Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's here too, and today we're gonna make
Speaker 2: some joyful noise together here on Stuff you should Know.
Speaker 1: That's right. I just poured myself a cup of ambition.
Speaker 2: Uh huh, I had a few of those this.
Speaker 3: Morning before we dive into Dolly Parton land. We should
Speaker 3: talk about our tour really quick because we're looking to
Speaker 3: sell some more tickets specifically, well everywhere, but specifically DC
Speaker 3: and Toronto.
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, for the whole shebang. We're gonna be in
Speaker 2: d C, Boston and then Toronto May fourth, fifth, and sixth.
Speaker 3: Right, that's right, And there are plenty of great seats available.
Speaker 3: This is a really good show. I think one of
Speaker 3: the best ones we've done in a long time. And
Speaker 3: if you're in the Northeast, like, this is it. We're
Speaker 3: not doing New York this year.
Speaker 1: Are you sorry?
Speaker 2: New York?
Speaker 3: But if you live the Northeast, this is this is
Speaker 3: your chance because we're doing the Southeast in the fall,
Speaker 3: and that's this is your opportunity.
Speaker 2: I think that's a great angle for this marketing campaign here.
Speaker 1: Chuck, Yeah, Northeast or bust.
Speaker 2: Okay, So that's enough about us, everybody. We're here to
Speaker 2: really talk about Dolly.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So Livia helped us with this one. And you know,
Speaker 3: we've remarked about how Livia is getting great at titling
Speaker 3: the articles even though she doesn't even have to, right
Speaker 3: she does it because she's creative and talented. And her
Speaker 3: title for this is why does everyone love Dolly Parton?
Speaker 3: And we're going to explain that, But I think the
Speaker 3: easiest thing to say is since the nineteen seventies, this
Speaker 3: is a woman who was basically just put goodness into
Speaker 3: the world at every turn.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. I was reading an interview with her
Speaker 2: in Rolling Stone from nineteen eighty, like nine to five
Speaker 2: had just come out, and you might as well have
Speaker 2: told me it was from twenty twenty three.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: She just she's been the same way this whole time. Great.
Speaker 2: She she doesn't like get into any political stuff. She said,
Speaker 2: I'm not political. I won't talk about politics.
Speaker 1: She doesn't.
Speaker 2: She leaves hot button issues alone. But if it means
Speaker 2: something to her, it's really meaningful, she'll she'll come out
Speaker 2: on you know, in favor of it. Endorsing it, but
Speaker 2: she doesn't put anything down. She might support something, but
Speaker 2: she's not going to put anything down publicly.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So the other kind of funny thing about this one
Speaker 3: from Livia is she always includes her sources, and she
Speaker 3: may have broken her own source record.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a lot.
Speaker 3: Oh boy, there were probably one hundred sources. But we
Speaker 3: did want to mention one in particular because I listened
Speaker 3: to this from jad Abamrad, the great jad Abamrab of
Speaker 3: Radio ab Fame, m like four years ago put out
Speaker 3: the wonderful series Dolly Parton's America. Yeah, and Livia binged
Speaker 3: it and I listened to it back then, and back
Speaker 3: then I was like, oh man, I want to do
Speaker 3: an episode on Dolly Parton. But it's like Jad it
Speaker 3: like he covered it so well, like what's the point
Speaker 3: kind of thing?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: But now four years on, I was like, well, we
Speaker 1: can give it.
Speaker 3: The stuff you should know treatment, which is to say,
Speaker 3: not as not as deep a dive, but it's a
Speaker 3: great series. If you want to learn more about Dolly Parton,
Speaker 3: then check out Dolly Parton's America.
Speaker 2: Very nice. And then just to button up, Chuck, we
Speaker 2: were trying to answer that question, why does everybody love Dolly?
Speaker 2: I came up with another hypothesis too, Okay, it's that
Speaker 2: you know, when somebody is like, they can be anything
Speaker 2: anybody wants them to be, Like, they're interpretable from all
Speaker 2: different angles, so everybody just assumes they're like them. Dolly
Speaker 2: is not like that. She is her own person who
Speaker 2: can't be pigeonholed into one box or another, right, but
Speaker 2: she's likable from all sides.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Like, find someone that's gonna talk some Dolly Parton
Speaker 3: and then you and I really can a discussion in
Speaker 3: the parking lot with that guy.
Speaker 2: It's a sad state of affairs, though, dude, because there's
Speaker 2: think pieces all over the internet about how it's just
Speaker 2: amazing that everybody doesn't hate Dolly Parton, and it's like,
Speaker 2: good God, like this is what we've come to, Like
Speaker 2: everybody hates everybody casually, so I mean, how has she
Speaker 2: escaped it so long? And it's just like such a
Speaker 2: sad state of affairs that that's normalized by even writing
Speaker 2: pieces like that. But they're out there for sure. But
Speaker 2: the upshot of it is people are amazed that people
Speaker 2: don't hate Dolly Parton, and it's true. People don't hate
Speaker 2: Dolly Parton.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and she's she's someone that is so I think,
Speaker 3: kind of universally beloved and internationally beloved. That as you'll
Speaker 3: see later in this episode there, she's been studied by
Speaker 3: anthropologists and sociologists.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which is pretty amazing. And so let's start at
Speaker 1: the beginning, shall we wait?
Speaker 2: Hold on one more thing?
Speaker 1: Yeah, more praise.
Speaker 2: The other thing about her, I think that's so amazing
Speaker 2: and so remarkable is that she This is the reason
Speaker 2: why everybody's just so fascinated with her right now. She's
Speaker 2: maybe the one person who is straddling both sides of
Speaker 2: the political and social divide as wide as it is
Speaker 2: in the United States today and is not is not
Speaker 2: like hanging on by her fingernails. She's like, I got
Speaker 2: a foot here, and I'm not lying about it. Got
Speaker 2: a foot here. I'm not lying about that either. I'm
Speaker 2: not I'm not trying to fool either side. This. This
Speaker 2: is what I'm into, and you know, I like both
Speaker 2: of you.
Speaker 3: Basically, it's almost like being a genuine human who stays
Speaker 3: true to who they are is something we should all
Speaker 3: aspire to.
Speaker 2: Sure, but it also shows she shows that that's such
Speaker 2: a rarity in this world that that you can be
Speaker 2: globally beloved by just doing that and also making like
Speaker 2: a ton of really great music too.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, I mean, come on, we're gonna talk about
Speaker 3: all this stuff, but can we.
Speaker 1: Go back to the beginning now? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, sorry, okay, Hey, never apologize about singing the praises
Speaker 3: of Dolly Parton.
Speaker 2: That's a great rule of stuff.
Speaker 1: You should, no motto.
Speaker 3: And I just can't wait till we get to the
Speaker 3: Dollywood stuff, because you've been and I have not. All right,
Speaker 3: So she was born Dolly Rebecca Parton in nineteen forty six,
Speaker 3: in January nineteenth of nineteen forty six in rural Tennessee.
Speaker 1: How do you pronounce this? Is it severe? County?
Speaker 2: I think it's severe.
Speaker 1: Oh, it's just severe.
Speaker 2: I'm almost positive it's severe.
Speaker 3: Okay, sev I e R and see immediately this is
Speaker 3: I'm sure Jad's episode pronounced it perfectly.
Speaker 1: I bad. I don't remember.
Speaker 2: Threw his face into us palm like these guys.
Speaker 3: But she was born to a big family of twelve kids.
