Dolly Parton : "The Smoky Mountain Songbird"
Jul 3, 2020 21:18:26 GMT
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Post by petrolino on Jul 3, 2020 21:18:26 GMT
Dolly Parton

Dolly Rebecca Parton was born on January 19, 1946 in Sevier County, Tennessee, in the United States of America, the 4th of 12 children (her sisters Stella and Rachel Ann are both country singers and actresses). Her father, Robert Lee Parton Sr., worked as a construction worker, mountain guide and sharecropper before earning himself a plot of land. Her mother, Avie Lee Caroline Parton (née Owens), was a homemaker (she was the daughter of a Pentecostal preacher).
"Along with being an entertainer, Dolly Parton is also a philanthropist, and one of her causes is her Imagination Library, which she founded in 1995. The library sends children all over the world books to encourage literacy, and Parton started the organization because of her father, who couldn't read or write.
While he was illiterate, Parton credited her father for inspiring her business savvy, telling Rolling Stone, “but Daddy was real smart when it came to knowing the value of a dollar and how to make a deal, whether it was a horse trade or whatever.”
While he was illiterate, Parton credited her father for inspiring her business savvy, telling Rolling Stone, “but Daddy was real smart when it came to knowing the value of a dollar and how to make a deal, whether it was a horse trade or whatever.”
- Hannah Barnes, Pop Culture
“People hear me talk about eating squirrel and groundhogs, but in the mountains like that, you really didn’t have much of a choice. There were twelve of us kids. We never ate possum — I remember Daddy saying, ‘That’s like a damn rat.’ But we ate everything — turtle, frogs. I just remember the big old groundhogs — whistle pigs, they called them — and you’d cook ’em with sweet potatoes, and you’d have different ways of making some of that gamy taste go away.”
- Dolly Parton, Rolling Stone
Dolly Parton

'Gonna Hurry As Slow As I Can'
In the mid-1960s, Parton used unusual studio recording techniques to create a one-girl, girl group sound redolent of Phil Spector's line-up. Songs like 'Busy Signal' and 'Control Yourself' are now designated as curios in the career of a country artist who's gone on to establish her own sound, but they do demonstrate how she was always ready and willing to branch out and explore different creative avenues.
Traditional country was a musical form that offered opportunities to female artists coming from communities where poverty was high and literacy rates were low. It was arrogantly assumed by some male stakeholders and business executives that these girls and women could be tightly controlled, but this assumption was wrong, as history had already indicated. Elsie McWilliams, Cindy Walker and hitmaker Marijohn Wilkin are in the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame for a reason.
Jenny Lou Carson was a prolific songwriter who's now acknowledged as being the first woman to write a No.1 country music hit. Liz Anderson enjoyed a lengthy career as a professional songwriter, producing hits for other artists, before emerging as a recording artist in her own right in the mid-1960s. Friends Loretta Lynn and Dottie West knocked down walls in the 1960s; West initially wrote songs with steel guitarist Bill West, while Lynn snuck songs she'd written on to her albums, here and there. By 1967, Bobbie Gentry had emerged as a singer-songwriter of standing.
Dolly Parton was writing and recording singles as early as 1959 when she co-wrote the song 'Puppy Love' with her uncle, country musician Bill Owens. She explored a myriad of musical styles as a teenage performer, few of which performed particularly well on the commercial market, but this didn't derail her stated ambition to become a professional musician and songwriter. During this time, Parton looked up to Brenda Lee who she viewed as a great performer and who had legs as short as hers.
Parton finally secured backing to go it alone as the 'Summer of Love' came around, releasing her now-iconic, introductory country cut, 'Hello, I'm Dolly' (1967). Truth is, Parton was already a creative entertainer by this point and she's never stopped writing music and lyrics since. In the process, she's become acknowledged as a trailblazer for every female singer-songwriter who's entered country music within the modern rock 'n' roll era.
"I think the atmosphere in which Dolly Parton could be dismissed due to her appearance, her background, her gender and her genre has only just properly disappeared. In the 90s, when I learned to love music, you could enjoy a Dolly song but only with a large serve of irony. Every one of Dolly's hits was a one off - I'm still astonished at how many of her songs I know and love - because she was always a lightweight. It still requires a conscious effort for many of us, but now people are finally trying to enjoy art on its own terms. And when they do they find that Dolly writes perfectly contained stories about immediately relatable characters with an economy that I think is unmatched in pop music."
- Robert Iton, The Guardian
Bill Owens & Dolly Parton

