play Adam. Speaker 2 (13:18) I can't tell Speaker 3 (13:19) if I play any of them well. The guitar is my best one. But I play a lot of mountain instruments, too. Dalsimer. A lot of harp. Banjo, that kind of stuff. Speaker 2 (13:31) And you play wind, too. Speaker 3 (13:33) Well... That's the penny whistle. We do a little bit of an Appalachian thing that we just a little woodwind, but it's just the mountain sounds. It's not like something you'd learn or play in an orchestra. It's just got that old mountain sound. Speaker 2 (13:48) Gotcha. Anyhow. Speaker 3 (13:53) Well, you know me. You're just asking. I'll just tell it as I know it or as I feel it, what I want you to hear. Speaker 2 (14:01) So I decided to start the interview by playing her 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. Speaker 6 (14:16) Wow. Speaker 2 (14:20) What is that first line? Speaker 3 (14:22) Oh, being born was the worst mistake I ever made. The doctor didn't spank me, he just slapped me in the face. Well, as a writer, you want to come up with all those. You want to come up with some really good lines if you're a really good songwriter. Speaker 2 (14:39) Where does that come from? Speaker 3 (14:41) That was really, really early on in those early, early days. Oh, I used to write a lot of sad-ass songs. Speaker 2 (14:51) Let me explain the reason I wanted to start with this sad-ass song. Growing up in the early 80s, I... 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 Speaker 8 (15:13) look terrific. And upstairs earlier today, we were discussing your weight. Speaker 2 (15:19) They talk about her weight for a little while. They then talk about how she looks. Then inevitably... Speaker 3 (15:23) People are always asking if they're real. Oh, Speaker 2 (15:26) I would never. They'd start talking about her breasts. But I would give about a Speaker 3 (15:30) year's pay to peek under there. Speaker 2 (15:34) They'd joke about her breasts. But then she would make an even better joke about her breasts. Speaker 3 (15:39) Do you know what's worse than a giraffe with a sore throat? And they said, no, what? And the answer is Dolly Parton with a chest cold. Speaker 2 (15:49) Here's another example. Speaker 6 (15:50) The headline on the other major news story today, to which we intend to devote some time, is Speaker 1 (15:55) very Speaker 6 (15:55) simple. Speaker 1 (15:55) Hello, Speaker 6 (15:56) Dolly. Speaker 7 (15:56) Yes. The first cloned sheep was known as Dolly the sheep. Speaker 2 (16:01) This is Helen