Speaker 3: And it's kind of fun to look up photos of
Speaker 3: Dolly and all her siblings because you know a few
Speaker 3: of her sisters look a lot like her.
Speaker 1: All her brothers look.
Speaker 3: Like you know, they should be like shooting pool down
Speaker 3: at the pool hall.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, all the.
Speaker 3: Just sort of genuine article smoky Mountain Tennessee foothills people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. And there were twelve of them, did you.
Speaker 1: Say, twelve sibs including her, And she was the fourth.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the fourth of twelve. And all fourteen people in
Speaker 2: her family lived in a two room cabin. And I've
Speaker 2: seen a replica of this cabin, and it is no joke.
Speaker 2: A two room cabin and fourteen people lived in it
Speaker 2: in the Smoky mountains.
Speaker 1: I mean two bedrooms with an office, right, right.
Speaker 2: I mean two rooms my friend with the outhouse, no
Speaker 2: running water, no electricity, Like she grew up as Smoky mountain,
Speaker 2: as a smoky mountain person can grow up, like even
Speaker 2: people in other parts of Tennessee are like wow.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: But she says she had a great childhood running around
Speaker 2: just being outside, and because she was the fourth of twelve,
Speaker 2: she wasn't particularly like paid attention to, so she could
Speaker 2: just kind of go off and do her own thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I get the idea that they were semi feral sort
Speaker 3: of mountain kids. Her granddad was a Pentecostal minister, very
Speaker 3: fiery in Brimstony, and she still, you know, mentions God
Speaker 3: a lot. I get the sense that she's a little
Speaker 3: less overtly religious, but spirituality still very much a mainstay
Speaker 3: in her life.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think it's more of a personal relationship between
Speaker 2: her and God.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which is supposed to be.
Speaker 2: So she really lucked out because she had an uncle
Speaker 2: named Bill Owens, who was a musician a songwriter who
Speaker 2: noticed that she wanted to get into music from a
Speaker 2: very young age and was maybe the only person in
Speaker 2: her entire life or her early life that noticed and
Speaker 2: then nurtured it. And she later said when he died
Speaker 2: a few years back at his funeral, like she wouldn't
Speaker 2: be here today if it wasn't him, Like she owed
Speaker 2: him everything because he nurtured it in her. He encouraged her,
Speaker 2: he supported her when she got rejected, and he helped
Speaker 2: her break into the business. So bill Owens was a
Speaker 2: huge influence in her life. But he noticed, like I said,
Speaker 2: from a very early age. I think she wrote her
Speaker 2: first song when she was.
Speaker 3: Five, Yeah, little tiny tassel top about her homemade corn
Speaker 3: husk doll and she would pretend, you know, she would
Speaker 3: get a tobacco stick and a tin can and act
Speaker 3: like it was her microphone and Mike's stand, and she
Speaker 3: would sing for the chickens in her yard and had
Speaker 3: obviously a real talent from the beginning. If you listen
Speaker 3: to her very first recording, Puppy Love from nineteen fifty nine,
Speaker 3: it sounds like, you know, thirteen year old Dolly Parton.
Speaker 3: You know, you can hear Dolly in that young voice.
Speaker 3: And like I said, she was thirteen. And that was
Speaker 3: the same year that she made her very first appearance
Speaker 3: at the Grand Old Opry, introduced.
Speaker 1: By none other than Johnny Cash.
Speaker 2: Yeah, who was her first big crush, so it was
Speaker 2: even more amazing for unbelievable. Her family didn't get to
Speaker 2: see it though, because Dolly Parton was on TV before
Speaker 2: her family had a TV at home. Yeah, which is
Speaker 2: pretty cool. I believe there was a TV appearance, yes, noah, okay,
Speaker 2: and if it was, if that one wasn't the first
Speaker 2: whenever it was, she was on TV first, her family
Speaker 2: still didn't have a.
Speaker 1: TV back, gotcha.
Speaker 2: So thanks to Uncle Billy taking her around and banging
Speaker 2: on doors, she ended up making her debut on Mercury
Speaker 2: Records in nineteen sixty two, which is nothing to sneeze at.
Speaker 2: But I get the impression that it wasn't like her.
Speaker 2: It wasn't like a like a okay, this is a
Speaker 2: serious recording contract. It's like, okay, let's let's test this
Speaker 2: girl out. Back then, they called any woman in country
Speaker 2: music a girl singer, right, So she was a bit
Speaker 2: of a novelty, not just because of her age, but
Speaker 2: because she was a woman as well. But she had
Speaker 2: her sight set on becoming a country music star. And
Speaker 2: so the day after she graduated high school, the day
Speaker 2: after she graduated high school, she got on a bus
Speaker 2: for Nashville to move there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, amazing, nineteen sixty four. And very soon after she
Speaker 3: moved there, she met a man that would become her
Speaker 3: husband and a mainstay in her life to this day,
Speaker 3: who is remarkably hard to find stuff about. His name
Speaker 3: is Carl Dean. They met it very famously at a
Speaker 3: laundromat when she was eighteen and he was twenty one.
Speaker 3: Married a couple of years later. And I think a
Speaker 3: lot of people that don't know a lot about Dolly
Speaker 3: Parton think she might be single or something. Because she
Speaker 3: never had kids. But she's been married to Carl Dean
Speaker 3: since nineteen sixty six and he doesn't want to be
Speaker 3: in the limelight. He never did. He's her biggest fan
Speaker 3: and supporter. She's always said, you know, off the stage,
Speaker 3: but he just doesn't want any part of the limelight.
Speaker 3: And it's hard to even find a lot of pictures
Speaker 3: of this guy. There's a handful out there. But he
Speaker 3: started an asphalt laying business in the late seventies, still
Speaker 3: runs that business today, which is just amazing. And yeah,
Speaker 3: I read an article from a couple of years ago.
Speaker 3: She was like, you know, Carl and I we like
Speaker 3: to run errand we go to the twenty four hour stores,
Speaker 3: you know, in the middle of the night, like Walmart
Speaker 3: and places, and she said, and there are fewer people
Speaker 3: there to come up to me. And she said, I
Speaker 3: don't mind it. I love people, she said, I just
Speaker 3: don't want it to get in the way of our shopping, right,
Speaker 3: And you know, Carl's not wild about it. So they
Speaker 3: just live a very simple kind of pure life together.
Speaker 3: I think, outside the limelight.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've read an interview with her somewhere and she
Speaker 2: said that in her opinion, if she's out in public,
Speaker 2: that time belongs to her fans, so she's not She
Speaker 2: doesn't have a problem with people coming up to her
Speaker 2: asking for autographs. She knows that she's out in public
Speaker 2: and that's a risk that she runs right. Sure, but
Speaker 2: her leisure time, her time away is like secluded off
Speaker 2: with Carl, just the two of them. Usually. Maybe she
Speaker 2: has a very close best friend I can't remember her name.
Speaker 2: They go everywhere together, so she's almost like a stand
Speaker 2: in for Carl when Dolly's traveling around.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and she's always been very her persona is very flirty,
Speaker 3: and she's always sort of flirted around with In fact,
Speaker 3: no friends that have worked on like commercial shoots with
Speaker 3: her and they were like, man, she's the biggest flirt
Speaker 3: you would ever know, and that's just her personality. And
Speaker 3: she said that Karl understands that, and that's just how
Speaker 3: she sort of has fun and relates to people, and
Speaker 3: it's always very innocent, and I just think it's kind
Speaker 3: of kind of cute and fun. Yep, for sure, I
Speaker 3: want her to flirt with me, you know, I think,
Speaker 3: is what I'm saying.