'Don't Drop Out'
Dolly Parton was inducted into the Grand Ole Opry in 1969 which she said was a dream come true for her. Since 1970 she's received 49 nominations at the Grammy Awards, the second highest number for any country artist after Willie Nelson with 52. She's also been nominated at the Academy Awards, the Emmy Awards, the Golden Globe Awards, the Tony Awards and the Drama Desk Awards though she's never yet picked up an award at any of them. She was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for her music in 1984, located at 6712 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, California; she received a joint star, in conjunction with regular collaborators Emmylou Harris and Linda Ronstadt, for their work as the musical and archivist collective Trio in 2018. A seasoned harmony singer and multi-instrumentalist, Parton is the composer of over 3000 songs and counting.
Parton was awarded the Living Legend Medal by the U.S. Library of Congress on April 14, 2004, for her contributions to the cultural heritage of the United States. In 2005, she was honored with the National Medal of Arts, the highest honour given by the U.S. government for excellence in the arts. She received the Kennedy Center Honors from the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, for a lifetime of contributions to the arts, in 2006. In 2015, a newly discovered species of fungus found growing in the southern Appalachians was named Japewiella dollypartoniana in honor of Parton's music and her efforts to bring employment, education and global attention to that region.
"The reason we are meeting today is that the 9 to 5 musical, based on the film, which Parton wrote the songs for, is opening in London. There has also been talk of Dolly Parton, Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin reuniting to make a sequel to the original movie, and when Parton confirms this is true I am not ashamed to admit that I squeal.
Some have argued that 9 to 5, with its story of three women taking vicious revenge on their male boss, is too cartoonish to be taken seriously. I can only assume these people were never sexually harassed themselves because what the movie lacks in intricate feminist arguments, it more than makes up for in being a supremely satisfying howl of rage against sexism, an over-the-top response to an over-the-top situation. It is all the more pleasing coming from Parton, who may look like a lurid male fantasy, but has always shown more mettle than meekness. She is, after all, the woman who stood up to the notoriously fearsome Colonel Tom Parker, Elvis Presley’s manager, and refused to sign away half the publishing rights to I Will Always Love You when Presley wanted to record the song in the 70s. This proved to be a pretty canny move 20 years later, when Whitney Houston covered the song and made Parton millions.
Reviving 9 to 5 now is a no-brainer because of the mood of the moment. Fonda has gone as far to say that workplace harassment is worse today than it was in 1980, but Parton is surely closer to the truth when she says: “I’m pretty sure it’s always been bad. It’s just that with the #MeToo movement women are bolder to speak out against it.”
Parton has to tread a careful line here because, while she may be adored by women happy to call themselves feminists, her core fanbase of southern Republicans has a rather more sceptical approach to the cause. They’re all for a woman standing up for herself on a sketchy New York street – and with a gun, even better! – but any sloganeering or talk of structural sexism would be frowned on. So, although she is sweetly keen to fly the flag for a movie she made almost 40 years ago, all discussions of the movie’s message are tempered with platitudes that will soothe any nervous male egos.
Surely, I say, she must have experienced sexual harassment in her career. “I have, but I have always been able to manoeuvre because I come from a family of six brothers, so I understand men and I’ve known more good men than bad men. It’s a man’s world, and it’s not their fault any more than it is just life and … we have allowed it to happen. I think people now see that we’re here, and women are very important, and they need us, just as we need the men. But if someone was getting real aggressive with me, I’d scream or throw something at them. But, of course, I’ve been hit on – I’ve probably hit on some people myself!”
Some have argued that 9 to 5, with its story of three women taking vicious revenge on their male boss, is too cartoonish to be taken seriously. I can only assume these people were never sexually harassed themselves because what the movie lacks in intricate feminist arguments, it more than makes up for in being a supremely satisfying howl of rage against sexism, an over-the-top response to an over-the-top situation. It is all the more pleasing coming from Parton, who may look like a lurid male fantasy, but has always shown more mettle than meekness. She is, after all, the woman who stood up to the notoriously fearsome Colonel Tom Parker, Elvis Presley’s manager, and refused to sign away half the publishing rights to I Will Always Love You when Presley wanted to record the song in the 70s. This proved to be a pretty canny move 20 years later, when Whitney Houston covered the song and made Parton millions.
Reviving 9 to 5 now is a no-brainer because of the mood of the moment. Fonda has gone as far to say that workplace harassment is worse today than it was in 1980, but Parton is surely closer to the truth when she says: “I’m pretty sure it’s always been bad. It’s just that with the #MeToo movement women are bolder to speak out against it.”
Parton has to tread a careful line here because, while she may be adored by women happy to call themselves feminists, her core fanbase of southern Republicans has a rather more sceptical approach to the cause. They’re all for a woman standing up for herself on a sketchy New York street – and with a gun, even better! – but any sloganeering or talk of structural sexism would be frowned on. So, although she is sweetly keen to fly the flag for a movie she made almost 40 years ago, all discussions of the movie’s message are tempered with platitudes that will soothe any nervous male egos.
Surely, I say, she must have experienced sexual harassment in her career. “I have, but I have always been able to manoeuvre because I come from a family of six brothers, so I understand men and I’ve known more good men than bad men. It’s a man’s world, and it’s not their fault any more than it is just life and … we have allowed it to happen. I think people now see that we’re here, and women are very important, and they need us, just as we need the men. But if someone was getting real aggressive with me, I’d scream or throw something at them. But, of course, I’ve been hit on – I’ve probably hit on some people myself!”
- Hadley Freeman, 'Dolly Parton On Sexual Politics' (article published at The Guardian on February 24, 2019)

