April 25, 2023 • 53 mins
Today we dive in to celebrate the international treasure that is Dolly Parton. Why is she nearly universally loved? Listen in to find out.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Chuck and Jerry's here too, and today we're gonna make
some joyful noise together here on Stuff you should Know.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
That's right. I just poured myself a cup of ambition.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Uh huh, I had a few of those this.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
Morning before we dive into Dolly Parton land. We should
talk about our tour really quick because we're looking to
sell some more tickets specifically, well everywhere, but specifically DC
and Toronto.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Right, yeah, for the whole shebang. We're gonna be in
d C, Boston and then Toronto May fourth, fifth, and sixth.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
Right, that's right, And there are plenty of great seats available.
This is a really good show. I think one of
the best ones we've done in a long time. And
if you're in the Northeast, like, this is it. We're
not doing New York this year.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
Are you sorry?
Speaker 2 (01:00):
New York?
Speaker 3 (01:01):
But if you live the Northeast, this is this is
your chance because we're doing the Southeast in the fall,
and that's this is your opportunity.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
I think that's a great angle for this marketing campaign here.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
Chuck, Yeah, Northeast or bust.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Okay, So that's enough about us, everybody. We're here to
really talk about Dolly.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
Yeah. So Livia helped us with this one. And you know,
we've remarked about how Livia is getting great at titling
the articles even though she doesn't even have to, right
she does it because she's creative and talented. And her
title for this is why does everyone love Dolly Parton?
And we're going to explain that, But I think the
(01:38):
easiest thing to say is since the nineteen seventies, this
is a woman who was basically just put goodness into
the world at every turn.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Yeah, for sure. I was reading an interview with her
in Rolling Stone from nineteen eighty, like nine to five
had just come out, and you might as well have
told me it was from twenty twenty three.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
She just she's been the same way this whole time. Great.
She she doesn't like get into any political stuff. She said,
I'm not political. I won't talk about politics.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
She doesn't.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
She leaves hot button issues alone. But if it means
something to her, it's really meaningful, she'll she'll come out
on you know, in favor of it. Endorsing it, but
she doesn't put anything down. She might support something, but
she's not going to put anything down publicly.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
So the other kind of funny thing about this one
from Livia is she always includes her sources, and she
may have broken her own source record.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
Yeah, there's a lot.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
Oh boy, there were probably one hundred sources. But we
did want to mention one in particular because I listened
to this from jad Abamrad, the great jad Abamrab of
Radio ab Fame, m like four years ago put out
the wonderful series Dolly Parton's America. Yeah, and Livia binged
it and I listened to it back then, and back
then I was like, oh man, I want to do
(02:56):
an episode on Dolly Parton. But it's like Jad it
like he covered it so well, like what's the point
kind of thing?
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Right?
Speaker 1 (03:04):
But now four years on, I was like, well, we
can give it.
Speaker 3 (03:05):
The stuff you should know treatment, which is to say,
not as not as deep a dive, but it's a
great series. If you want to learn more about Dolly Parton,
then check out Dolly Parton's America.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
Very nice. And then just to button up, Chuck, we
were trying to answer that question, why does everybody love Dolly?
I came up with another hypothesis too, Okay, it's that
you know, when somebody is like, they can be anything
anybody wants them to be, Like, they're interpretable from all
different angles, so everybody just assumes they're like them. Dolly
(03:42):
is not like that. She is her own person who
can't be pigeonholed into one box or another, right, but
she's likable from all sides.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
Yeah, Like, find someone that's gonna talk some Dolly Parton
and then you and I really can a discussion in
the parking lot with that guy.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
It's a sad state of affairs, though, dude, because there's
think pieces all over the internet about how it's just
amazing that everybody doesn't hate Dolly Parton, and it's like,
good God, like this is what we've come to, Like
everybody hates everybody casually, so I mean, how has she
escaped it so long? And it's just like such a
sad state of affairs that that's normalized by even writing
(04:26):
pieces like that. But they're out there for sure. But
the upshot of it is people are amazed that people
don't hate Dolly Parton, and it's true. People don't hate
Dolly Parton.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
Yeah, and she's she's someone that is so I think,
kind of universally beloved and internationally beloved. That as you'll
see later in this episode there, she's been studied by
anthropologists and sociologists.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
Yeah, which is pretty amazing. And so let's start at
the beginning, shall we wait?
Speaker 2 (04:54):
Hold on one more thing?
Speaker 1 (04:55):
Yeah, more praise.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
The other thing about her, I think that's so amazing
and so remarkable is that she This is the reason
why everybody's just so fascinated with her right now. She's
maybe the one person who is straddling both sides of
the political and social divide as wide as it is
in the United States today and is not is not
(05:19):
like hanging on by her fingernails. She's like, I got
a foot here, and I'm not lying about it. Got
a foot here. I'm not lying about that either. I'm
not I'm not trying to fool either side. This. This
is what I'm into, and you know, I like both
of you.
Speaker 3 (05:32):
Basically, it's almost like being a genuine human who stays
true to who they are is something we should all
aspire to.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
Sure, but it also shows she shows that that's such
a rarity in this world that that you can be
globally beloved by just doing that and also making like
a ton of really great music too.
Speaker 3 (05:51):
Well, yeah, I mean, come on, we're gonna talk about
all this stuff, but can we.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
Go back to the beginning now? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (05:57):
Yeah, sorry, okay, Hey, never apologize about singing the praises
of Dolly Parton.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
That's a great rule of stuff.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
You should, no motto.
Speaker 3 (06:06):
And I just can't wait till we get to the
Dollywood stuff, because you've been and I have not. All right,
So she was born Dolly Rebecca Parton in nineteen forty six,
in January nineteenth of nineteen forty six in rural Tennessee.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
How do you pronounce this? Is it severe? County?
Speaker 2 (06:23):
I think it's severe.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
Oh, it's just severe.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
I'm almost positive it's severe.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
Okay, sev I e R and see immediately this is
I'm sure Jad's episode pronounced it perfectly.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
I bad. I don't remember.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
Threw his face into us palm like these guys.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
But she was born to a big family of twelve kids.
And it's kind of fun to look up photos of
Dolly and all her siblings because you know a few
of her sisters look a lot like her.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
All her brothers look.
Speaker 3 (06:54):
Like you know, they should be like shooting pool down
at the pool hall.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
Yeah, you know, all the.
Speaker 3 (07:00):
Just sort of genuine article smoky Mountain Tennessee foothills people.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
Yeah, for sure. And there were twelve of them, did you.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
Say, twelve sibs including her, And she was the fourth.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
Yeah, the fourth of twelve. And all fourteen people in
her family lived in a two room cabin. And I've
seen a replica of this cabin, and it is no joke.
A two room cabin and fourteen people lived in it
in the Smoky mountains.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
I mean two bedrooms with an office, right, right.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
I mean two rooms my friend with the outhouse, no
running water, no electricity, Like she grew up as Smoky mountain,
as a smoky mountain person can grow up, like even
people in other parts of Tennessee are like wow.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
But she says she had a great childhood running around
just being outside, and because she was the fourth of twelve,
she wasn't particularly like paid attention to, so she could
just kind of go off and do her own thing.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (07:58):
I get the idea that they were semi feral sort
of mountain kids. Her granddad was a Pentecostal minister, very
fiery in Brimstony, and she still, you know, mentions God
a lot. I get the sense that she's a little
less overtly religious, but spirituality still very much a mainstay
in her life.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
Yeah. I think it's more of a personal relationship between
her and God.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
Yeah, which is supposed to be.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
So she really lucked out because she had an uncle
named Bill Owens, who was a musician a songwriter who
noticed that she wanted to get into music from a
very young age and was maybe the only person in
her entire life or her early life that noticed and
then nurtured it. And she later said when he died
(08:44):
a few years back at his funeral, like she wouldn't
be here today if it wasn't him, Like she owed
him everything because he nurtured it in her. He encouraged her,
he supported her when she got rejected, and he helped
her break into the business. So bill Owens was a
huge influence in her life. But he noticed, like I said,
from a very early age. I think she wrote her
first song when she was.
Speaker 3 (09:04):
Five, Yeah, little tiny tassel top about her homemade corn
husk doll and she would pretend, you know, she would
get a tobacco stick and a tin can and act
like it was her microphone and Mike's stand, and she
would sing for the chickens in her yard and had
obviously a real talent from the beginning. If you listen
(09:25):
to her very first recording, Puppy Love from nineteen fifty nine,
it sounds like, you know, thirteen year old Dolly Parton.
You know, you can hear Dolly in that young voice.
And like I said, she was thirteen. And that was
the same year that she made her very first appearance
at the Grand Old Opry, introduced.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
By none other than Johnny Cash.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
Yeah, who was her first big crush, so it was
even more amazing for unbelievable. Her family didn't get to
see it though, because Dolly Parton was on TV before
her family had a TV at home. Yeah, which is
pretty cool. I believe there was a TV appearance, yes, noah, okay,
and if it was, if that one wasn't the first
(10:07):
whenever it was, she was on TV first, her family
still didn't have a.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
TV back, gotcha.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
So thanks to Uncle Billy taking her around and banging
on doors, she ended up making her debut on Mercury
Records in nineteen sixty two, which is nothing to sneeze at.
But I get the impression that it wasn't like her.
It wasn't like a like a okay, this is a
serious recording contract. It's like, okay, let's let's test this
(10:34):
girl out. Back then, they called any woman in country
music a girl singer, right, So she was a bit
of a novelty, not just because of her age, but
because she was a woman as well. But she had
her sight set on becoming a country music star. And
so the day after she graduated high school, the day
after she graduated high school, she got on a bus
(10:54):
for Nashville to move there.