Speaker 2: This this episode might be your big break, Chuck. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so would you just like turn bright red and like
Speaker 2: dig your the toe of your foot into this.
Speaker 3: I kind of am a little bright red. I thought
Speaker 3: it was the stuff you should know. Sign in here
Speaker 3: casting a red beam on my face.
Speaker 2: No, that's you thinking about being flirted with by Dolly Partner.
Speaker 2: I know.
Speaker 3: Well, dude, I grew up as you did, but I'm,
Speaker 3: you know, a little bit older. Like the heyday of
Speaker 3: early Dolly was when I was a kid, and of
Speaker 3: course my dad was in love with her, and you know,
Speaker 3: it was just she was one of the biggest stars
Speaker 3: in the world, and my parents were kind of into
Speaker 3: country music, so she was just sort of prevalent in
Speaker 3: our household somehow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, my introduction to her was through nine to five.
Speaker 2: If my mom that that whole message and the idea
Speaker 2: behind it was right up my mom's alley, So she
Speaker 2: would watch it with her hands clasped together.
Speaker 1: At the side of her face like that.
Speaker 2: Just an editor adoration of everybody, including Dolly Parton too.
Speaker 2: I think my family was never really into country music,
Speaker 2: so I think that that was like a big introduction
Speaker 2: and probably a win over for my family. Was nine
Speaker 2: to five.
Speaker 3: All right, Well, we'll talk about nine to five and
Speaker 3: crossover success more.
Speaker 1: It's a good setup.
Speaker 3: But how about we take a break, Yes, and we'll
Speaker 3: be right back with more Dolly parton.
Speaker 2: Okay, So we're talking about Dolly becoming a star. Like
Speaker 2: she's had a couple of record contracts, nothing serious though,
Speaker 2: but then in nineteen sixty five she saw him with
Speaker 2: Monument Records. That was her big her first big record contract,
Speaker 2: I read. But they wanted her to be a pop singer,
Speaker 2: which is kind of ironic because she actually would kind
Speaker 2: of become a pop singer later on in her career,
Speaker 2: But at first she was like, no way, Like have
Speaker 2: you seen my house? And do you know how many
Speaker 2: people are in my family? I'm not a pop singer.
Speaker 2: I'm a country singer, right, Yeah, So she persisted and
Speaker 2: hung in there, and they ended up like folding and
Speaker 2: giving in, and she went on to become a full
Speaker 2: fledged country singer.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Nineteen sixty seven her first record Hello I'm Dolly, which
Speaker 3: is just great. How they used to do records like
Speaker 3: that in time like that when you like introduce her
Speaker 3: to the world. But you know, as would become a
Speaker 3: thing like in her career, most of the songs that
Speaker 3: she's well known for most of the songs she's recorded.
Speaker 3: She's done, you know, plenty of cup because everyone does that,
Speaker 3: especially in country music. But she is most well known
Speaker 3: as a songwriter, and we'll get into that more in
Speaker 3: a little bit. But she wrote two Now Libya has
Speaker 3: a number twenty four. But I saw that there were
Speaker 3: both top twenty in the country charts, Dumb Blonde, which
Speaker 3: is written by a guy named Curly Putman, great name,
Speaker 3: and Something Fishy written by Dolly, and I think the
Speaker 3: album itself was a top twenty hit her debut, right crazy,
Speaker 3: you know in the country charts, right off out of
Speaker 3: the gate.
Speaker 2: Yes, I was looking up Something Fishy and it's about
Speaker 2: a woman who's become convinced that her husband's fishing trips
Speaker 2: aren't actually fishing trips and that he's running around on her.
Speaker 2: So one of the lines is, I guess some large
Speaker 2: mouth bass left that lipstick on your shirt. I don't
Speaker 2: think you're a fisherman, honey, I think you're a flirt.
Speaker 2: That's like perfect debut. Dolly like at what age, like
Speaker 2: nineteen I think is how old she has? Yeah, pretty great.
Speaker 3: And Porter Wagoner is someone that we talked about on
Speaker 3: our Grand ole Opry Show and he had the Porter
Speaker 3: Wagoner Show. He hires young Dolly to replace his other
Speaker 3: young woman sidekick singer, and basically she elevated the show
Speaker 3: to the point where it was a number one, the
Speaker 3: number one syndicated show in the country radio show. And
Speaker 3: they started doing duets together and albums together, including their
Speaker 3: first one, Just Between You and Me in nineteen sixty eight.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they started touring a lot too, and she
Speaker 2: learned a tremendous amount about touring, performing live, the music business.
Speaker 2: Everything she needed to learn early on came from touring
Speaker 2: with Porter Wagner. But he was also really well aware
Speaker 2: that he had like a real cash register on his hands. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and he kept her under his thumb as much as
Speaker 2: he could, both emotionally blackmailing her, I get the impression,
Speaker 2: but also locking her into just really floyd of contracts
Speaker 2: because she might not have known what she was signing.
Speaker 2: She probably did and just figured like, Okay, at least
Speaker 2: it's gonna help me get to where I'm going. That's
Speaker 2: the likelier explanation if you ask me. But he was
Speaker 2: definitely in charge for the first many years of her
Speaker 2: serious career.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: But because she's Dolly Parton and so beloved. When they
Speaker 3: eventually broke up their relationship, I think it was kind
Speaker 3: of rough, and she ended up writing a song I
Speaker 3: Will Always Love You about that relationship, and ultimately they
Speaker 3: worked it out and she reconciled and was at his
Speaker 3: deathbed with his family, and it was kind of one
Speaker 3: of those no hard feelings kind of situations.
Speaker 2: Oh really, I've read that his last dying words were,
Speaker 2: I'll never forgive you. That's what I'm gonna say on
Speaker 2: my deathbed. No, I'm just gonna like wave my finger
Speaker 2: around the room to everybody standing there.
Speaker 1: And we're all gonna be like, is he talking about me?
Speaker 2: Exactly? You guys can spend the rest of your lives
Speaker 2: figuring it out.
Speaker 1: Of me able to just look at me and say,
Speaker 1: he's talking about you.
Speaker 2: Totally.
Speaker 1: Uh So, they while they were a duet.
Speaker 2: Oh wait, wait, Chuck, wait, wait, hold on, one more
Speaker 2: thing you brought up I Will Always love You, which
Speaker 2: everybody knows one of probably her most one of her
Speaker 2: most famous songs, arguably her other most famous song.
Speaker 1: Joe Lene great song.
Speaker 2: She apparently wrote those songs on the same day. Start
Speaker 2: to finish. Isn't that amazing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean she she now says, like, you know,
Speaker 3: if it wasn't the same day, it was in the
Speaker 3: within a couple of days of each other, but like,
Speaker 3: either way, it's remarkable.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's possible it was the same day. She
Speaker 2: just doesn't remember.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: That really like kind of goes to show what kind
Speaker 2: of uh she she was drinking cups of ambition left
Speaker 2: and right, apparently, because not only does that story potentially true,
Speaker 2: she also put out twenty five albums yeah, both d
Speaker 2: us with Porter Wagner and then some solo albums in
Speaker 2: the five period between nineteen sixty eight and nineteen seventy three.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean that's remarkable she started, and that's kind
Speaker 3: of where I was headed.
Speaker 1: Anyway.