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Selected Hall Of Fame Honors
Nashville Songwriters Hall Of Fame (inducted in 1986)
Country Music Hall Of Fame (inducted in 1999)
Songwriters Hall Of Fame (inducted in 2001)
Gospel Music Hall Of Fame (inducted in 2009)
Music City Walk Of Fame (inducted in 2009)

Selected Songwriting Honors
Grammy Hall Of Fame – 'I Will Always Love You' – 1974 Recording (2007)
Grammy Hall Of Fame – 'Jolene' – 1974 Recording (2014)

Lifetime Achievement Awards
Country Radio Broadcasters Career Achievement Award (2005)
Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award (2011)
Country Music Association Lifetime Achievement Award (2016)

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"The Iron Butterfly"

"Dolly Parton’s popularity has endured, in large part, because even after five decades of stardom, she remains an enigma in plain sight. Call it the Parton Paradox: Hers has been one of the most scrutinised female bodies in the history of modern celebrity, and yet no one can tell you for certain what her forearms look like.
“Very often someone will wow you, but as you get to know them, the mystery wears off,” Jane Fonda, Parton’s co-star in the feminist film 9 to 5, told Rolling Stone in 1980. “One of the things that just flabbergasts me about Dolly is the amount of mystery she has.”
And at the moment, the magical mysteries of Dolly Parton seem to be captivating a whole new generation. The 73-year-old is riding high on a trifecta of millennial milestones: she’s the subject of a popular serialised podcast (Dolly Parton’s America, hosted by Jad Abumrad), the inspiration for the new Netflix anthology series Dolly Parton’s Heartstrings, and the featured vocalist on an EDM song (the Swedish duo Galantis’ “Faith”, on which Parton appears alongside a Dutch rapper named Mr Probz). And, as her nearly five million Twitter followers will tell you, she knows her way around a “Jolene” meme.
In some sense, though, 2019 is an odd time for a Dolly renaissance. It’s easy to see why someone like Fonda – a kind of octogenarian Greta Thunberg – is enjoying an uptick in intergenerational support from a politically aware cohort too young to remember her days of anti-war activism. Parton, on the other hand, has remained reluctant to make the slightest hint of a political statement, even in these urgent times.
The first episode of Dolly Parton’s America centres partly on the 9 to 5 songwriter’s reluctance to call herself a feminist. Earlier this year, Parton’s own sister, Stella, said she was “ashamed” of Dolly for not speaking out more about the #MeToo movement. In response, Parton told The Guardian: “I don’t feel I have to march, hold up a sign or label myself. I think the way I have conducted my life and my business and myself speaks for itself.”
Yet at the 2017 Emmys, Parton looked visibly, uncharacteristically flustered when she appeared on stage to present a best-supporting actor award with her co-stars Fonda and Lily Tomlin – both of whom took a seemingly unscripted verbal swipe at Donald Trump. Steering the conversation back to more familiar territory, Parton did what she’s also done when some interviews have got too political or contentious: She pulled from her trusted arsenal of boob jokes.
“Well, I know about support,” she quipped, gesturing towards her chest. “If it weren’t for support, Shock and Awe here would be more like Flopsy and Droopy.”
One reason Parton’s approval rating is so high, though, is that all the attributes that used to set her up for criticism – the outrageous, hyper-femme style; the unapologetic business savvy needed to pull off her late-Seventies pop crossover; even the so-what acknowledgement of her own cosmetic surgery – are no longer taboo.