Speaker 3 (10:55):
Yeah, amazing, nineteen sixty four. And very soon after she
moved there, she met a man that would become her
husband and a mainstay in her life to this day,
who is remarkably hard to find stuff about. His name
is Carl Dean. They met it very famously at a
laundromat when she was eighteen and he was twenty one.
(11:18):
Married a couple of years later. And I think a
lot of people that don't know a lot about Dolly
Parton think she might be single or something. Because she
never had kids. But she's been married to Carl Dean
since nineteen sixty six and he doesn't want to be
in the limelight. He never did. He's her biggest fan
and supporter. She's always said, you know, off the stage,
(11:39):
but he just doesn't want any part of the limelight.
And it's hard to even find a lot of pictures
of this guy. There's a handful out there. But he
started an asphalt laying business in the late seventies, still
runs that business today, which is just amazing. And yeah,
I read an article from a couple of years ago.
She was like, you know, Carl and I we like
to run errand we go to the twenty four hour stores,
(12:02):
you know, in the middle of the night, like Walmart
and places, and she said, and there are fewer people
there to come up to me. And she said, I
don't mind it. I love people, she said, I just
don't want it to get in the way of our shopping, right,
And you know, Carl's not wild about it. So they
just live a very simple kind of pure life together.
I think, outside the limelight.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
Yeah, I've read an interview with her somewhere and she
said that in her opinion, if she's out in public,
that time belongs to her fans, so she's not She
doesn't have a problem with people coming up to her
asking for autographs. She knows that she's out in public
and that's a risk that she runs right. Sure, but
her leisure time, her time away is like secluded off
(12:40):
with Carl, just the two of them. Usually. Maybe she
has a very close best friend I can't remember her name.
They go everywhere together, so she's almost like a stand
in for Carl when Dolly's traveling around.
Speaker 3 (12:50):
Yeah, and she's always been very her persona is very flirty,
and she's always sort of flirted around with In fact,
no friends that have worked on like commercial shoots with
her and they were like, man, she's the biggest flirt
you would ever know, and that's just her personality. And
she said that Karl understands that, and that's just how
she sort of has fun and relates to people, and
(13:11):
it's always very innocent, and I just think it's kind
of kind of cute and fun. Yep, for sure, I
want her to flirt with me, you know, I think,
is what I'm saying.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
This this episode might be your big break, Chuck. Yeah,
so would you just like turn bright red and like
dig your the toe of your foot into this.
Speaker 3 (13:30):
I kind of am a little bright red. I thought
it was the stuff you should know. Sign in here
casting a red beam on my face.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
No, that's you thinking about being flirted with by Dolly Partner.
I know.
Speaker 3 (13:39):
Well, dude, I grew up as you did, but I'm,
you know, a little bit older. Like the heyday of
early Dolly was when I was a kid, and of
course my dad was in love with her, and you know,
it was just she was one of the biggest stars
in the world, and my parents were kind of into
country music, so she was just sort of prevalent in
our household somehow.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
Yeah, my introduction to her was through nine to five.
If my mom that that whole message and the idea
behind it was right up my mom's alley, So she
would watch it with her hands clasped together.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
At the side of her face like that.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
Just an editor adoration of everybody, including Dolly Parton too.
I think my family was never really into country music,
so I think that that was like a big introduction
and probably a win over for my family. Was nine
to five.
Speaker 3 (14:23):
All right, Well, we'll talk about nine to five and
crossover success more.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
It's a good setup.
Speaker 3 (14:27):
But how about we take a break, Yes, and we'll
be right back with more Dolly parton.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
Okay, So we're talking about Dolly becoming a star. Like
she's had a couple of record contracts, nothing serious though,
but then in nineteen sixty five she saw him with
Monument Records. That was her big her first big record contract,
I read. But they wanted her to be a pop singer,
which is kind of ironic because she actually would kind
of become a pop singer later on in her career,
(15:18):
But at first she was like, no way, Like have
you seen my house? And do you know how many
people are in my family? I'm not a pop singer.
I'm a country singer, right, Yeah, So she persisted and
hung in there, and they ended up like folding and
giving in, and she went on to become a full
fledged country singer.
Speaker 1 (15:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (15:38):
Nineteen sixty seven her first record Hello I'm Dolly, which
is just great. How they used to do records like
that in time like that when you like introduce her
to the world. But you know, as would become a
thing like in her career, most of the songs that
she's well known for most of the songs she's recorded.
(15:58):
She's done, you know, plenty of cup because everyone does that,
especially in country music. But she is most well known
as a songwriter, and we'll get into that more in
a little bit. But she wrote two Now Libya has
a number twenty four. But I saw that there were
both top twenty in the country charts, Dumb Blonde, which
(16:19):
is written by a guy named Curly Putman, great name,
and Something Fishy written by Dolly, and I think the
album itself was a top twenty hit her debut, right crazy,
you know in the country charts, right off out of
the gate.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
Yes, I was looking up Something Fishy and it's about
a woman who's become convinced that her husband's fishing trips
aren't actually fishing trips and that he's running around on her.
So one of the lines is, I guess some large
mouth bass left that lipstick on your shirt. I don't
think you're a fisherman, honey, I think you're a flirt.
That's like perfect debut. Dolly like at what age, like
(16:57):
nineteen I think is how old she has? Yeah, pretty great.
Speaker 3 (17:01):
And Porter Wagoner is someone that we talked about on
our Grand ole Opry Show and he had the Porter
Wagoner Show. He hires young Dolly to replace his other
young woman sidekick singer, and basically she elevated the show
to the point where it was a number one, the
number one syndicated show in the country radio show. And
(17:24):
they started doing duets together and albums together, including their
first one, Just Between You and Me in nineteen sixty eight.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
Yeah, and they started touring a lot too, and she
learned a tremendous amount about touring, performing live, the music business.
Everything she needed to learn early on came from touring
with Porter Wagner. But he was also really well aware
that he had like a real cash register on his hands. Yeah,
(17:51):
and he kept her under his thumb as much as
he could, both emotionally blackmailing her, I get the impression,
but also locking her into just really floyd of contracts
because she might not have known what she was signing.
She probably did and just figured like, Okay, at least
it's gonna help me get to where I'm going. That's
the likelier explanation if you ask me. But he was
(18:12):
definitely in charge for the first many years of her
serious career.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (18:18):
But because she's Dolly Parton and so beloved. When they
eventually broke up their relationship, I think it was kind
of rough, and she ended up writing a song I
Will Always Love You about that relationship, and ultimately they
worked it out and she reconciled and was at his
deathbed with his family, and it was kind of one
(18:39):
of those no hard feelings kind of situations.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
Oh really, I've read that his last dying words were,
I'll never forgive you. That's what I'm gonna say on
my deathbed. No, I'm just gonna like wave my finger
around the room to everybody standing there.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
And we're all gonna be like, is he talking about me?
Speaker 2 (18:55):
Exactly? You guys can spend the rest of your lives
figuring it out.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
Of me able to just look at me and say,
he's talking about you.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
Totally.
Speaker 1 (19:04):
Uh So, they while they were a duet.
Speaker 2 (19:08):
Oh wait, wait, Chuck, wait, wait, hold on, one more
thing you brought up I Will Always love You, which
everybody knows one of probably her most one of her
most famous songs, arguably her other most famous song.
Speaker 1 (19:18):
Joe Lene great song.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
She apparently wrote those songs on the same day. Start
to finish. Isn't that amazing.
Speaker 3 (19:26):
Yeah, I mean she she now says, like, you know,
if it wasn't the same day, it was in the
within a couple of days of each other, but like,
either way, it's remarkable.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
Yeah, and it's possible it was the same day. She
just doesn't remember.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (19:40):
That really like kind of goes to show what kind
of uh she she was drinking cups of ambition left
and right, apparently, because not only does that story potentially true,
she also put out twenty five albums yeah, both d
us with Porter Wagner and then some solo albums in
the five period between nineteen sixty eight and nineteen seventy three.
Speaker 3 (20:03):
Yeah, I mean that's remarkable she started, and that's kind
of where I was headed.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
Anyway.
Speaker 3 (20:07):
She kind of started recording her own solo stuff as
she was. You know, it's kind of obvious she just
had she was too prolific of a songwriter. I mean,
she supposedly her quote is that she's written more than
three thousand songs and three of them are good. She's
also humble, another reason people love Dolly Parton. But she
had too much to say early on, and so started
(20:31):
making solo records while she was still with Wagoner, and
it was in that that time period, I think in
the early seventies is when you know those iconic songs
Jolene and I Will Always Love You came out.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
Right, but still under the tutelage of Porter Wagner.
Speaker 3 (20:44):
Right, yeah, I mean those are solo albums and I
think I Will Always Love You. It was about them
splitting apart, So it was sort of right there at
the end.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
I think it definitely was. And I heard a story
of years back that he said, Okay, I'll let you
out of your contract if you let me produce this
amazing song, and she yeah, I will always love you, right,
And then apparently he turned around and sued her anyway
for breach of contract. But she she got out of it.
She got out of this this this terrible contract, this
(21:14):
exploitive contract. She got out from under a very domineering mentor.
And this is a really big time of transition for
her because not only did she get away from Porter Wagner,
which was enormous, because in a sense, she was like
a pinball that had just been plunged when she was
released from from Wagner, just looking for like the next
(21:37):
bumper to just shoot her off in another direction. That's
my analogy, buddy. Yeah, and that's exactly what happened. But
she also had to break up with her family band,
like they were her original backing band. She had to
be like, I gotta get better musicians, you guys. And
she made some really hard decisions, but they they ended
up paying off, and from what I understand, there were
(21:59):
no last hard feelings from it.