Speaker 3: She kind of started recording her own solo stuff as
Speaker 3: she was. You know, it's kind of obvious she just
Speaker 3: had she was too prolific of a songwriter. I mean,
Speaker 3: she supposedly her quote is that she's written more than
Speaker 3: three thousand songs and three of them are good. She's
Speaker 3: also humble, another reason people love Dolly Parton. But she
Speaker 3: had too much to say early on, and so started
Speaker 3: making solo records while she was still with Wagoner, and
Speaker 3: it was in that that time period, I think in
Speaker 3: the early seventies is when you know those iconic songs
Speaker 3: Jolene and I Will Always Love You came out.
Speaker 2: Right, but still under the tutelage of Porter Wagner.
Speaker 3: Right, yeah, I mean those are solo albums and I
Speaker 3: think I Will Always Love You. It was about them
Speaker 3: splitting apart, So it was sort of right there at
Speaker 3: the end.
Speaker 2: I think it definitely was. And I heard a story
Speaker 2: of years back that he said, Okay, I'll let you
Speaker 2: out of your contract if you let me produce this
Speaker 2: amazing song, and she yeah, I will always love you, right,
Speaker 2: And then apparently he turned around and sued her anyway
Speaker 2: for breach of contract. But she she got out of it.
Speaker 2: She got out of this this this terrible contract, this
Speaker 2: exploitive contract. She got out from under a very domineering mentor.
Speaker 2: And this is a really big time of transition for
Speaker 2: her because not only did she get away from Porter Wagner,
Speaker 2: which was enormous, because in a sense, she was like
Speaker 2: a pinball that had just been plunged when she was
Speaker 2: released from from Wagner, just looking for like the next
Speaker 2: bumper to just shoot her off in another direction. That's
Speaker 2: my analogy, buddy. Yeah, and that's exactly what happened. But
Speaker 2: she also had to break up with her family band,
Speaker 2: like they were her original backing band. She had to
Speaker 2: be like, I gotta get better musicians, you guys. And
Speaker 2: she made some really hard decisions, but they they ended
Speaker 2: up paying off, and from what I understand, there were
Speaker 2: no last hard feelings from it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's pretty great. She hosted a TV show for
Speaker 3: one season, just like us. It was called Dolly. You know,
Speaker 3: back then they had all those great variety shows. This
Speaker 3: was seventy six into seventy seven. And then a very
Speaker 3: important man comes into her life by the name of
Speaker 3: Sandy Gallen, who was a uber manager got the Beatles
Speaker 3: on Ed Sulimon would later manage Michael Jackson and marbar
Speaker 3: streisand and Cher and Sandy Gallen was a pretty instrumental
Speaker 3: person for a couple of reasons.
Speaker 1: One is.
Speaker 3: Kind of encouraging the crossover success. Like he booked her
Speaker 3: at the bottom line in the Greenwich Village. Who you know,
Speaker 3: everyone from Springsteen to lou Reid were playing there.
Speaker 2: Like Andy Warhol came and watched her show. There's an
Speaker 2: awesome picture of them sitting together.
Speaker 1: Yeah, talk about crossover.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. And she was nervous. I saw that she
Speaker 2: was nervous on the on the way to being scared.
Speaker 1: I'm sure. Yeah.
Speaker 3: He had her tour Europe, exposed her internationally. He took
Speaker 3: her to Studio fifty four, which is probably where she
Speaker 3: also hung out with Andy Warhol. But the other big
Speaker 3: reason is that Sandy Gallen was gay. He died like
Speaker 3: five years ago. And this was a very instrumental relationship.
Speaker 3: And I get the impression, you know, Dolly is very
Speaker 3: famous for being a sort of an icon in the
Speaker 3: LGTVQ community.
Speaker 2: Yeah, from very early on.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And it seems like this is kind of where
Speaker 3: it all started, was having this relationship with Sandy, and
Speaker 3: you know, just the gay community wrapping their arms around
Speaker 3: her early on, not necessarily because you know, she had
Speaker 3: a gay manager, but you know, I don't think it hurt.
Speaker 2: Right, And The New York Times wrote that she got
Speaker 2: a warm welcome in San Francisco from transgender fans and
Speaker 2: quote other exotic urban cult audiences.
Speaker 3: Well, Dolly's always said, you know, she's one of those
Speaker 3: love is love types, and you know, it's just like
Speaker 3: it's the way to live life. Like she doesn't judge people,
Speaker 3: and she never has, and she's always just embraced like
Speaker 3: whatever community wants to love her music, Like why would she?
Speaker 3: I never get it when people like intentionally sort of
Speaker 3: turn audiences off, right, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know for sure, for sure, But also like
Speaker 2: it's that's so true and it's so prevalent when when
Speaker 2: you read about her, watch interviews with her, just listen
Speaker 2: to her talk, you're almost like, what's your angle, dolly, right,
Speaker 2: what are you really up to here?
Speaker 3: Her big crossover hit was Here You Come Again, which
Speaker 3: was considered a pop song. I mean, I've always kind
Speaker 3: of thought it was a country song, I guess because
Speaker 3: her voice is in it and she insisted on steel guitar,
Speaker 3: so it still had.
Speaker 1: A little country. But it's like a perfect song.
Speaker 2: It's a perfect crossover, Like it's exactly perfectly balanced, Like
Speaker 2: there couldn't have been a better song to transition from
Speaker 2: full on country singer to country pop singer.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And it went number one on the country chart,
Speaker 3: number three on the pop charts.
Speaker 1: Album went platinum.
Speaker 3: And this is you know, the late seventies when she
Speaker 3: really really really blew up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was that. She just took off like a
Speaker 2: rocket from there. One of the things that she did
Speaker 2: very wisely in the late seventies early eighties, right around
Speaker 2: this time, was just hop on the TV circuit. Y
Speaker 2: She's been on at least a few hundred TV appearances,
Speaker 2: but a lot of them took place in the seventies
Speaker 2: and eighties when she was just making herself known, making
Speaker 2: herself a household name. And none of this was by accident,
Speaker 2: Like she's she's wanted to be a megas star since
Speaker 2: she was a kid, and this was part of She
Speaker 2: apparently makes a lot of lists and they turn out
Speaker 2: to kind of be five year plans, and I'm sure
Speaker 2: getting on the talk show circuit was part of one
Speaker 2: of those lists.
Speaker 3: And that explains why as a kid growing up in
Speaker 3: the seventies, I saw a lot of Dolly Parton exactly.
Speaker 2: She was everywhere Dolly wanted you to see a lot
Speaker 2: of Dolly Parton.
Speaker 3: In the eighties is when she continued some of her
Speaker 3: collaborations with other artists, very famously with Kenny Rodgers with
Speaker 3: Islands in the Stream, huge massive hit, Haven't Heard It,
Speaker 3: And then nineteen eighty seven, my favorite collaboration at least
Speaker 3: came out and maybe my favorite Dolly stuff period, oh yeah,
Speaker 3: was the album Trio Yeah, that she recorded with Linda
Speaker 3: Ronstadt and Emilu Harris. Just three of the best voices
Speaker 3: in the history of music coming together to sing together.
Speaker 3: They ended up making three albums over the years together.
Speaker 3: So if you haven't listened to any of this stuff,
Speaker 3: highly recommend Trio from nineteen eighty seven.
Speaker 2: She also released some bluegrass albums in the late nineties,
Speaker 2: The Grass Is Blue, Little Sparrow, Halo's and Horns, And
Speaker 2: then she released her first Christmas album in thirty years
Speaker 2: back in twenty twenty, A Holly Dolly Christmas, which is
Speaker 2: pretty good. It's cute, But I think the best Christmas
Speaker 2: album she released was Once Upon a Christmas in nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty four. There's a lot of Kenny Rogers on it.
