Remembering Dolly Parton with Jof Owen

Sentimental Garbage

Caroline O'Donoghue and Jof Owen gather to reflect on the recent passing of Dolly Parton and her profound impact on global culture. They exp

Key takeaways

• Dolly Parton's music often documented adult themes like motherhood, divorce, and stillbirth long before modern pop stars.
• She utilized a 'backwards Barbie' aesthetic to blend high-glamour with her roots as a girl from the Smoky Mountains.
• The hosts discuss how she navigated controversial topics, such as gay marriage, by using humor as a defense mechanism.
• Her career trajectory moved from being a child prodigy in Tennessee to creating Dollywood, a physical embodiment of her childhood romanticism.
• Dolly Parton's death is viewed by the speakers as a potential signal for the end of an era of shared monoculture.

Main topics

• The legacy of Dolly Parton
• Themes in country music
• The death of monoculture

Notable quotes

She was like the tent pole pinning down a very, very important corner of decency.

Conclusion

The episode serves as a moving tribute to an icon who mastered the art

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:00) Hello everyone. How are you? It's been such a long time since we've spoken. I think the last time I jumped on here to record a podcast was in Christmas of last year. And since then a lot has happened with me, which I hope to fill you in on in good time. But right now I just felt that, you know, I am planning to come back for Sentimental Garbage for a full season very soon. It just felt wrong to not mark the passing of Dolly Parton within the universe of this podcast. I really do think of her as like one of the faces on Mount Rushmore of what this podcast kind of stands for, which is, you know, a femininity and a silliness, but also a sincerity that I really do believe that Dolly Parton represented and like inspired me in so much. in so much of what I do and like the longer that passes between now and her death I've kind of realized how much she's informed the way I look at the world and I'm sure you feel exactly the same so please enjoy this conversation with me and my good friend Joff Owen um we will try and be back very soon I've had quite a knackering year I'm sure you have as well and there's still loads to go but we'll have lots of episodes very soon and in the meantime enjoy Speaker 2 (1:25) Hello and welcome to Sentimental Garbage, the podcast where our happiness depends on you. My name is Karen O'Donoghue and I'm in the same boat as a lot of my friends in that I'm really sad. And he's looking better than a body has a right to. It's Geoff Owen. Speaker 1 (1:39) Hi. Hi. Thanks for having me. Speaker 2 (1:41) Thanks for coming. In Speaker 1 (1:42) these sad times. Speaker 2 (1:44) These sad times? I'm still sad. Speaker 1 (1:46) Yeah, it's actually been weird ever since you asked me Speaker 2 (1:49) to Speaker 1 (1:49) come on. I've actually... I almost like really lent into mourning in such a way, like watching all the films, rereading books, listening to all the songs, like in a way that I probably wouldn't normally have gone quite as heavily on. Speaker 2 (2:01) But I'm amazed by my own response as well, because just to bring everybody up to speed, today is Friday. Dolly Parton sadly passed on Wednesday? Tuesday. Tuesday night is when kind of the world got the news. I was just outside. Ski Hands pub in Broccoli about to go in. Oh, nice. It's Speaker 1 (2:19) a Speaker 2 (2:19) lovely pub. Nice Speaker 1 (2:20) pub, yeah, busy. Busy and Speaker 2 (2:22) lovely pub. Yeah. And I remember I was... I was walking in and I just found out on my phone and some girls were walking out and they just found out on their phones. And then they looked up and it also happened to be that they were sentimental garbage listeners. And so we've all had this moment where we all just kind of held hands and we're like, Speaker 1 (2:37) oh, Speaker 2 (2:38) oh, oh gosh. Like, oh gosh. And you know, it was the hit, the sudden hit of like, I can't believe this person who has been around our whole lives and, and before we were born is, is gone because it felt like she'd always be there. And. Then after that, the feeling of sadness continued far more than I have ever felt for another celebrity passing. I think the closest thing I've probably felt is maybe Robin Williams. Because just because of the amount of films he's in that are in your childhood and he feels so part of growing up. For my generation, it felt really that way. But I think the grief of losing Dolly hit me day to day that night when I was listening to... her one of her records at home and I was I was really really crying because it just didn't feel like just be that a person had left or you know a person who's responsible for an amazing body of work had left but that an entire way of living had passed yeah Speaker 1 (3:35) like Speaker 2 (3:36) this is a person who like very famously and who loved to speak about you know was born as one of 12 children in like the smoky mountains in Tennessee with no running water if you wanted water you had to run out and get it And no electricity. And I grew up in this way that like her... Speaker 2 (3:54) her like that way of living was common from like the 15th century up until her birth and then she went from that to being not like this like country barefoot girl who you