Speaker 3 (22:01):
Yeah, that's pretty great. She hosted a TV show for
one season, just like us. It was called Dolly. You know,
back then they had all those great variety shows. This
was seventy six into seventy seven. And then a very
important man comes into her life by the name of
Sandy Gallen, who was a uber manager got the Beatles
(22:25):
on Ed Sulimon would later manage Michael Jackson and marbar
streisand and Cher and Sandy Gallen was a pretty instrumental
person for a couple of reasons.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
One is.
Speaker 3 (22:37):
Kind of encouraging the crossover success. Like he booked her
at the bottom line in the Greenwich Village. Who you know,
everyone from Springsteen to lou Reid were playing there.
Speaker 2 (22:47):
Like Andy Warhol came and watched her show. There's an
awesome picture of them sitting together.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
Yeah, talk about crossover.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
Yeah, exactly. And she was nervous. I saw that she
was nervous on the on the way to being scared.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
I'm sure. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (23:02):
He had her tour Europe, exposed her internationally. He took
her to Studio fifty four, which is probably where she
also hung out with Andy Warhol. But the other big
reason is that Sandy Gallen was gay. He died like
five years ago. And this was a very instrumental relationship.
And I get the impression, you know, Dolly is very
(23:24):
famous for being a sort of an icon in the
LGTVQ community.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
Yeah, from very early on.
Speaker 3 (23:30):
Yeah, And it seems like this is kind of where
it all started, was having this relationship with Sandy, and
you know, just the gay community wrapping their arms around
her early on, not necessarily because you know, she had
a gay manager, but you know, I don't think it hurt.
Speaker 2 (23:48):
Right, And The New York Times wrote that she got
a warm welcome in San Francisco from transgender fans and
quote other exotic urban cult audiences.
Speaker 3 (24:00):
Well, Dolly's always said, you know, she's one of those
love is love types, and you know, it's just like
it's the way to live life. Like she doesn't judge people,
and she never has, and she's always just embraced like
whatever community wants to love her music, Like why would she?
I never get it when people like intentionally sort of
(24:22):
turn audiences off, right, you know.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
Yeah, I know for sure, for sure, But also like
it's that's so true and it's so prevalent when when
you read about her, watch interviews with her, just listen
to her talk, you're almost like, what's your angle, dolly, right,
what are you really up to here?
Speaker 3 (24:44):
Her big crossover hit was Here You Come Again, which
was considered a pop song. I mean, I've always kind
of thought it was a country song, I guess because
her voice is in it and she insisted on steel guitar,
so it still had.
Speaker 1 (24:59):
A little country. But it's like a perfect song.
Speaker 2 (25:02):
It's a perfect crossover, Like it's exactly perfectly balanced, Like
there couldn't have been a better song to transition from
full on country singer to country pop singer.
Speaker 3 (25:14):
Yeah, And it went number one on the country chart,
number three on the pop charts.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
Album went platinum.
Speaker 3 (25:20):
And this is you know, the late seventies when she
really really really blew up.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
Yeah, that was that. She just took off like a
rocket from there. One of the things that she did
very wisely in the late seventies early eighties, right around
this time, was just hop on the TV circuit. Y
She's been on at least a few hundred TV appearances,
but a lot of them took place in the seventies
and eighties when she was just making herself known, making
(25:47):
herself a household name. And none of this was by accident,
Like she's she's wanted to be a megas star since
she was a kid, and this was part of She
apparently makes a lot of lists and they turn out
to kind of be five year plans, and I'm sure
getting on the talk show circuit was part of one
of those lists.
Speaker 3 (26:08):
And that explains why as a kid growing up in
the seventies, I saw a lot of Dolly Parton exactly.
Speaker 2 (26:13):
She was everywhere Dolly wanted you to see a lot
of Dolly Parton.
Speaker 3 (26:18):
In the eighties is when she continued some of her
collaborations with other artists, very famously with Kenny Rodgers with
Islands in the Stream, huge massive hit, Haven't Heard It,
And then nineteen eighty seven, my favorite collaboration at least
came out and maybe my favorite Dolly stuff period, oh yeah,
(26:38):
was the album Trio Yeah, that she recorded with Linda
Ronstadt and Emilu Harris. Just three of the best voices
in the history of music coming together to sing together.
They ended up making three albums over the years together.
So if you haven't listened to any of this stuff,
highly recommend Trio from nineteen eighty seven.
Speaker 2 (26:56):
She also released some bluegrass albums in the late nineties,
The Grass Is Blue, Little Sparrow, Halo's and Horns, And
then she released her first Christmas album in thirty years
back in twenty twenty, A Holly Dolly Christmas, which is
pretty good. It's cute, But I think the best Christmas
album she released was Once Upon a Christmas in nineteen
(27:17):
eighty four. There's a lot of Kenny Rogers on it.
Speaker 3 (27:20):
I made a joke this last Christmas on Instagram. I
think that like probably fifty percent of Dolly Parton's Christmas
songs are about sex. It's true where there's like sexual overtones,
right exactly.
Speaker 1 (27:34):
Yeah, Yeah, it's good stuff.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
But that nineteen eighty four album has hard candy Christmas
on it, which is what I mean, you have it,
maybe your best her best one, if you ask me.
Speaker 1 (27:46):
Great song.
Speaker 3 (27:47):
All right, So now let's talk a little bit more
about her songwriting. I think that's the thing that she's
sort of most proud of. She said in a twenty
twenty book, if I had to choose just one thing
to be, would choose to be a songwriter. She's always
said that she loves writing from the male point of view.
She loves writing songs for men because a lot of
(28:08):
her songs are sort of narrative story type songs, and
she has written a lot of big, huge hits for
people like Merle Haggard and Kenny Rogers and Hank Williams
Junior and all kinds of dudes.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
Right. She also plays a bunch of instruments. The guitar,
she says, is her strongest, and there's a lot of
other string instruments that she can play. I saw a
video of one of her concerts. She's got a banjo
slung around her, yeah, her like she's got a strap
hanging from a strap while she's playing a fiddle really fast.
It's pretty amazing. But if you really want to be
(28:40):
amazed by Dolly, you should watch her play the saxophone,
and in particular, at the Glastonbury Music Festival in twenty
fourteen in the UK, in front of a crowd of
one hundred thousand, she busted out her yackety sacks, Yeah,
the Benny Hill theme song, and it just Hill.
Speaker 1 (29:00):
It is.
Speaker 3 (29:01):
That whole show is a fun watch because it's you know,
it's in It's at the Glastonbury Festival and it's like,
I don't know, I think your legendary status just like
grew with that appearance.
Speaker 2 (29:11):
Oh yeah, Like she was, you know, kind of a
cult favorite in the UK and then she became like
a like a pop culture favorite after that show.
Speaker 1 (29:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (29:20):
Nine to five, the movie that you mentioned before in
nineteen eighty was when she got into movie making, and
it is a movie.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
Boy.
Speaker 3 (29:27):
Not only does it hold up today, but it is
that was ahead of its time and like even more
relevant today than it probably was then.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
Which is sad if you stop and think about it.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
No, no, totally sad.
Speaker 2 (29:38):
But it was based on an actual movement called nine
to five, the nine to five movement from the early
seventies that I guess Jane Fonda was aware of because
she was one of the creators behind the movie nine
to five, And that was an actual like movement led
by Secretary starting in Boston and it spread around the
country and they were protesting sexual harassment low p getting
(30:00):
passed over for promotions. And they had a great slogan
that I saw raises not.
Speaker 1 (30:06):
Roses, raises not roses. Yeah, I love that.
Speaker 2 (30:10):
I love it too, like your T shirt exactly.
Speaker 1 (30:13):
But some money exactly. I buy my own.
Speaker 2 (30:15):
Flowers, right, I can buy my own flowers.
Speaker 3 (30:19):
Yeah, that's what the back of the T shirt said.
And then parentheses quit pinching my butt.
Speaker 2 (30:24):
Plus also, that's a Miley Cyrus song. Who is Dolly
Parton's god daughter?
Speaker 1 (30:30):
That's right?
Speaker 3 (30:30):
Yeah, and Dolly credits that relationship with the fact that
millennials love Dolly.
Speaker 2 (30:36):
Yeah. I wasn't aware of this, so everybody knows. Even
I know that Miley Cyrus was Hannah Montana on Nickelodeon
from I think two thousand and six to twenty eleven, right,
and she would have Dolly on here or there as
aunt Dolly like her aunt, Hannah Montana's aunt. And I
guess like millennials just grew up watching that and that
(30:57):
she just exposed herself not literally but figuratively to an
entirely new generation, and it stuck like, that's that's how
they that's how they met Dolly, and they just kept
following her and loving her from that point on.
Speaker 1 (31:09):
I love it.
Speaker 3 (31:11):
She was in a bunch of movies over the years,
Best Little Worehouse in Texas with Burt Reynolds of course
part of the ensemble, and Steele Magnolia's. Very disappointingly, Olivia
doesn't mention my favorite Dolly second favorite Dolly Parton movie,
which was Rhinestone with Sylvester Stallone, one of my big
HBO movies. Early on, I watched that thing over and
(31:32):
over again. Stallone sings. Have you ever seen it?
Speaker 2 (31:36):
No? I never have. I turned I turned the TV
off after Life Force.
Speaker 3 (31:42):
You should check out Rhinestone because still you know that
the premises She's to make a country star out of
Sylvester Stallone, and he has a song in there called
Drinkenstein instead of Frankenstein, and the chorus is Budweiser. You've
created a monster and call him drinking style.