Speaker 3: I made a joke this last Christmas on Instagram. I
Speaker 3: think that like probably fifty percent of Dolly Parton's Christmas
Speaker 3: songs are about sex. It's true where there's like sexual overtones,
Speaker 3: right exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, it's good stuff.
Speaker 2: But that nineteen eighty four album has hard candy Christmas
Speaker 2: on it, which is what I mean, you have it,
Speaker 2: maybe your best her best one, if you ask me.
Speaker 1: Great song.
Speaker 3: All right, So now let's talk a little bit more
Speaker 3: about her songwriting. I think that's the thing that she's
Speaker 3: sort of most proud of. She said in a twenty
Speaker 3: twenty book, if I had to choose just one thing
Speaker 3: to be, would choose to be a songwriter. She's always
Speaker 3: said that she loves writing from the male point of view.
Speaker 3: She loves writing songs for men because a lot of
Speaker 3: her songs are sort of narrative story type songs, and
Speaker 3: she has written a lot of big, huge hits for
Speaker 3: people like Merle Haggard and Kenny Rogers and Hank Williams
Speaker 3: Junior and all kinds of dudes.
Speaker 2: Right. She also plays a bunch of instruments. The guitar,
Speaker 2: she says, is her strongest, and there's a lot of
Speaker 2: other string instruments that she can play. I saw a
Speaker 2: video of one of her concerts. She's got a banjo
Speaker 2: slung around her, yeah, her like she's got a strap
Speaker 2: hanging from a strap while she's playing a fiddle really fast.
Speaker 2: It's pretty amazing. But if you really want to be
Speaker 2: amazed by Dolly, you should watch her play the saxophone,
Speaker 2: and in particular, at the Glastonbury Music Festival in twenty
Speaker 2: fourteen in the UK, in front of a crowd of
Speaker 2: one hundred thousand, she busted out her yackety sacks, Yeah,
Speaker 2: the Benny Hill theme song, and it just Hill.
Speaker 1: It is.
Speaker 3: That whole show is a fun watch because it's you know,
Speaker 3: it's in It's at the Glastonbury Festival and it's like,
Speaker 3: I don't know, I think your legendary status just like
Speaker 3: grew with that appearance.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, Like she was, you know, kind of a
Speaker 2: cult favorite in the UK and then she became like
Speaker 2: a like a pop culture favorite after that show.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Nine to five, the movie that you mentioned before in
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty was when she got into movie making, and
Speaker 3: it is a movie.
Speaker 1: Boy.
Speaker 3: Not only does it hold up today, but it is
Speaker 3: that was ahead of its time and like even more
Speaker 3: relevant today than it probably was then.
Speaker 2: Which is sad if you stop and think about it.
Speaker 1: No, no, totally sad.
Speaker 2: But it was based on an actual movement called nine
Speaker 2: to five, the nine to five movement from the early
Speaker 2: seventies that I guess Jane Fonda was aware of because
Speaker 2: she was one of the creators behind the movie nine
Speaker 2: to five, And that was an actual like movement led
Speaker 2: by Secretary starting in Boston and it spread around the
Speaker 2: country and they were protesting sexual harassment low p getting
Speaker 2: passed over for promotions. And they had a great slogan
Speaker 2: that I saw raises not.
Speaker 1: Roses, raises not roses. Yeah, I love that.
Speaker 2: I love it too, like your T shirt exactly.
Speaker 1: But some money exactly. I buy my own.
Speaker 2: Flowers, right, I can buy my own flowers.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's what the back of the T shirt said.
Speaker 3: And then parentheses quit pinching my butt.
Speaker 2: Plus also, that's a Miley Cyrus song. Who is Dolly
Speaker 2: Parton's god daughter?
Speaker 1: That's right?
Speaker 3: Yeah, and Dolly credits that relationship with the fact that
Speaker 3: millennials love Dolly.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I wasn't aware of this, so everybody knows. Even
Speaker 2: I know that Miley Cyrus was Hannah Montana on Nickelodeon
Speaker 2: from I think two thousand and six to twenty eleven, right,
Speaker 2: and she would have Dolly on here or there as
Speaker 2: aunt Dolly like her aunt, Hannah Montana's aunt. And I
Speaker 2: guess like millennials just grew up watching that and that
Speaker 2: she just exposed herself not literally but figuratively to an
Speaker 2: entirely new generation, and it stuck like, that's that's how
Speaker 2: they that's how they met Dolly, and they just kept
Speaker 2: following her and loving her from that point on.
Speaker 1: I love it.
Speaker 3: She was in a bunch of movies over the years,
Speaker 3: Best Little Worehouse in Texas with Burt Reynolds of course
Speaker 3: part of the ensemble, and Steele Magnolia's. Very disappointingly, Olivia
Speaker 3: doesn't mention my favorite Dolly second favorite Dolly Parton movie,
Speaker 3: which was Rhinestone with Sylvester Stallone, one of my big
Speaker 3: HBO movies. Early on, I watched that thing over and
Speaker 3: over again. Stallone sings. Have you ever seen it?
Speaker 2: No? I never have. I turned I turned the TV
Speaker 2: off after Life Force.
Speaker 3: You should check out Rhinestone because still you know that
Speaker 3: the premises She's to make a country star out of
Speaker 3: Sylvester Stallone, and he has a song in there called
Speaker 3: Drinkenstein instead of Frankenstein, and the chorus is Budweiser. You've
Speaker 3: created a monster and call him drinking style.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: But still unreally sings, and it's.
Speaker 3: Just I think it's known probably as a bad movie,
Speaker 3: but it has a very special place in my heart.
Speaker 2: It sounds like the prequel to Tulsa King. So she
Speaker 2: also did you mention sand Dollar yet?
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 2: She founded a production company with Sandy Gallan, her longtime
Speaker 2: manager and friend, and they went on to produce movies
Speaker 2: like Father of the Bride, Yeah, Buffy the Vampire Slayer,
Speaker 2: the movie.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: She also did a straight Talk which she was in
Speaker 2: where she plays a woman who accidentally becomes a radio
Speaker 2: host and of course just shoots into the stratosphere and popularity.
Speaker 1: I never saw that.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah it was. It was okay, okay, not her
Speaker 2: best work, but still she was amazing at Steele Magnolia's.
Speaker 2: I mean, like, if you if you go back and yeah,
Speaker 2: if you go back and watch some of those scenes
Speaker 2: between her and her husband in particular, it's she's a
Speaker 2: really good actress.
Speaker 3: No, she's good and in fact, but the Shelby I
Speaker 3: just did was more Sally Field, not that I think
Speaker 3: about it.
Speaker 2: I detected Hannah sally Field in there.
Speaker 3: All right, I think let's take another break and then
Speaker 3: we'll This was going to go a little long, but
Speaker 3: that's okay because we're about to dive into Dollywood right
Speaker 3: after this. Shelby all right, my friend, here we are.
Speaker 3: I'll set it up with how it starts, and then
Speaker 3: you can just take over because you've actually been there.
Speaker 3: But in an interview in nineteen eighty two with Barbara Walters,
Speaker 3: Dolly Parton said something about being interest did in opening
Speaker 3: up a theme park back home.
Speaker 1: And there was a theme park.
Speaker 3: Silver Dollar City, in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, and the owners,
Speaker 3: Jack and Pete Hershand heard this interview, gave her a
Speaker 3: call and was like, let's get together on this, and
Speaker 3: they did to great success.