know started playing all these instruments at a young age to being on country radio to being a tv star to then you know fast forward 60 years is the helm of not just an empire but an entire sort of lens of looking at the world and realizing that that transition that thing of like you know your dad had to pay the doctor in a bag of cornmeal for birthing you because he didn't have any money to like being this, this sort of like to quote Mad Men, to being an astronaut, to like transcending your upbringing so much. That won't happen again. This way of living won't happen again, you know? Speaker 1 (4:41) No, no. It's what you're saying there about like that spanning that time and that sort of being like a voice from, well, certainly a voice I grew up with. That voice disappeared. It's quite weird. You said a lot there. Speaker 2 (4:53) Yeah, I'm sorry. I've been wound up for a few days now. You've covered the hole. Speaker 1 (5:00) Sorry. I just closed my Speaker 2 (5:02) laptop lid. Speaker 1 (5:02) I was like, we're free-balling. That was all your notes. Speaker 2 (5:05) That was all my notes. You just finished it. And Speaker 1 (5:07) then she died. And Speaker 2 (5:08) then she died on Tuesday. And now we're here talking about it. Speaker 1 (5:13) But she is a voice that we've all grown. I think that was why it hit me. It's a voice that's always been there. The other times it's hit me, it's been like when like a celebrity's died. I'm not like, although I love celebrities, I'm not like invested in them so much that I sort of would like cry a week. Yeah. Like Wogan got me because it was like one of those voices that I'd like. And Oliver Postgate was another one who did the clangers and stuff like those voices. So when you hear their voices, they take you back to some like a younger time or like a time when you were younger and you. sort of, they've always been there and I think that's what's quite weird about it. It's like you sort of forget that they're going to die and then you think about your own mortality. But you just think about, oh my God, everyone's going to die. I think that's why it hits you. Yeah, I was out with some friends and we were just in a pub with no reception but people were trying to ring us and then we went to see Orville Peck, which is a great artist to go and see. Great artist to go and see. So it's quite nice that... There were so many people there who Speaker 2 (6:15) meant Speaker 1 (6:17) so much to you. And then he was, you know, he did, I will always love you. It was like in that moment. So we had an hour of quite intense sort of public mourning. And then, yeah, I went home. And my girlfriend had made a shrine. And she took apart the George Michael shrine to make it. Speaker 2 (6:36) I love that your home is so shrine heavy. Yeah, we shed Speaker 1 (6:39) a lot of flowers from that. And then that was it. I was just like, she was playing it. It was like, it was really, really sad. And I don't think I've really been that sad. Yeah. A lot of people do, like celebrities do die, but definitely this one really hit, I don't know. It feels like there's sort of... Speaker 1 (6:59) She was so the opposite of the way the world is at the moment, in terms of her kindness and her philanthropy and just how much she cared for other people. Her being in the world almost felt like stabilising in some way, or hopeful, just like it felt like having a little bit of hope. Speaker 2 (7:17) The stabilising influence, I think, is a really important thing. And you're dead right in the sense that she does feel like... the opposite of how the world is right now. It felt like she was like the tent pole pinning down a very, very important corner of decency. And like, that's so, I have to sort of like, when I was researching for this and sort of preparing what I was going to say, I had to keep sort of winding my own neck in a bit because there's so, I mean, the internet is just flooded with tributes and all the papers and every celebrity has come out and said something and she worked with so many people right up until her. much later years and like, so that makes sense. But like, you know, this, this, this kind of language that we're using, this like her being this cornerstone of like decency of her being almost like a saint, like she kind of glows like something kind of holy, something beyond is like, then you have to sort of whip yourself back and be like, no, she was a person who was in, in, in many ways as ordinary as all of us in that she had like organs that failed in a body that, that passed. And. She was just a person who made a series of choices and those choices involved enormous kindness. Yeah. Speaker 1 (8:25) And like... Yeah. It is... I think, like, there were people in the pub when... Yeah. Speaker 2 (8:31) They Speaker 1 (8:31) were saying, oh, this reminds me of Diana. And actually, it feels very different, Diana, because Diana's sort of, like, death, we sort of build up to making her a saint. At the time when she died, she was quite vilified. She was quite divided. Diana wasn't loved by the press. You think now she was always the people's princess, but actually at the time the tabloids were awful to her. People were kind of, I don't know, they definitely weren't 100 % loving her. And then she dies and she gets made into a saint by the cultural things that go on around her. But Dolly's