Speaker 2 (32:01):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (32:02):
But still unreally sings, and it's.
Speaker 3 (32:04):
Just I think it's known probably as a bad movie,
but it has a very special place in my heart.
Speaker 2 (32:08):
It sounds like the prequel to Tulsa King. So she
also did you mention sand Dollar yet?
Speaker 1 (32:17):
No.
Speaker 2 (32:17):
She founded a production company with Sandy Gallan, her longtime
manager and friend, and they went on to produce movies
like Father of the Bride, Yeah, Buffy the Vampire Slayer,
the movie.
Speaker 1 (32:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (32:31):
She also did a straight Talk which she was in
where she plays a woman who accidentally becomes a radio
host and of course just shoots into the stratosphere and popularity.
Speaker 1 (32:42):
I never saw that.
Speaker 2 (32:43):
Oh yeah it was. It was okay, okay, not her
best work, but still she was amazing at Steele Magnolia's.
I mean, like, if you if you go back and yeah,
if you go back and watch some of those scenes
between her and her husband in particular, it's she's a
really good actress.
Speaker 3 (33:02):
No, she's good and in fact, but the Shelby I
just did was more Sally Field, not that I think
about it.
Speaker 2 (33:08):
I detected Hannah sally Field in there.
Speaker 3 (33:10):
All right, I think let's take another break and then
we'll This was going to go a little long, but
that's okay because we're about to dive into Dollywood right
after this. Shelby all right, my friend, here we are.
(33:48):
I'll set it up with how it starts, and then
you can just take over because you've actually been there.
But in an interview in nineteen eighty two with Barbara Walters,
Dolly Parton said something about being interest did in opening
up a theme park back home.
Speaker 1 (34:03):
And there was a theme park.
Speaker 3 (34:05):
Silver Dollar City, in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, and the owners,
Jack and Pete Hershand heard this interview, gave her a
call and was like, let's get together on this, and
they did to great success.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
Yeah, four years later Dollywood opened. It reopened as Dollywood.
I should say, just that first year they doubled their
entries to one point three million people coming. And that's
not just a full year, Like it snows and everything
kind of shuts down in the winter time in Pigeon
Forger and the Smoky So I'm guessing they crammed a
(34:40):
lot of those people in in a very short amount
of time, probably summer. I don't know why I'm going
off on this tangent, but it just seemed to work.
Speaker 1 (34:48):
They close in the winter be.
Speaker 2 (34:49):
Quiet too, So it was a success right out of
the gate, I should say. And a little known fact
or it's a rumor that a lot of people don't
realize as actual fact. They period a time capsule there
on opening day and it contains an unreleased Dolly song
No Way that is not to be open until I
think she's ninety nine years old?
Speaker 1 (35:10):
Wow, which is what is she now? Seventy six, seventy eight?
Speaker 2 (35:15):
I think?
Speaker 1 (35:16):
Okay, so it's it's close.
Speaker 2 (35:18):
Yeah, we can wait.
Speaker 3 (35:19):
She sees it yet, Oh we'll wait. So tell me
about Dollywood. I want to I want to know more.
Speaker 2 (35:24):
So it is a you can definitely believe that it
used to be a silver dollar city. They preserved a
lot of stuff. There's a coal fired train that kind
of takes you around on some neat vistas and everything.
There's We went and we went around Christmas time, which
kind of undermines my argument about being shutting down in
the winter. We went for Humi's birthday actually like one year,
(35:46):
and there was like a Christmas show where there was
like singing and dancing. But it was so corny that
I was waiting for everybody to be like, oh, you know,
we're just joking, here's the real show. It never happened.
It was just that like kitchy am in earnest, Yeah,
and just corny, but it was very sweet in retrospect,
especially hard to sit through, but very sweet. And then
(36:07):
there's just a lot of like people dipping candles, there's
tons of food to eat. There's a roller coaster that
neither you me nor I went on. But there's a
museum there that's closed temporarily because apparently they're reimagining it.
But it was originally called the Chasing Rainbows Museum. And
Dolly Parton is a just self professed packrat. She saved everything,
(36:31):
chuck everything. The Coat of Many Colors that she sings about,
it's there. You can see it in real life right there,
and it's the tiniest, cutest little thing you've ever seen
in your entire life. It's so tiny, and.
Speaker 1 (36:46):
When she was a kid, right out of all rags that.
Speaker 2 (36:48):
She sang about in that Coat of Many Colors and
it's what a great song. But then just just to
love that song and then see the actual coat and
then just see how dinky it is. It was just amazing.
Those lists I told you she used to keep, she
kept those, Those are on display, wigs, rhinestones everywhere. But
it's not just like this odor tribute to Dolly. It's
(37:08):
a genuine, like curated look into her whole career, and
it's it was one of the best museums I've ever
been to in my life of any kind.
Speaker 1 (37:17):
Why didn't you guys ride the roller coaster?
Speaker 2 (37:19):
We're both scared of roller coasters.
Speaker 1 (37:21):
Oh, I don't think I remembered that.
Speaker 2 (37:24):
Yes, I've been scared of roller coasters for decades, but
I feel like I'm starting to come out of it. Okay,
And I might go challenge myself and ride a few
roller coasters this summer and see if I'm correct or
if I'm really really wrong.
Speaker 3 (37:37):
Well, you should go to six Flags with Ruby and I,
because there's nothing like getting your courage worked up than
a seven year old who will ride anything, okay, staring
you in the face.
Speaker 2 (37:48):
Okay, all right, I may use that. That's just the
elixir I'm looking for.
Speaker 3 (37:52):
Yeah, yeah, she'll go on whatever. And she's just like
she wouldn't understand. She'd be like, why don't you want
to go on it? What do you mean you're scared?
Speaker 2 (37:58):
I don't You're of ruining things for me.
Speaker 3 (38:02):
Uh, well, I want to go to Dollywood, so maybe
we can go to six Wags and then Dollywood and
just do a theme park round up.
Speaker 2 (38:08):
I strongly recommend it because there's like all sorts of
stuff in nearby Gatlinburg and Pigeon Ford, Ripley's Museums and
just all sorts of just cool, super kitchy touristy stuff.
I think, Oh, what's his name? Uh, the guy who
sings Proud to be an American?
Speaker 1 (38:28):
Lee Green Greenwood.
Speaker 2 (38:30):
There's the Lee Greenwood Cafe where they no joke, play
those song oh no, loop over and over again. The
whole time You're like, where's the next song? They don't
play the next song.
Speaker 3 (38:40):
I heard that song every night of the summer for
like five summers when I worked at the Stow Mountain
laser shop.
Speaker 2 (38:45):
Oh yeah, I'll bet I.
Speaker 1 (38:46):
Got my fill of it.
Speaker 2 (38:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (38:48):
Uh, So we can talk a little bit more about
her politics she's and this is where the sociologists and
anthropologists come in. There's a sociologist named Treci McMillan Cottum
that has written about how black women have always looked
up to Dolly Parton as a role model, even though
she is like it's a very specific sort of white
Southern thing that she embodies. Again, just you know, testifies
(39:12):
to her crossover appeal that she is to be admired
by anybody.
Speaker 1 (39:17):
Her Q score.
Speaker 3 (39:18):
If you don't know what a Q score is, it's
a marketing tool that basically there's a bunch of things
that go into your Q score, but it's basically how
how much people like you, how much they recognize your name.
And her Q score is like legendarily one of the
top Q scores of all time celebrity.
Speaker 2 (39:33):
Was she has a high positive Q score. They also
do a negative Q score and she's a very low
negative Q score, So she's among the most beloved and
among the least disliked people in the entire world.
Speaker 1 (39:45):
Yeah. I don't want to know my Q score.
Speaker 2 (39:47):
I looked it up. We don't have one yet.
Speaker 1 (39:49):
Okay, good.
Speaker 2 (39:49):
But I was reading this article on the Conversation and
these two Australian marketing people were trying to figure out
who would have been Australia's Dolly, and they landed on
Hugh Jackman. And I'm like, I can't disagree with that.
Speaker 1 (40:02):
He's pretty likable.
Speaker 2 (40:03):
Sure everybody likes Hugh Jackman. Yeah, I would agree with that,
even though he did the Greatest Showman, right people still
like Hugh Jackman.
Speaker 1 (40:13):
The anthropologist comes in.
Speaker 3 (40:15):
A man named Jonathan Zilberg in nineteen ninety five talked
about how she was loved in Zimbabwe, of all places,
and again it's just like, you know, pick a country
and chances are people there love Dolly Parton.
Speaker 2 (40:31):
And in Dolly Parton's America. And then they talk about
how Nelson Mandela, while he was in prison in South Africa,
got his jailers to play Joe Lean for the whole Yeah,
holds in jail basically all Shawshank redemption.
Speaker 3 (40:45):
Uh huh, pretty cool, Pretty cool. And like you said earlier,
she basically just avoids politics. She doesn't let any politician
on either side use her music. If a Democrat uses it,
she shuts him down. If a Republican uses it, she
shuts him down. She just sort of side steps all
that stuff. She's always been, you know, growing up. Of course,
(41:07):
in the seventies there were a lot of playground jokes
about Dolly Parton's breast size.
Speaker 1 (41:12):
She was very well known for.
Speaker 3 (41:14):
It, and she's always been the first one to jump
in and joke about it herself. Instead of being like
the butt of the joke, she can just go along
with it, and that's just that's another really likable quality
as someone who can and can laugh at themselves and
not take things too seriously.