Speaker 2: Yeah, four years later Dollywood opened. It reopened as Dollywood.
Speaker 2: I should say, just that first year they doubled their
Speaker 2: entries to one point three million people coming. And that's
Speaker 2: not just a full year, Like it snows and everything
Speaker 2: kind of shuts down in the winter time in Pigeon
Speaker 2: Forger and the Smoky So I'm guessing they crammed a
Speaker 2: lot of those people in in a very short amount
Speaker 2: of time, probably summer. I don't know why I'm going
Speaker 2: off on this tangent, but it just seemed to work.
Speaker 1: They close in the winter be.
Speaker 2: Quiet too, So it was a success right out of
Speaker 2: the gate, I should say. And a little known fact
Speaker 2: or it's a rumor that a lot of people don't
Speaker 2: realize as actual fact. They period a time capsule there
Speaker 2: on opening day and it contains an unreleased Dolly song
Speaker 2: No Way that is not to be open until I
Speaker 2: think she's ninety nine years old?
Speaker 1: Wow, which is what is she now? Seventy six, seventy eight?
Speaker 2: I think?
Speaker 1: Okay, so it's it's close.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we can wait.
Speaker 3: She sees it yet, Oh we'll wait. So tell me
Speaker 3: about Dollywood. I want to I want to know more.
Speaker 2: So it is a you can definitely believe that it
Speaker 2: used to be a silver dollar city. They preserved a
Speaker 2: lot of stuff. There's a coal fired train that kind
Speaker 2: of takes you around on some neat vistas and everything.
Speaker 2: There's We went and we went around Christmas time, which
Speaker 2: kind of undermines my argument about being shutting down in
Speaker 2: the winter. We went for Humi's birthday actually like one year,
Speaker 2: and there was like a Christmas show where there was
Speaker 2: like singing and dancing. But it was so corny that
Speaker 2: I was waiting for everybody to be like, oh, you know,
Speaker 2: we're just joking, here's the real show. It never happened.
Speaker 2: It was just that like kitchy am in earnest, Yeah,
Speaker 2: and just corny, but it was very sweet in retrospect,
Speaker 2: especially hard to sit through, but very sweet. And then
Speaker 2: there's just a lot of like people dipping candles, there's
Speaker 2: tons of food to eat. There's a roller coaster that
Speaker 2: neither you me nor I went on. But there's a
Speaker 2: museum there that's closed temporarily because apparently they're reimagining it.
Speaker 2: But it was originally called the Chasing Rainbows Museum. And
Speaker 2: Dolly Parton is a just self professed packrat. She saved everything,
Speaker 2: chuck everything. The Coat of Many Colors that she sings about,
Speaker 2: it's there. You can see it in real life right there,
Speaker 2: and it's the tiniest, cutest little thing you've ever seen
Speaker 2: in your entire life. It's so tiny, and.
Speaker 1: When she was a kid, right out of all rags that.
Speaker 2: She sang about in that Coat of Many Colors and
Speaker 2: it's what a great song. But then just just to
Speaker 2: love that song and then see the actual coat and
Speaker 2: then just see how dinky it is. It was just amazing.
Speaker 2: Those lists I told you she used to keep, she
Speaker 2: kept those, Those are on display, wigs, rhinestones everywhere. But
Speaker 2: it's not just like this odor tribute to Dolly. It's
Speaker 2: a genuine, like curated look into her whole career, and
Speaker 2: it's it was one of the best museums I've ever
Speaker 2: been to in my life of any kind.
Speaker 1: Why didn't you guys ride the roller coaster?
Speaker 2: We're both scared of roller coasters.
Speaker 1: Oh, I don't think I remembered that.
Speaker 2: Yes, I've been scared of roller coasters for decades, but
Speaker 2: I feel like I'm starting to come out of it. Okay,
Speaker 2: And I might go challenge myself and ride a few
Speaker 2: roller coasters this summer and see if I'm correct or
Speaker 2: if I'm really really wrong.
Speaker 3: Well, you should go to six Flags with Ruby and I,
Speaker 3: because there's nothing like getting your courage worked up than
Speaker 3: a seven year old who will ride anything, okay, staring
Speaker 3: you in the face.
Speaker 2: Okay, all right, I may use that. That's just the
Speaker 2: elixir I'm looking for.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, she'll go on whatever. And she's just like
Speaker 3: she wouldn't understand. She'd be like, why don't you want
Speaker 3: to go on it? What do you mean you're scared?
Speaker 2: I don't You're of ruining things for me.
Speaker 3: Uh, well, I want to go to Dollywood, so maybe
Speaker 3: we can go to six Wags and then Dollywood and
Speaker 3: just do a theme park round up.
Speaker 2: I strongly recommend it because there's like all sorts of
Speaker 2: stuff in nearby Gatlinburg and Pigeon Ford, Ripley's Museums and
Speaker 2: just all sorts of just cool, super kitchy touristy stuff.
Speaker 2: I think, Oh, what's his name? Uh, the guy who
Speaker 2: sings Proud to be an American?
Speaker 1: Lee Green Greenwood.
Speaker 2: There's the Lee Greenwood Cafe where they no joke, play
Speaker 2: those song oh no, loop over and over again. The
Speaker 2: whole time You're like, where's the next song? They don't
Speaker 2: play the next song.
Speaker 3: I heard that song every night of the summer for
Speaker 3: like five summers when I worked at the Stow Mountain
Speaker 3: laser shop.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I'll bet I.
Speaker 1: Got my fill of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Uh, So we can talk a little bit more about
Speaker 3: her politics she's and this is where the sociologists and
Speaker 3: anthropologists come in. There's a sociologist named Treci McMillan Cottum
Speaker 3: that has written about how black women have always looked
Speaker 3: up to Dolly Parton as a role model, even though
Speaker 3: she is like it's a very specific sort of white
Speaker 3: Southern thing that she embodies. Again, just you know, testifies
Speaker 3: to her crossover appeal that she is to be admired
Speaker 3: by anybody.
Speaker 1: Her Q score.
Speaker 3: If you don't know what a Q score is, it's
Speaker 3: a marketing tool that basically there's a bunch of things
Speaker 3: that go into your Q score, but it's basically how
Speaker 3: how much people like you, how much they recognize your name.
Speaker 3: And her Q score is like legendarily one of the
Speaker 3: top Q scores of all time celebrity.
Speaker 2: Was she has a high positive Q score. They also
Speaker 2: do a negative Q score and she's a very low
Speaker 2: negative Q score, So she's among the most beloved and
Speaker 2: among the least disliked people in the entire world.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I don't want to know my Q score.
Speaker 2: I looked it up. We don't have one yet.
Speaker 1: Okay, good.
Speaker 2: But I was reading this article on the Conversation and
Speaker 2: these two Australian marketing people were trying to figure out
Speaker 2: who would have been Australia's Dolly, and they landed on
Speaker 2: Hugh Jackman. And I'm like, I can't disagree with that.
Speaker 1: He's pretty likable.
Speaker 2: Sure everybody likes Hugh Jackman. Yeah, I would agree with that,
Speaker 2: even though he did the Greatest Showman, right people still
Speaker 2: like Hugh Jackman.
Speaker 1: The anthropologist comes in.
Speaker 3: A man named Jonathan Zilberg in nineteen ninety five talked
Speaker 3: about how she was loved in Zimbabwe, of all places,
Speaker 3: and again it's just like, you know, pick a country
Speaker 3: and chances are people there love Dolly Parton.