like... Already, we already think of her as that. So it's like almost, the process is different. Like she's, we already think of her as like. Yeah. Like a complete goodness. Like in a fun way though. In a fun way. Not in a boring way, that's the key. In like Speaker 2 (9:21) a gay way. Speaker 1 (9:22) Like a really camp fun way. That's Speaker 2 (9:25) the Speaker 1 (9:25) thing. She's good, but not, she's the opposite. Like that's an amazing thing to be. It's like Speaker 2 (9:30) that Speaker 1 (9:31) nice, that kind, that good. Because niceness and kindness are such boring traits. Speaker 2 (9:37) Yeah. And Speaker 1 (9:38) she managed to make those things really, really fun. Speaker 2 (9:41) And funny. Speaker 1 (9:41) And funny. I know, funny, clever, kind. I mean, it's just... Speaker 2 (9:47) Okay, let's go back a bit because just your creds for being our guest today is that you are like a country music expert, aficionado, journalist. Would you use aficionado? Speaker 1 (10:01) Yeah, I think so. I mean, it's all I listen to, really. Speaker 2 (10:03) I've Speaker 1 (10:04) tried to sort of wean myself off recently because I felt like I was just getting lost in this alternate universe that actually no one else could talk to me about. It was too much. But yeah, I've been listening. Took my whole life. So ever since I was five, I sort of got into country because I wanted to be a cowboy. So I Speaker 2 (10:22) was Speaker 1 (10:22) like, well, this is my soundtrack. So Dolly would sort of sneak in there, but it was more like the actual songs about cowboys, like Speaker 2 (10:28) Johnny Speaker 1 (10:28) Cash and stuff. But yeah, and then teenage years would have been when Dolly really sort of started to come through in the songs. And then ever since then, I've just... Do Speaker 2 (10:39) you remember like a Dolly moment for you? It Speaker 1 (10:43) was Down From Dover. Do you know the song Down From Dover? Speaker 2 (10:45) Down from Dover, yes. Yeah, Speaker 1 (10:46) yeah. Speaker 2 (10:47) I only know it, to be fair, I only know it because you made me a playlist. Speaker 1 (10:50) Oh, yeah, it's that song. But I heard like the Lee Hazelwood and Nancy Sinatra one and then realised it was a Dolly song and then I sort of went right back into her catalogue and I knew obviously like the hits and stuff growing up but then it was like, oh, she had like a way darker side that I didn't realise where she sort of sung about, you know. poverty in like a very it's just a very unusual way I suppose like she was probably like the great sort of song smith of poverty which is a weird thing to be but like only sort of rappers come close that's Speaker 2 (11:26) so interesting in Speaker 1 (11:28) terms of like sort of documenting that in such a real way and there's sort of the heartbreak and the romance of it and also the you know the divorces and the Yeah, just the honest and all those other things that she'd they go into her songs all these things that come with poverty like it's quite She was like the great documentary of that. I think in terms of like American songwriters and Speaker 2 (11:50) do you think like? Speaker 1 (11:52) There's Speaker 2 (11:52) more question about country music generally, but like it does. And, you know, I think a lot of people have made this point in various ways, but I think country music, particularly female led country music from like from Dolly Parton to, you know, your Crystal Gales or your Reba McEntire. You just touched your chest and I said Crystal Gales. I love Crystal. Speaker 1 (12:14) Yeah. Speaker 2 (12:14) Or like or, you know, or the chicks and everything. Yeah. Speaker 2 (12:19) It does seem to me that so much of female-led country music is a form of feminism for and about a woman who would never call herself a feminist. Speaker 1 (12:31) Yeah. Do you know Speaker 2 (12:31) what I mean? Speaker 1 (12:32) Totally. For a start, country music was always music by adults, for adults, and about adults, which is the thing that makes it different to any other genre, really, because it's songs for adult women, like about motherhood, marriage, divorce. adulthood, ageing. Stillbirth. Stillbirth, exactly. Like some of Dolly's early ones, Speaker 2 (12:50) it's about having a daughter who dies. She has so many songs about stillbirth. She has so many songs about children dying. It's quite unbelievable in her early catalogue. Speaker 1 (12:59) Yeah. That is something that does affect adult women. So it's quite amazing that a genre was able to document these things. Until Taylor Swift comes along, Speaker 2 (13:10) teenage... Speaker 1 (13:12) teenagers aren't even covered in country music. Like she changes, like Taylor changed everything. Before that, everyone's singing adults, you know, even like 15 year old artists to sing in songs for adults. They're not singing about going to school and, you know, so it's quite unusual in that way. And that's sort of, especially for women, that means that they can sing about all these things that usually ignored by music and by songwriters because they're not covered really anything beyond the age of 21 isn't covered. Speaker 2 (13:37) Yeah. Speaker 1 (13:38) And Speaker 2 (13:38) what, where, that's really fascinating. that country music is a genre for adults by adults. Where does that come from? What is that? I Speaker 1 (13:47) don't know why