Speaker 2 (41:29):
I also saw it put that she she knows that
these jokes are going to be made anyway, so she
can diffuse them by getting out in front of them
and topping, you know, the lame jokes that like old
talk show hosts would make.
Speaker 1 (41:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:43):
I saw once she said that she burned her braw
and it took the fire department three days to put
it out, like that kind of stuff. That's hilarious. That
was her joke.
Speaker 1 (41:53):
Yeah, that's good, that's very funny.
Speaker 2 (41:55):
So I think we mentioned this before. Do you know
that Dolly the sheep, the first cloned animal on the planet,
was named Dolly because she was grown from a mammary gland.
So yeah, I can't remember where we talked about that,
but it really just goes to show like that's how
ubiquitous Dolly Parton's boobs were in the twentieth century, Like
(42:16):
they were as big as she was. Basically, Yeah, they
were definitely part of her intended they were definitely part
of her brand for sure.
Speaker 3 (42:24):
Yeah, you know, she was smart enough to lean into it.
Another thing that she had done over the years is
there are a lot of really dark songs that she's
written about. Even though she's never kind of outright considered
herself a feminist, she very much is and a lot
of the songs she's written over the years have been
very dark songs about women who are either abandoned or
(42:47):
suffering from sexual double standards.
Speaker 1 (42:50):
Or there's one brutal song.
Speaker 3 (42:51):
From nineteen seventy called Daddy Come and Get Me about
a true story of a relative in her family that
was basically institutionalized by her husband. So she's never been
afraid to go down sort of in the tradition of
the old sort of dark country murder ballad thing, go
down these darker roads with some of the songs she's written.
Speaker 2 (43:08):
Yeah, I saw that she considers herself not a feminist,
but in favor of all women. She's for all women.
So it's like she doesn't subscribe to the movement part,
but what the movement's ultimately about, she's totally in favor with,
and that's super her. She made a very rare, overt
(43:29):
statement when she came out in support of Black Lives Matter,
and at a time where it was like, you're casting
your lot one way or another, and she stood up
for it, which is pretty.
Speaker 1 (43:42):
Cool she did.
Speaker 3 (43:43):
She also in twenty eighteen that was at Dollywood, the
Dixie Stampede, she changed the name to Dolly Parton Stampede
after people complained about the whole Dixie connotation and Civil
War theme.
Speaker 1 (43:57):
She changed that up, and she was.
Speaker 3 (43:59):
Just like, you know, I never really thought about, you know,
the Confederate imagery, meaning what it meant to people, and
so she was happily changed it. And that's just the
kind of person she is, I think.
Speaker 2 (44:10):
And she got gufh for that, and she got guff
for supporting Black Lives Matter from some of her her
right leaning fans. But she can always explain herself, you know,
and she does so in such a great way that
you're just kind of like, well, fine, it's hard to
be you can't keep a grudge against her, even if
she goes against you politically, but she just so rarely
(44:30):
does it.
Speaker 1 (44:31):
Yeah, agreed, she is.
Speaker 3 (44:34):
We're gonna wind it down with her business in philanthropy,
very savvy business person from the very beginning. She was
smart enough to hang on to her the rights to
her own music and never give him up. Even when
Elvis Presley came Colin and wanted to cover I Will
Always Love You. He wanted half the publishing rights, and
she was like, no way, He'd take a walk Elvis Presley.
Speaker 2 (44:55):
He didn't. Apparently, Colonel Tom called her up on the
morning of the scheduled record varing session and sprung that
on her, and she turned him down. And she was
hoping that Elvis was as disappointed as she was. But
that took a lot of gumption, especially to have it
sprung on you like that, and she said, Nope, not
doing it. But that's one of the things that made
her so incredibly wealthy. Like apparently her music catalog has
(45:18):
a net worth of about one hundred and fifty million
dollars and brings in about six to eight million dollars
a year for her, according to I think Forbes, and
then her steak in Dollywood is her her most valuable asset.
I think it's like one hundred and sixty five million dollars.
Pretty neat.
Speaker 1 (45:36):
She has done quite well for herself.
Speaker 3 (45:38):
Yeah, she I mean these days she's she's not stopping either.
She's she's on Duncan Hine's buttermilk biscuit mix with her
little cartoon face. They have fragrances branded by Dolly. They
have pet clothes that she's branded with, Like just all
(45:58):
kinds of things. She's not afraid to license her image
for sure.
Speaker 2 (46:02):
We've got that the Duncan Hines frosting in our pantry.
Do you the chocolate chocolate cream frosting. And then one
other thing I saw, chuck. She wrote a book. Co
wrote a book with James Patterson, one of the best,
one of the most favorite novelists in the entire world.
It's called Run Rows Run, and it's a thriller based
kind of loosely on Dolly's story of making it in
the music basins. Oh wow, yeah, I think it just
(46:24):
came out.
Speaker 1 (46:25):
Okay, let me have to check that out. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (46:27):
She is very charitable as well. She started the Dollywood
Foundation in nineteen eighty eight just to get literacy going
in her home county, and it grew and grew and
grew to the point where it is now in the US, Canada, Australia,
the UK, and Ireland, and to date the program has
given out more than two hundred and four million books
(46:50):
may across these countries. And you know she'll build a
hospital in her county. Anytime there's like wildfires nearby, she's
chipping in. She very famously donated a million dollars to
Vanderbilt University Medical Center for COVID nineteen vaccine research. And
(47:10):
you know, people don't credit her with the MODERNA vaccine,
but they're like, that million dollars was instrumental in getting
that vaccine to trial.
Speaker 1 (47:19):
Well.
Speaker 2 (47:19):
Yeah, she also was like everybody go get jabbed.
Speaker 1 (47:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (47:22):
There was a video at one round of her getting
her own vaccine, the first one, I think, and she
was singing vaccine to the tune of Joe Lene and.
Speaker 1 (47:33):
Sing pretty nice die in.
Speaker 2 (47:34):
Yeah, exactly. It was great. So one other thing though
about her foundation. One reason she got into literacy programs
was because her father never learned to read, and apparently
he told her just before he died that he was
most proud of her for that work that she'd done
with promoting literacy around the world. It's pretty cool. It
(47:55):
makes it even neaterer.
Speaker 3 (47:56):
And in addition to the vaccine Jolene song, she also
did a version of I Will Always Jab You.
Speaker 2 (48:03):
It was less popular. Less popular sounds a little aggressive.
Speaker 3 (48:07):
She's been nominated for fifty three Grammys. Fifty three she's
won ten, which I think that number should be higher,
But you know, they have given her Lifetime Achievement Awards
and Joelene and I Will Always Love You were inducted
into the Grammy Hall of Fame, so they have like
heaped awards on her even when she has not won
(48:28):
the actual Grammy. And she's also won an Emmy, right yeah.
Speaker 2 (48:32):
She was also up for two Oscars for Best Song
for Traveling Through for trans America and I think two
thousand and six and then.
Speaker 1 (48:44):
Nine to five not win.
Speaker 2 (48:46):
No, it was beaten by Fame.
Speaker 1 (48:48):
Oh boy, tough year.
Speaker 2 (48:50):
Traveling Through was beaten by hard out There for a
Pimp from Hustle and Flow.
Speaker 1 (48:56):
That's a good song too.
Speaker 2 (48:57):
Are you gonna top that?
Speaker 3 (48:58):
It's really hard. I was getting getting ready to trash
whatever beat out nine to five? But yeah, Fame is
a great song.
Speaker 1 (49:04):
That's a tough year.
Speaker 2 (49:05):
That's a very tough year. But she also has two
Guinness World Records to her name, one of which is
Most Decades with the Top twenty Hit, which really just
goes to show how long she's been around it, how
long she's been.
Speaker 1 (49:18):
Huge you know what else?
Speaker 3 (49:19):
She has two of what stars on the Hollywood Walk
of Fame, DOWO.
Speaker 2 (49:24):
I know, is there anybody else who has that?
Speaker 3 (49:26):
I think so people in different media, although probably not
a lot of people.
Speaker 1 (49:31):
I bet it's a pretty short list.
Speaker 3 (49:33):
One in nineteen eighty four and then one in twenty eighteen,
when I guess the final Trio of Trio albums came out.
Speaker 2 (49:42):
So if you think Dolly's slowing down, friend, you are
dead wrong. Yep, she's got a new album coming out.
So she was inducted in the Rock and Roll Hall
of Fame despite her protests. She's like, I'm not a rocker.
Apparently she's like, all right, well I better go be
a rocker and earn that honor. She's so, her next
studio album, her forty ninth, is coming out I think
(50:02):
this fall, and it's called rock Star. And she's going
to be singing with some other rock stars too.
Speaker 1 (50:09):
Yeah, Stevie Nick's, Paul McCartney share, I love it. Yep.
Vince Neil, No, not Vince Neil.
Speaker 2 (50:17):
That's correct, Not Vince Neil.
Speaker 1 (50:18):
No, just kidding, that'd be pretty amazing.
Speaker 2 (50:22):
Actually, you got anything else about Dolly Parton?
Speaker 1 (50:25):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (50:25):
I've got one other thing before you answer. She wakes
up at three am every day.
Speaker 1 (50:30):
Oh and just daughter of a sharecropper. Yeah, I guess
that's amazing.
Speaker 2 (50:36):
Okay, you got anything else?
Speaker 1 (50:38):
I got nothing else?
Speaker 2 (50:39):
Okay, I don't either. I don't think, but I'm gonna
think of ten things after we're done recording.
Speaker 3 (50:45):
I know I'm gonna I've been listening to Dolly Parton
all day, so it's gonna continue on.