Speaker 2: And in Dolly Parton's America. And then they talk about
Speaker 2: how Nelson Mandela, while he was in prison in South Africa,
Speaker 2: got his jailers to play Joe Lean for the whole Yeah,
Speaker 2: holds in jail basically all Shawshank redemption.
Speaker 3: Uh huh, pretty cool, Pretty cool. And like you said earlier,
Speaker 3: she basically just avoids politics. She doesn't let any politician
Speaker 3: on either side use her music. If a Democrat uses it,
Speaker 3: she shuts him down. If a Republican uses it, she
Speaker 3: shuts him down. She just sort of side steps all
Speaker 3: that stuff. She's always been, you know, growing up. Of course,
Speaker 3: in the seventies there were a lot of playground jokes
Speaker 3: about Dolly Parton's breast size.
Speaker 1: She was very well known for.
Speaker 3: It, and she's always been the first one to jump
Speaker 3: in and joke about it herself. Instead of being like
Speaker 3: the butt of the joke, she can just go along
Speaker 3: with it, and that's just that's another really likable quality
Speaker 3: as someone who can and can laugh at themselves and
Speaker 3: not take things too seriously.
Speaker 2: I also saw it put that she she knows that
Speaker 2: these jokes are going to be made anyway, so she
Speaker 2: can diffuse them by getting out in front of them
Speaker 2: and topping, you know, the lame jokes that like old
Speaker 2: talk show hosts would make.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I saw once she said that she burned her braw
Speaker 2: and it took the fire department three days to put
Speaker 2: it out, like that kind of stuff. That's hilarious. That
Speaker 2: was her joke.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's good, that's very funny.
Speaker 2: So I think we mentioned this before. Do you know
Speaker 2: that Dolly the sheep, the first cloned animal on the planet,
Speaker 2: was named Dolly because she was grown from a mammary gland.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I can't remember where we talked about that,
Speaker 2: but it really just goes to show like that's how
Speaker 2: ubiquitous Dolly Parton's boobs were in the twentieth century, Like
Speaker 2: they were as big as she was. Basically, Yeah, they
Speaker 2: were definitely part of her intended they were definitely part
Speaker 2: of her brand for sure.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, she was smart enough to lean into it.
Speaker 3: Another thing that she had done over the years is
Speaker 3: there are a lot of really dark songs that she's
Speaker 3: written about. Even though she's never kind of outright considered
Speaker 3: herself a feminist, she very much is and a lot
Speaker 3: of the songs she's written over the years have been
Speaker 3: very dark songs about women who are either abandoned or
Speaker 3: suffering from sexual double standards.
Speaker 1: Or there's one brutal song.
Speaker 3: From nineteen seventy called Daddy Come and Get Me about
Speaker 3: a true story of a relative in her family that
Speaker 3: was basically institutionalized by her husband. So she's never been
Speaker 3: afraid to go down sort of in the tradition of
Speaker 3: the old sort of dark country murder ballad thing, go
Speaker 3: down these darker roads with some of the songs she's written.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I saw that she considers herself not a feminist,
Speaker 2: but in favor of all women. She's for all women.
Speaker 2: So it's like she doesn't subscribe to the movement part,
Speaker 2: but what the movement's ultimately about, she's totally in favor with,
Speaker 2: and that's super her. She made a very rare, overt
Speaker 2: statement when she came out in support of Black Lives Matter,
Speaker 2: and at a time where it was like, you're casting
Speaker 2: your lot one way or another, and she stood up
Speaker 2: for it, which is pretty.
Speaker 1: Cool she did.
Speaker 3: She also in twenty eighteen that was at Dollywood, the
Speaker 3: Dixie Stampede, she changed the name to Dolly Parton Stampede
Speaker 3: after people complained about the whole Dixie connotation and Civil
Speaker 3: War theme.
Speaker 1: She changed that up, and she was.
Speaker 3: Just like, you know, I never really thought about, you know,
Speaker 3: the Confederate imagery, meaning what it meant to people, and
Speaker 3: so she was happily changed it. And that's just the
Speaker 3: kind of person she is, I think.
Speaker 2: And she got gufh for that, and she got guff
Speaker 2: for supporting Black Lives Matter from some of her her
Speaker 2: right leaning fans. But she can always explain herself, you know,
Speaker 2: and she does so in such a great way that
Speaker 2: you're just kind of like, well, fine, it's hard to
Speaker 2: be you can't keep a grudge against her, even if
Speaker 2: she goes against you politically, but she just so rarely
Speaker 2: does it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, agreed, she is.
Speaker 3: We're gonna wind it down with her business in philanthropy,
Speaker 3: very savvy business person from the very beginning. She was
Speaker 3: smart enough to hang on to her the rights to
Speaker 3: her own music and never give him up. Even when
Speaker 3: Elvis Presley came Colin and wanted to cover I Will
Speaker 3: Always Love You. He wanted half the publishing rights, and
Speaker 3: she was like, no way, He'd take a walk Elvis Presley.
Speaker 2: He didn't. Apparently, Colonel Tom called her up on the
Speaker 2: morning of the scheduled record varing session and sprung that
Speaker 2: on her, and she turned him down. And she was
Speaker 2: hoping that Elvis was as disappointed as she was. But
Speaker 2: that took a lot of gumption, especially to have it
Speaker 2: sprung on you like that, and she said, Nope, not
Speaker 2: doing it. But that's one of the things that made
Speaker 2: her so incredibly wealthy. Like apparently her music catalog has
Speaker 2: a net worth of about one hundred and fifty million
Speaker 2: dollars and brings in about six to eight million dollars
Speaker 2: a year for her, according to I think Forbes, and
Speaker 2: then her steak in Dollywood is her her most valuable asset.
Speaker 2: I think it's like one hundred and sixty five million dollars.
Speaker 2: Pretty neat.
Speaker 1: She has done quite well for herself.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she I mean these days she's she's not stopping either.
Speaker 3: She's she's on Duncan Hine's buttermilk biscuit mix with her
Speaker 3: little cartoon face. They have fragrances branded by Dolly. They
Speaker 3: have pet clothes that she's branded with, Like just all
Speaker 3: kinds of things. She's not afraid to license her image
Speaker 3: for sure.
Speaker 2: We've got that the Duncan Hines frosting in our pantry.
Speaker 2: Do you the chocolate chocolate cream frosting. And then one
Speaker 2: other thing I saw, chuck. She wrote a book. Co
Speaker 2: wrote a book with James Patterson, one of the best,
Speaker 2: one of the most favorite novelists in the entire world.
Speaker 2: It's called Run Rows Run, and it's a thriller based
Speaker 2: kind of loosely on Dolly's story of making it in
Speaker 2: the music basins. Oh wow, yeah, I think it just
Speaker 2: came out.
Speaker 1: Okay, let me have to check that out. Yeah.
Speaker 3: She is very charitable as well. She started the Dollywood
Speaker 3: Foundation in nineteen eighty eight just to get literacy going
Speaker 3: in her home county, and it grew and grew and
Speaker 3: grew to the point where it is now in the US, Canada, Australia,
Speaker 3: the UK, and Ireland, and to date the program has
Speaker 3: given out more than two hundred and four million books
Speaker 3: may across these countries. And you know she'll build a
Speaker 3: hospital in her county. Anytime there's like wildfires nearby, she's
Speaker 3: chipping in. She very famously donated a million dollars to
Speaker 3: Vanderbilt University Medical Center for COVID nineteen vaccine research. And
Speaker 3: you know, people don't credit her with the MODERNA vaccine,
Speaker 3: but they're like, that million dollars was instrumental in getting
Speaker 3: that vaccine to trial.