A generation that’s grown up with Snapchat-filtered selfies and pop feminism seems to have an innate understanding that artifice doesn’t negate authenticity, or that a penchant for towering wigs and acrylic nails doesn’t prevent someone from being a songwriting genius. (Maybe they even help: Parton claims to have first tapped out the beat of “9 to 5” while idly clicking her fingernails.)
Perhaps that’s why her rhinestone DNA is visible in young artists as varied as Kacey Musgraves and Cardi B — to say nothing of Parton’s own goddaughter Miley Cyrus, who inspired a whole new generation of Parton fans who first came to know her as wacky Aunt Dolly from Hannah Montana. Parton sang a duet with Kesha on her 2017 album Rainbow – a 1980 Parton hit that Kesha’s mother happened to co-write. At this year’s Grammys, when Parton was honoured with the MusiCares person of the year award for her philanthropy, she performed a rousing medley of her hits alongside a who’s who billing of her millennial heirs, like Katy Perry, Maren Morris and Musgraves.
Like Cher, another 73-year-old multi-hyphenate icon, Parton has over the past few years ascended to a rarefied level of intergenerational celebrity: a saucy grandmother of social media. When the Gen-Z sheriff and “Old Town Road” mastermind Lil Nas X wondered aloud, on Twitter, “y’all think i can get dolly parton and megan thee stallion on an old town road remix?”, Parton (or at least someone on her team) was quick to respond with a very appropriate unicorn emoji. “I was so happy for him,” Parton said recently of Lil Nas X. “I don’t care how we present country music or keep it alive,” she added. “I’m all about acceptance.”
That quote is classic Dolly: Anyone can see himself or herself in it, no matter which side of the country traditionalists versus Lil Nas X debate they land on. Both-sides-ism rarely feels as benevolent as it does when coming from Parton, but that’s nothing new. When asked, in 1997, how she was able to maintain fan bases within both the religious right and the gay community, she replied, “It’s two different worlds, and I live in both and I love them both, and I understand and accept both.”
“Very often someone will wow you, but as you get to know them, the mystery wears off,” Jane Fonda, Parton’s co-star in the feminist film 9 to 5, told Rolling Stone in 1980. “One of the things that just flabbergasts me about Dolly is the amount of mystery she has.”
And at the moment, the magical mysteries of Dolly Parton seem to be captivating a whole new generation. The 73-year-old is riding high on a trifecta of millennial milestones: she’s the subject of a popular serialised podcast (Dolly Parton’s America, hosted by Jad Abumrad), the inspiration for the new Netflix anthology series Dolly Parton’s Heartstrings, and the featured vocalist on an EDM song (the Swedish duo Galantis’ “Faith”, on which Parton appears alongside a Dutch rapper named Mr Probz). And, as her nearly five million Twitter followers will tell you, she knows her way around a “Jolene” meme.
In some sense, though, 2019 is an odd time for a Dolly renaissance. It’s easy to see why someone like Fonda – a kind of octogenarian Greta Thunberg – is enjoying an uptick in intergenerational support from a politically aware cohort too young to remember her days of anti-war activism. Parton, on the other hand, has remained reluctant to make the slightest hint of a political statement, even in these urgent times.
The first episode of Dolly Parton’s America centres partly on the 9 to 5 songwriter’s reluctance to call herself a feminist. Earlier this year, Parton’s own sister, Stella, said she was “ashamed” of Dolly for not speaking out more about the #MeToo movement. In response, Parton told The Guardian: “I don’t feel I have to march, hold up a sign or label myself. I think the way I have conducted my life and my business and myself speaks for itself.”