Speaker 2 (50:49):
Yeah, it's not hard to do. If you want to
know more about Dolly Parton, friend, go listen to Dolly Parton.
Go watch videos of Dolly Parton, Go read interviews with
Dolly Parton. She was once described as a black belt interviewee,
so you'll never be disappointed with a Dolly Parton interview.
And since I said you'll never be disappointed by a
Dolly Parton interview, that has opened up listener mail.
Speaker 3 (51:12):
I'm going to call this great email follow up from Arcades. Hey, guys,
want to tell you a story of my very traditional grandmother.
She was very traditional in the Midwestern sense, and she
was a homemaker. Oh yeah, have books for my grandfather's
iron working concern. She didn't tolerate cussing or fussing, and
was a conservative dresser.
Speaker 2 (51:32):
She liked the calico.
Speaker 1 (51:34):
She didn't have any obvious vices save one. Pac Man.
Speaker 3 (51:38):
Oh yeah, to hear her tell it, there was a
time where she would wake up before her husband and
five children, power up the atari, and start a pac
Man game. After thirty minutes or so, she would get
breakfast on the table, get her family out the door,
and do the books, clean the house, and then finally
get back to her paused pac Man game, which she
would play until it was time to start dinner when
her family came back home.
Speaker 2 (51:57):
That's awesome. She had pac Man fever.
Speaker 1 (52:00):
That's good.
Speaker 3 (52:01):
It wouldn't be much of a story, guys, except here's
the thing. She was really really good at pac Man.
She once told me she had the first forty something
levels memorized and could use them to rack up points
and then thus extra lives. She got to a point
where she could play the same game all day long. Eventually,
she would describe getting to a high enough level where
the game would freeze. Oh and what she was describing
(52:23):
was level two fifty six to kill screen, and said
she was home alone every time she reached it, and
the Internet wasn't a household thing. No one ever knew
what she was talking about.
Speaker 2 (52:32):
She just rolled the door be like somebody, anybody come look.
Speaker 3 (52:37):
It was until many years later that I saw King
of Kong and saw the footage of the kill screen
my grandmother had described. Couldn't believe my eyes or the
fact that my conservative grandmother was such an early skilled
gamer neat. She since passed away, But every time the
subject of pac Man comes up brings a smile to
my face.
Speaker 1 (52:53):
And I remember her and her high scores. That is
from Aaron Miller of Kansas City, that Kansas.
Speaker 2 (53:01):
Oh, that's rare. You don't usually hear from those people
Kansas side. Well, thanks a lot, Aaron, that's a fantastic story.
I'm glad you could smuggle that message out of the
Kansas side of Kansas City to us. And if you
want to be like Aaron and get in touch however way,
you can try putting it in an email sending it
off to stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1 (53:25):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Chuck and Jerry's here too, and today we're gonna make
some joyful noise together here on Stuff you should Know.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
That's right. I just poured myself a cup of ambition.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Uh huh, I had a few of those this.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
Morning before we dive into Dolly Parton land. We should
talk about our tour really quick because we're looking to
sell some more tickets specifically, well everywhere, but specifically DC
and Toronto.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Right, yeah, for the whole shebang. We're gonna be in
d C, Boston and then Toronto May fourth, fifth, and sixth.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
Right, that's right, And there are plenty of great seats available.
This is a really good show. I think one of
the best ones we've done in a long time. And
if you're in the Northeast, like, this is it. We're
not doing New York this year.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
Are you sorry?
Speaker 2 (01:00):
New York?
Speaker 3 (01:01):
But if you live the Northeast, this is this is
your chance because we're doing the Southeast in the fall,
and that's this is your opportunity.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
I think that's a great angle for this marketing campaign here.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
Chuck, Yeah, Northeast or bust.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Okay, So that's enough about us, everybody. We're here to
really talk about Dolly.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
Yeah. So Livia helped us with this one. And you know,
we've remarked about how Livia is getting great at titling
the articles even though she doesn't even have to, right
she does it because she's creative and talented. And her
title for this is why does everyone love Dolly Parton?
And we're going to explain that, But I think the
(01:38):
easiest thing to say is since the nineteen seventies, this
is a woman who was basically just put goodness into
the world at every turn.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Yeah, for sure. I was reading an interview with her
in Rolling Stone from nineteen eighty, like nine to five
had just come out, and you might as well have
told me it was from twenty twenty three.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
She just she's been the same way this whole time. Great.
She she doesn't like get into any political stuff. She said,
I'm not political. I won't talk about politics.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
She doesn't.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
She leaves hot button issues alone. But if it means
something to her, it's really meaningful, she'll she'll come out
on you know, in favor of it. Endorsing it, but
she doesn't put anything down. She might support something, but
she's not going to put anything down publicly.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
So the other kind of funny thing about this one
from Livia is she always includes her sources, and she
may have broken her own source record.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
Yeah, there's a lot.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
Oh boy, there were probably one hundred sources. But we
did want to mention one in particular because I listened
to this from jad Abamrad, the great jad Abamrab of
Radio ab Fame, m like four years ago put out
the wonderful series Dolly Parton's America. Yeah, and Livia binged
it and I listened to it back then, and back
then I was like, oh man, I want to do
(02:56):
an episode on Dolly Parton. But it's like Jad it
like he covered it so well, like what's the point
kind of thing?
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Right?
Speaker 1 (03:04):
But now four years on, I was like, well, we
can give it.
Speaker 3 (03:05):
The stuff you should know treatment, which is to say,
not as not as deep a dive, but it's a
great series. If you want to learn more about Dolly Parton,
then check out Dolly Parton's America.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
Very nice. And then just to button up, Chuck, we
were trying to answer that question, why does everybody love Dolly?
I came up with another hypothesis too, Okay, it's that
you know, when somebody is like, they can be anything
anybody wants them to be, Like, they're interpretable from all
different angles, so everybody just assumes they're like them. Dolly
(03:42):
is not like that. She is her own person who
can't be pigeonholed into one box or another, right, but
she's likable from all sides.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
Yeah, Like, find someone that's gonna talk some Dolly Parton
and then you and I really can a discussion in
the parking lot with that guy.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
It's a sad state of affairs, though, dude, because there's
think pieces all over the internet about how it's just
amazing that everybody doesn't hate Dolly Parton, and it's like,
good God, like this is what we've come to, Like
everybody hates everybody casually, so I mean, how has she
escaped it so long? And it's just like such a
sad state of affairs that that's normalized by even writing
(04:26):
pieces like that. But they're out there for sure. But
the upshot of it is people are amazed that people
don't hate Dolly Parton, and it's true. People don't hate
Dolly Parton.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
Yeah, and she's she's someone that is so I think,
kind of universally beloved and internationally beloved. That as you'll
see later in this episode there, she's been studied by
anthropologists and sociologists.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
Yeah, which is pretty amazing. And so let's start at
the beginning, shall we wait?
Speaker 2 (04:54):
Hold on one more thing?
Speaker 1 (04:55):
Yeah, more praise.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
The other thing about her, I think that's so amazing
and so remarkable is that she This is the reason
why everybody's just so fascinated with her right now. She's
maybe the one person who is straddling both sides of
the political and social divide as wide as it is
in the United States today and is not is not
(05:19):
like hanging on by her fingernails. She's like, I got
a foot here, and I'm not lying about it. Got
a foot here. I'm not lying about that either. I'm
not I'm not trying to fool either side. This. This
is what I'm into, and you know, I like both
of you.
Speaker 3 (05:32):
Basically, it's almost like being a genuine human who stays
true to who they are is something we should all
aspire to.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
Sure, but it also shows she shows that that's such
a rarity in this world that that you can be
globally beloved by just doing that and also making like
a ton of really great music too.
Speaker 3 (05:51):
Well, yeah, I mean, come on, we're gonna talk about
all this stuff, but can we.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
Go back to the beginning now? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (05:57):
Yeah, sorry, okay, Hey, never apologize about singing the praises
of Dolly Parton.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
That's a great rule of stuff.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
You should, no motto.
Speaker 3 (06:06):
And I just can't wait till we get to the
Dollywood stuff, because you've been and I have not. All right,
So she was born Dolly Rebecca Parton in nineteen forty six,
in January nineteenth of nineteen forty six in rural Tennessee.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
How do you pronounce this? Is it severe? County?
Speaker 2 (06:23):
I think it's severe.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
Oh, it's just severe.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
I'm almost positive it's severe.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
Okay, sev I e R and see immediately this is
I'm sure Jad's episode pronounced it perfectly.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
I bad. I don't remember.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
Threw his face into us palm like these guys.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
But she was born to a big family of twelve kids.
And it's kind of fun to look up photos of
Dolly and all her siblings because you know a few
of her sisters look a lot like her.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
All her brothers look.
Speaker 3 (06:54):
Like you know, they should be like shooting pool down
at the pool hall.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
Yeah, you know, all the.
Speaker 3 (07:00):
Just sort of genuine article smoky Mountain Tennessee foothills people.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
Yeah, for sure. And there were twelve of them, did you.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
Say, twelve sibs including her, And she was the fourth.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
Yeah, the fourth of twelve. And all fourteen people in
her family lived in a two room cabin. And I've
seen a replica of this cabin, and it is no joke.