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she also was like everybody go get jabbed.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: There was a video at one round of her getting
Speaker 2: her own vaccine, the first one, I think, and she
Speaker 2: was singing vaccine to the tune of Joe Lene and.
Speaker 1: Sing pretty nice die in.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. It was great. So one other thing though
Speaker 2: about her foundation. One reason she got into literacy programs
Speaker 2: was because her father never learned to read, and apparently
Speaker 2: he told her just before he died that he was
Speaker 2: most proud of her for that work that she'd done
Speaker 2: with promoting literacy around the world. It's pretty cool. It
Speaker 2: makes it even neaterer.
Speaker 3: And in addition to the vaccine Jolene song, she also
Speaker 3: did a version of I Will Always Jab You.
Speaker 2: It was less popular. Less popular sounds a little aggressive.
Speaker 3: She's been nominated for fifty three Grammys. Fifty three she's
Speaker 3: won ten, which I think that number should be higher,
Speaker 3: But you know, they have given her Lifetime Achievement Awards
Speaker 3: and Joelene and I Will Always Love You were inducted
Speaker 3: into the Grammy Hall of Fame, so they have like
Speaker 3: heaped awards on her even when she has not won
Speaker 3: the actual Grammy. And she's also won an Emmy, right yeah.
Speaker 2: She was also up for two Oscars for Best Song
Speaker 2: for Traveling Through for trans America and I think two
Speaker 2: thousand and six and then.
Speaker 1: Nine to five not win.
Speaker 2: No, it was beaten by Fame.
Speaker 1: Oh boy, tough year.
Speaker 2: Traveling Through was beaten by hard out There for a
Speaker 2: Pimp from Hustle and Flow.
Speaker 1: That's a good song too.
Speaker 2: Are you gonna top that?
Speaker 3: It's really hard. I was getting getting ready to trash
Speaker 3: whatever beat out nine to five? But yeah, Fame is
Speaker 3: a great song.
Speaker 1: That's a tough year.
Speaker 2: That's a very tough year. But she also has two
Speaker 2: Guinness World Records to her name, one of which is
Speaker 2: Most Decades with the Top twenty Hit, which really just
Speaker 2: goes to show how long she's been around it, how
Speaker 2: long she's been.
Speaker 1: Huge you know what else?
Speaker 3: She has two of what stars on the Hollywood Walk
Speaker 3: of Fame, DOWO.
Speaker 2: I know, is there anybody else who has that?
Speaker 3: I think so people in different media, although probably not
Speaker 3: a lot of people.
Speaker 1: I bet it's a pretty short list.
Speaker 3: One in nineteen eighty four and then one in twenty eighteen,
Speaker 3: when I guess the final Trio of Trio albums came out.
Speaker 2: So if you think Dolly's slowing down, friend, you are
Speaker 2: dead wrong. Yep, she's got a new album coming out.
Speaker 2: So she was inducted in the Rock and Roll Hall
Speaker 2: of Fame despite her protests. She's like, I'm not a rocker.
Speaker 2: Apparently she's like, all right, well I better go be
Speaker 2: a rocker and earn that honor. She's so, her next
Speaker 2: studio album, her forty ninth, is coming out I think
Speaker 2: this fall, and it's called rock Star. And she's going
Speaker 2: to be singing with some other rock stars too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Stevie Nick's, Paul McCartney share, I love it. Yep.
Speaker 1: Vince Neil, No, not Vince Neil.
Speaker 2: That's correct, Not Vince Neil.
Speaker 1: No, just kidding, that'd be pretty amazing.
Speaker 2: Actually, you got anything else about Dolly Parton?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 2: I've got one other thing before you answer. She wakes
Speaker 2: up at three am every day.
Speaker 1: Oh and just daughter of a sharecropper. Yeah, I guess
Speaker 1: that's amazing.
Speaker 2: Okay, you got anything else?
Speaker 1: I got nothing else?
Speaker 2: Okay, I don't either. I don't think, but I'm gonna
Speaker 2: think of ten things after we're done recording.
Speaker 3: I know I'm gonna I've been listening to Dolly Parton
Speaker 3: all day, so it's gonna continue on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's not hard to do. If you want to
Speaker 2: know more about Dolly Parton, friend, go listen to Dolly Parton.
Speaker 2: Go watch videos of Dolly Parton, Go read interviews with
Speaker 2: Dolly Parton. She was once described as a black belt interviewee,
Speaker 2: so you'll never be disappointed with a Dolly Parton interview.
Speaker 2: And since I said you'll never be disappointed by a
Speaker 2: Dolly Parton interview, that has opened up listener mail.
Speaker 3: I'm going to call this great email follow up from Arcades. Hey, guys,
Speaker 3: want to tell you a story of my very traditional grandmother.
Speaker 3: She was very traditional in the Midwestern sense, and she
Speaker 3: was a homemaker. Oh yeah, have books for my grandfather's
Speaker 3: iron working concern. She didn't tolerate cussing or fussing, and
Speaker 3: was a conservative dresser.
Speaker 2: She liked the calico.
Speaker 1: She didn't have any obvious vices save one. Pac Man.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, to hear her tell it, there was a
Speaker 3: time where she would wake up before her husband and
Speaker 3: five children, power up the atari, and start a pac
Speaker 3: Man game. After thirty minutes or so, she would get
Speaker 3: breakfast on the table, get her family out the door,
Speaker 3: and do the books, clean the house, and then finally
Speaker 3: get back to her paused pac Man game, which she
Speaker 3: would play until it was time to start dinner when
Speaker 3: her family came back home.
Speaker 2: That's awesome. She had pac Man fever.
Speaker 1: That's good.
Speaker 3: It wouldn't be much of a story, guys, except here's
Speaker 3: the thing. She was really really good at pac Man.
Speaker 3: She once told me she had the first forty something
Speaker 3: levels memorized and could use them to rack up points
Speaker 3: and then thus extra lives. She got to a point
Speaker 3: where she could play the same game all day long. Eventually,
Speaker 3: she would describe getting to a high enough level where
Speaker 3: the game would freeze. Oh and what she was describing
Speaker 3: was level two fifty six to kill screen, and said
Speaker 3: she was home alone every time she reached it, and
Speaker 3: the Internet wasn't a household thing. No one ever knew
Speaker 3: what she was talking about.
Speaker 2: She just rolled the door be like somebody, anybody come look.
Speaker 3: It was until many years later that I saw King
Speaker 3: of Kong and saw the footage of the kill screen
Speaker 3: my grandmother had described. Couldn't believe my eyes or the
Speaker 3: fact that my conservative grandmother was such an early skilled
Speaker 3: gamer neat. She since passed away, But every time the
Speaker 3: subject of pac Man comes up brings a smile to
Speaker 3: my face.
Speaker 1: And I remember her and her high scores. That is
Speaker 1: from Aaron Miller of Kansas City, that Kansas.
Speaker 2: Oh, that's rare. You don't usually hear from those people
Speaker 2: Kansas side. Well, thanks a lot, Aaron, that's a fantastic story.
Speaker 2: I'm glad you could smuggle that message out of the
Speaker 2: Kansas side of Kansas City to us. And if you
Speaker 2: want to be like Aaron and get in touch however way,
Speaker 2: you can try putting it in an email sending it
Speaker 2: off to stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
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