Yet at the 2017 Emmys, Parton looked visibly, uncharacteristically flustered when she appeared on stage to present a best-supporting actor award with her co-stars Fonda and Lily Tomlin – both of whom took a seemingly unscripted verbal swipe at Donald Trump. Steering the conversation back to more familiar territory, Parton did what she’s also done when some interviews have got too political or contentious: She pulled from her trusted arsenal of boob jokes.
“Well, I know about support,” she quipped, gesturing towards her chest. “If it weren’t for support, Shock and Awe here would be more like Flopsy and Droopy.”
One reason Parton’s approval rating is so high, though, is that all the attributes that used to set her up for criticism – the outrageous, hyper-femme style; the unapologetic business savvy needed to pull off her late-Seventies pop crossover; even the so-what acknowledgement of her own cosmetic surgery – are no longer taboo.
A generation that’s grown up with Snapchat-filtered selfies and pop feminism seems to have an innate understanding that artifice doesn’t negate authenticity, or that a penchant for towering wigs and acrylic nails doesn’t prevent someone from being a songwriting genius. (Maybe they even help: Parton claims to have first tapped out the beat of “9 to 5” while idly clicking her fingernails.)
Perhaps that’s why her rhinestone DNA is visible in young artists as varied as Kacey Musgraves and Cardi B — to say nothing of Parton’s own goddaughter Miley Cyrus, who inspired a whole new generation of Parton fans who first came to know her as wacky Aunt Dolly from Hannah Montana. Parton sang a duet with Kesha on her 2017 album Rainbow – a 1980 Parton hit that Kesha’s mother happened to co-write. At this year’s Grammys, when Parton was honoured with the MusiCares person of the year award for her philanthropy, she performed a rousing medley of her hits alongside a who’s who billing of her millennial heirs, like Katy Perry, Maren Morris and Musgraves.
Like Cher, another 73-year-old multi-hyphenate icon, Parton has over the past few years ascended to a rarefied level of intergenerational celebrity: a saucy grandmother of social media. When the Gen-Z sheriff and “Old Town Road” mastermind Lil Nas X wondered aloud, on Twitter, “y’all think i can get dolly parton and megan thee stallion on an old town road remix?”, Parton (or at least someone on her team) was quick to respond with a very appropriate unicorn emoji. “I was so happy for him,” Parton said recently of Lil Nas X. “I don’t care how we present country music or keep it alive,” she added. “I’m all about acceptance.”
That quote is classic Dolly: Anyone can see himself or herself in it, no matter which side of the country traditionalists versus Lil Nas X debate they land on. Both-sides-ism rarely feels as benevolent as it does when coming from Parton, but that’s nothing new. When asked, in 1997, how she was able to maintain fan bases within both the religious right and the gay community, she replied, “It’s two different worlds, and I live in both and I love them both, and I understand and accept both.”
- Linsay Zoladz, 'How Dolly Parton Is Captivating A Whole New Generation Of Fans' (article published at The New York Times on November 21, 2019)
Miss Piggy & Dolly Parton collaborate in 1987 on 'I'm A Hog For You Baby'

'Fuel To The Flame'
'The Bridge'
'Daddy Won't Be Home Anymore'
'The Golden Streets Of Glory'
'In The Good Old Days (When Times Were Bad)'
'Jeannie's Afraid Of The Dark'
'Joshua'
'The Flame'
'Sweet Rachel Ann'
'Coat Of Many Colours'
Dolly Parton In The Pink In 1978