A two room cabin and fourteen people lived in it
in the Smoky mountains.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
I mean two bedrooms with an office, right, right.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
I mean two rooms my friend with the outhouse, no
running water, no electricity, Like she grew up as Smoky mountain,
as a smoky mountain person can grow up, like even
people in other parts of Tennessee are like wow.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
But she says she had a great childhood running around
just being outside, and because she was the fourth of twelve,
she wasn't particularly like paid attention to, so she could
just kind of go off and do her own thing.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (07:58):
I get the idea that they were semi feral sort
of mountain kids. Her granddad was a Pentecostal minister, very
fiery in Brimstony, and she still, you know, mentions God
a lot. I get the sense that she's a little
less overtly religious, but spirituality still very much a mainstay
in her life.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
Yeah. I think it's more of a personal relationship between
her and God.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
Yeah, which is supposed to be.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
So she really lucked out because she had an uncle
named Bill Owens, who was a musician a songwriter who
noticed that she wanted to get into music from a
very young age and was maybe the only person in
her entire life or her early life that noticed and
then nurtured it. And she later said when he died
(08:44):
a few years back at his funeral, like she wouldn't
be here today if it wasn't him, Like she owed
him everything because he nurtured it in her. He encouraged her,
he supported her when she got rejected, and he helped
her break into the business. So bill Owens was a
huge influence in her life. But he noticed, like I said,
from a very early age. I think she wrote her
first song when she was.
Speaker 3 (09:04):
Five, Yeah, little tiny tassel top about her homemade corn
husk doll and she would pretend, you know, she would
get a tobacco stick and a tin can and act
like it was her microphone and Mike's stand, and she
would sing for the chickens in her yard and had
obviously a real talent from the beginning. If you listen
(09:25):
to her very first recording, Puppy Love from nineteen fifty nine,
it sounds like, you know, thirteen year old Dolly Parton.
You know, you can hear Dolly in that young voice.
And like I said, she was thirteen. And that was
the same year that she made her very first appearance
at the Grand Old Opry, introduced.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
By none other than Johnny Cash.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
Yeah, who was her first big crush, so it was
even more amazing for unbelievable. Her family didn't get to
see it though, because Dolly Parton was on TV before
her family had a TV at home. Yeah, which is
pretty cool. I believe there was a TV appearance, yes, noah, okay,
and if it was, if that one wasn't the first
(10:07):
whenever it was, she was on TV first, her family
still didn't have a.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
TV back, gotcha.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
So thanks to Uncle Billy taking her around and banging
on doors, she ended up making her debut on Mercury
Records in nineteen sixty two, which is nothing to sneeze at.
But I get the impression that it wasn't like her.
It wasn't like a like a okay, this is a
serious recording contract. It's like, okay, let's let's test this
(10:34):
girl out. Back then, they called any woman in country
music a girl singer, right, So she was a bit
of a novelty, not just because of her age, but
because she was a woman as well. But she had
her sight set on becoming a country music star. And
so the day after she graduated high school, the day
after she graduated high school, she got on a bus
(10:54):
for Nashville to move there.
Speaker 3 (10:55):
Yeah, amazing, nineteen sixty four. And very soon after she
moved there, she met a man that would become her
husband and a mainstay in her life to this day,
who is remarkably hard to find stuff about. His name
is Carl Dean. They met it very famously at a
laundromat when she was eighteen and he was twenty one.
(11:18):
Married a couple of years later. And I think a
lot of people that don't know a lot about Dolly
Parton think she might be single or something. Because she
never had kids. But she's been married to Carl Dean
since nineteen sixty six and he doesn't want to be
in the limelight. He never did. He's her biggest fan
and supporter. She's always said, you know, off the stage,
(11:39):
but he just doesn't want any part of the limelight.
And it's hard to even find a lot of pictures
of this guy. There's a handful out there. But he
started an asphalt laying business in the late seventies, still
runs that business today, which is just amazing. And yeah,
I read an article from a couple of years ago.
She was like, you know, Carl and I we like
to run errand we go to the twenty four hour stores,
(12:02):
you know, in the middle of the night, like Walmart
and places, and she said, and there are fewer people
there to come up to me. And she said, I
don't mind it. I love people, she said, I just
don't want it to get in the way of our shopping, right,
And you know, Carl's not wild about it. So they
just live a very simple kind of pure life together.
I think, outside the limelight.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
Yeah, I've read an interview with her somewhere and she
said that in her opinion, if she's out in public,
that time belongs to her fans, so she's not She
doesn't have a problem with people coming up to her
asking for autographs. She knows that she's out in public
and that's a risk that she runs right. Sure, but
her leisure time, her time away is like secluded off
(12:40):
with Carl, just the two of them. Usually. Maybe she
has a very close best friend I can't remember her name.
They go everywhere together, so she's almost like a stand
in for Carl when Dolly's traveling around.
Speaker 3 (12:50):
Yeah, and she's always been very her persona is very flirty,
and she's always sort of flirted around with In fact,
no friends that have worked on like commercial shoots with
her and they were like, man, she's the biggest flirt
you would ever know, and that's just her personality. And
she said that Karl understands that, and that's just how
she sort of has fun and relates to people, and
(13:11):
it's always very innocent, and I just think it's kind
of kind of cute and fun. Yep, for sure, I
want her to flirt with me, you know, I think,
is what I'm saying.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
This this episode might be your big break, Chuck. Yeah,
so would you just like turn bright red and like
dig your the toe of your foot into this.
Speaker 3 (13:30):
I kind of am a little bright red. I thought
it was the stuff you should know. Sign in here
casting a red beam on my face.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
No, that's you thinking about being flirted with by Dolly Partner.
I know.
Speaker 3 (13:39):
Well, dude, I grew up as you did, but I'm,
you know, a little bit older. Like the heyday of
early Dolly was when I was a kid, and of
course my dad was in love with her, and you know,
it was just she was one of the biggest stars
in the world, and my parents were kind of into
country music, so she was just sort of prevalent in
our household somehow.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
Yeah, my introduction to her was through nine to five.
If my mom that that whole message and the idea
behind it was right up my mom's alley, So she
would watch it with her hands clasped together.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
At the side of her face like that.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
Just an editor adoration of everybody, including Dolly Parton too.
I think my family was never really into country music,
so I think that that was like a big introduction
and probably a win over for my family. Was nine
to five.
Speaker 3 (14:23):
All right, Well, we'll talk about nine to five and
crossover success more.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
It's a good setup.
Speaker 3 (14:27):
But how about we take a break, Yes, and we'll
be right back with more Dolly parton.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
Okay, So we're talking about Dolly becoming a star. Like
she's had a couple of record contracts, nothing serious though,
but then in nineteen sixty five she saw him with
Monument Records. That was her big her first big record contract,
I read. But they wanted her to be a pop singer,
which is kind of ironic because she actually would kind
of become a pop singer later on in her career,
(15:18):
But at first she was like, no way, Like have
you seen my house? And do you know how many
people are in my family? I'm not a pop singer.
I'm a country singer, right, Yeah, So she persisted and
hung in there, and they ended up like folding and
giving in, and she went on to become a full
fledged country singer.
Speaker 1 (15:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (15:38):
Nineteen sixty seven her first record Hello I'm Dolly, which
is just great. How they used to do records like
that in time like that when you like introduce her
to the world. But you know, as would become a
thing like in her career, most of the songs that
she's well known for most of the songs she's recorded.
(15:58):
She's done, you know, plenty of cup because everyone does that,
especially in country music. But she is most well known
as a songwriter, and we'll get into that more in
a little bit. But she wrote two Now Libya has
a number twenty four. But I saw that there were
both top twenty in the country charts, Dumb Blonde, which
(16:19):
is written by a guy named Curly Putman, great name,
and Something Fishy written by Dolly, and I think the
album itself was a top twenty hit her debut, right crazy,
you know in the country charts, right off out of
the gate.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
Yes, I was looking up Something Fishy and it's about
a woman who's become convinced that her husband's fishing trips
aren't actually fishing trips and that he's running around on her.
So one of the lines is, I guess some large
mouth bass left that lipstick on your shirt. I don't
think you're a fisherman, honey, I think you're a flirt.
That's like perfect debut. Dolly like at what age, like
(16:57):
nineteen I think is how old she has? Yeah, pretty great.
Speaker 3 (17:01):
And Porter Wagoner is someone that we talked about on
our Grand ole Opry Show and he had the Porter
Wagoner Show. He hires young Dolly to replace his other
young woman sidekick singer, and basically she elevated the show
to the point where it was a number one, the
number one syndicated show in the country radio show. And
(17:24):
they started doing duets together and albums together, including their
first one, Just Between You and Me in nineteen sixty eight.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
Yeah, and they started touring a lot too, and she
learned a tremendous amount about touring, performing live, the music business.
Everything she needed to learn early on came from touring
with Porter Wagner. But he was also really well aware
that he had like a real cash register on his hands. Yeah,
(17:51):
and he kept her under his thumb as much as
he could, both emotionally blackmailing her, I get the impression,
but also locking her into just really floyd of contracts
because she might not have known what she was signing.
She probably did and just figured like, Okay, at least
it's gonna help me get to where I'm going. That's
the likelier explanation if you ask me. But he was
(18:12):
definitely in charge for the first many years of her
serious career.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (18:18):
But because she's Dolly Parton and so beloved. When they
eventually broke up their relationship, I think it was kind
of rough, and she ended up writing a song I
Will Always Love You about that relationship, and ultimately they
worked it out and she reconciled and was at his
deathbed with his family, and it was kind of one
(18:39):
of those no hard feelings kind of situations.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
Oh really, I've read that his last dying words were,
I'll never forgive you. That's what I'm gonna say on
my deathbed. No, I'm just gonna like wave my finger
around the room to everybody standing there.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
And we're all gonna be like, is he talking about me?
Speaker 2 (18:55):
Exactly? You guys can spend the rest of your lives
figuring it out.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
Of me able to just look at me and say,
he's talking about you.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
Totally.