it's... I don't know why it's... I guess it just came down from adults. I guess it must precede rock and roll, I suppose, and so... Yeah. And it doesn't ever sort of waver from that. So when rock and roll goes after teenagers and sort of that whole idea of the teenage mindset and everything follows that, country music sticks to its roots and it's very much like... I guess it's grounded in sort of Christian conservative, like in America must be part of it. But it's weird that it doesn't change that. It stays right about adult themes up until Taylor Swift, really. Speaker 2 (14:21) Yeah. And I guess that's like, I mean, when Dolly always credited her kind of... the fact that she was a prodigy, do you know what I mean? Which is, and this is like the fascinating thing about Dolly is that like, you know, I was listening to, and I'll probably end up referencing it a lot in this podcast, an amazing podcast called Dolly Parton's America, where she's being interviewed about all the instruments she can play. She can play the banjo and the dulcimer. She can play her own nails. She can play the pan flute. She can play the tin whistle. She can play all these things. But there's always this real, Speaker 2 (14:55) intense sense of modesty and sort of I don't know dismissiveness about her own gifts she's very much like oh you know I'm a good writer and everything her musicianship is incredible like and there's this amazing story and I'm sure we'll get to him in a minute um of her and Porter Wagner after she wrote Jolene he wanted to show off to the session musicians um the opening lick of Jolene show them how to play it and Speaker 1 (15:23) he couldn't play it because she Speaker 2 (15:25) had written it and only she knew how to do it and it's got that amazing kind of a lift I guess yeah yeah in that opening lick um and and and that she just like yanked the guitar off him because she was sick of him getting it wrong And did it. But she sort of, so she was like a prodigy. She was on country radio from the age of 10. She was in Speaker 1 (15:42) a Speaker 2 (15:42) family band, all that. But she credits that from being from where she's from, which is from the Smoky Mountains in Tennessee in Appalachia, of this being a tradition of story songs that have come from like... I guess Irish folk music and English folk music and all the people who immigrated at the turn of the century and then like made that tradition what it was in that part of the world. And something else fascinating that I learned is that a lot of her songs and a lot of those female vocals that are like story songs about women being wronged by men Speaker 1 (16:15) come Speaker 2 (16:16) from the kind of inverse of these murder ballads. There was all these songs. about men essentially killing women that they knocked up or whatever and then these women artists coming and flipping it and making it from the perspective of the victim. And that's just, sorry, this is me like... That's really, did you make that up? Or did you actually... No, I've... I've never thought of it Speaker 1 (16:38) that way, but that obviously must be why, that must be why they start turning into like, a lot of the songs that sort of, like Kitty Wells, it wasn't God who made Honky Tonk Angels, it's like an answer song. Speaker 2 (16:51) Yeah. Speaker 1 (16:51) There were lots of answer songs started coming up, so men would... write a sort of chauvinistic song and the woman would be like rolling her eyes and they'd write a response onto it so you get that and I guess that's the same thing with they're probably just sick of being murdered in song Speaker 2 (17:05) sick Speaker 1 (17:06) of Speaker 2 (17:06) the back teeth of being murdered I mean for millennials you might remember our version of this which was fuck you and fuck you right back yeah exactly I think the guy who wrote the first song was called Owen Speaker 2 (17:23) I remember Speaker 1 (17:24) the two songs, but I don't remember either artist. Speaker 2 (17:28) Frankie and Owen. Speaker 1 (17:31) It's taller than that. Anyway. That'll help explain that. That'll help explain that. It was invented by country music. Speaker 2 (17:39) Yeah. This idea of like, I don't know, these gendered lines of. And this is the kind of, these, what are essentially feminist songs. And like, as Dolly's career goes on, you see this kind of flip to like a lot of very independent women's songs. Yeah. Like, like nine to five is a version of that. I've just sort of like picking yourself up and, and carrying on. And. Speaker 2 (18:11) that all kind of existing under this umbrella of like a changing world where women are getting credit cards and going to work and all this kind of stuff. But, you know. still not really claiming the moniker of feminist or whatever. No, Speaker 1 (18:27) not at Speaker 2 (18:27) all. Speaker 1 (18:27) It's like, the whole way through, she rises at the top, especially when she goes solo, it's like 65, 60. She's like, this women's lib is on the rise and she's, but the way she sees it, it's like she's opposite to intellectual feminism in a way. She's like lived feminism. But she would still, all of them. It's only sort of in the last few years that country artists have started sort of saying they are feminists. There's a few who have said, but like all the way through, like they've, they've just would never, like Loretta Lynn would