Speaker 1 (19:04):
Uh So, they while they were a duet.
Speaker 2 (19:08):
Oh wait, wait, Chuck, wait, wait, hold on, one more
thing you brought up I Will Always love You, which
everybody knows one of probably her most one of her
most famous songs, arguably her other most famous song.
Speaker 1 (19:18):
Joe Lene great song.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
She apparently wrote those songs on the same day. Start
to finish. Isn't that amazing.
Speaker 3 (19:26):
Yeah, I mean she she now says, like, you know,
if it wasn't the same day, it was in the
within a couple of days of each other, but like,
either way, it's remarkable.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
Yeah, and it's possible it was the same day. She
just doesn't remember.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (19:40):
That really like kind of goes to show what kind
of uh she she was drinking cups of ambition left
and right, apparently, because not only does that story potentially true,
she also put out twenty five albums yeah, both d
us with Porter Wagner and then some solo albums in
the five period between nineteen sixty eight and nineteen seventy three.
Speaker 3 (20:03):
Yeah, I mean that's remarkable she started, and that's kind
of where I was headed.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
Anyway.
Speaker 3 (20:07):
She kind of started recording her own solo stuff as
she was. You know, it's kind of obvious she just
had she was too prolific of a songwriter. I mean,
she supposedly her quote is that she's written more than
three thousand songs and three of them are good. She's
also humble, another reason people love Dolly Parton. But she
had too much to say early on, and so started
(20:31):
making solo records while she was still with Wagoner, and
it was in that that time period, I think in
the early seventies is when you know those iconic songs
Jolene and I Will Always Love You came out.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
Right, but still under the tutelage of Porter Wagner.
Speaker 3 (20:44):
Right, yeah, I mean those are solo albums and I
think I Will Always Love You. It was about them
splitting apart, So it was sort of right there at
the end.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
I think it definitely was. And I heard a story
of years back that he said, Okay, I'll let you
out of your contract if you let me produce this
amazing song, and she yeah, I will always love you, right,
And then apparently he turned around and sued her anyway
for breach of contract. But she she got out of it.
She got out of this this this terrible contract, this
(21:14):
exploitive contract. She got out from under a very domineering mentor.
And this is a really big time of transition for
her because not only did she get away from Porter Wagner,
which was enormous, because in a sense, she was like
a pinball that had just been plunged when she was
released from from Wagner, just looking for like the next
(21:37):
bumper to just shoot her off in another direction. That's
my analogy, buddy. Yeah, and that's exactly what happened. But
she also had to break up with her family band,
like they were her original backing band. She had to
be like, I gotta get better musicians, you guys. And
she made some really hard decisions, but they they ended
up paying off, and from what I understand, there were
(21:59):
no last hard feelings from it.
Speaker 3 (22:01):
Yeah, that's pretty great. She hosted a TV show for
one season, just like us. It was called Dolly. You know,
back then they had all those great variety shows. This
was seventy six into seventy seven. And then a very
important man comes into her life by the name of
Sandy Gallen, who was a uber manager got the Beatles
(22:25):
on Ed Sulimon would later manage Michael Jackson and marbar
streisand and Cher and Sandy Gallen was a pretty instrumental
person for a couple of reasons.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
One is.
Speaker 3 (22:37):
Kind of encouraging the crossover success. Like he booked her
at the bottom line in the Greenwich Village. Who you know,
everyone from Springsteen to lou Reid were playing there.
Speaker 2 (22:47):
Like Andy Warhol came and watched her show. There's an
awesome picture of them sitting together.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
Yeah, talk about crossover.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
Yeah, exactly. And she was nervous. I saw that she
was nervous on the on the way to being scared.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
I'm sure. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (23:02):
He had her tour Europe, exposed her internationally. He took
her to Studio fifty four, which is probably where she
also hung out with Andy Warhol. But the other big
reason is that Sandy Gallen was gay. He died like
five years ago. And this was a very instrumental relationship.
And I get the impression, you know, Dolly is very
(23:24):
famous for being a sort of an icon in the
LGTVQ community.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
Yeah, from very early on.
Speaker 3 (23:30):
Yeah, And it seems like this is kind of where
it all started, was having this relationship with Sandy, and
you know, just the gay community wrapping their arms around
her early on, not necessarily because you know, she had
a gay manager, but you know, I don't think it hurt.
Speaker 2 (23:48):
Right, And The New York Times wrote that she got
a warm welcome in San Francisco from transgender fans and
quote other exotic urban cult audiences.
Speaker 3 (24:00):
Well, Dolly's always said, you know, she's one of those
love is love types, and you know, it's just like
it's the way to live life. Like she doesn't judge people,
and she never has, and she's always just embraced like
whatever community wants to love her music, Like why would she?
I never get it when people like intentionally sort of
(24:22):
turn audiences off, right, you know.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
Yeah, I know for sure, for sure, But also like
it's that's so true and it's so prevalent when when
you read about her, watch interviews with her, just listen
to her talk, you're almost like, what's your angle, dolly, right,
what are you really up to here?
Speaker 3 (24:44):
Her big crossover hit was Here You Come Again, which
was considered a pop song. I mean, I've always kind
of thought it was a country song, I guess because
her voice is in it and she insisted on steel guitar,
so it still had.
Speaker 1 (24:59):
A little country. But it's like a perfect song.
Speaker 2 (25:02):
It's a perfect crossover, Like it's exactly perfectly balanced, Like
there couldn't have been a better song to transition from
full on country singer to country pop singer.
Speaker 3 (25:14):
Yeah, And it went number one on the country chart,
number three on the pop charts.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
Album went platinum.
Speaker 3 (25:20):
And this is you know, the late seventies when she
really really really blew up.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
Yeah, that was that. She just took off like a
rocket from there. One of the things that she did
very wisely in the late seventies early eighties, right around
this time, was just hop on the TV circuit. Y
She's been on at least a few hundred TV appearances,
but a lot of them took place in the seventies
and eighties when she was just making herself known, making
(25:47):
herself a household name. And none of this was by accident,
Like she's she's wanted to be a megas star since
she was a kid, and this was part of She
apparently makes a lot of lists and they turn out
to kind of be five year plans, and I'm sure
getting on the talk show circuit was part of one
of those lists.
Speaker 3 (26:08):
And that explains why as a kid growing up in
the seventies, I saw a lot of Dolly Parton exactly.
Speaker 2 (26:13):
She was everywhere Dolly wanted you to see a lot
of Dolly Parton.
Speaker 3 (26:18):
In the eighties is when she continued some of her
collaborations with other artists, very famously with Kenny Rodgers with
Islands in the Stream, huge massive hit, Haven't Heard It,
And then nineteen eighty seven, my favorite collaboration at least
came out and maybe my favorite Dolly stuff period, oh yeah,
(26:38):
was the album Trio Yeah, that she recorded with Linda
Ronstadt and Emilu Harris. Just three of the best voices
in the history of music coming together to sing together.
They ended up making three albums over the years together.
So if you haven't listened to any of this stuff,
highly recommend Trio from nineteen eighty seven.
Speaker 2 (26:56):
She also released some bluegrass albums in the late nineties,
The Grass Is Blue, Little Sparrow, Halo's and Horns, And
then she released her first Christmas album in thirty years
back in twenty twenty, A Holly Dolly Christmas, which is
pretty good. It's cute, But I think the best Christmas
album she released was Once Upon a Christmas in nineteen
(27:17):
eighty four. There's a lot of Kenny Rogers on it.
Speaker 3 (27:20):
I made a joke this last Christmas on Instagram. I
think that like probably fifty percent of Dolly Parton's Christmas
songs are about sex. It's true where there's like sexual overtones,
right exactly.
Speaker 1 (27:34):
Yeah, Yeah, it's good stuff.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
But that nineteen eighty four album has hard candy Christmas
on it, which is what I mean, you have it,
maybe your best her best one, if you ask me.
Speaker 1 (27:46):
Great song.
Speaker 3 (27:47):
All right, So now let's talk a little bit more
about her songwriting. I think that's the thing that she's
sort of most proud of. She said in a twenty
twenty book, if I had to choose just one thing
to be, would choose to be a songwriter. She's always
said that she loves writing from the male point of view.
She loves writing songs for men because a lot of
(28:08):
her songs are sort of narrative story type songs, and
she has written a lot of big, huge hits for
people like Merle Haggard and Kenny Rogers and Hank Williams
Junior and all kinds of dudes.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
Right. She also plays a bunch of instruments. The guitar,
she says, is her strongest, and there's a lot of
other string instruments that she can play. I saw a
video of one of her concerts. She's got a banjo
slung around her, yeah, her like she's got a strap
hanging from a strap while she's playing a fiddle really fast.
It's pretty amazing. But if you really want to be
(28:40):
amazed by Dolly, you should watch her play the saxophone,
and in particular, at the Glastonbury Music Festival in twenty
fourteen in the UK, in front of a crowd of
one hundred thousand, she busted out her yackety sacks, Yeah,
the Benny Hill theme song, and it just Hill.
Speaker 1 (29:00):
It is.
Speaker 3 (29:01):
That whole show is a fun watch because it's you know,
it's in It's at the Glastonbury Festival and it's like,
I don't know, I think your legendary status just like
grew with that appearance.
Speaker 2 (29:11):
Oh yeah, Like she was, you know, kind of a
cult favorite in the UK and then she became like
a like a pop culture favorite after that show.
Speaker 1 (29:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (29:20):
Nine to five, the movie that you mentioned before in
nineteen eighty was when she got into movie making, and
it is a movie.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
Boy.
Speaker 3 (29:27):
Not only does it hold up today, but it is
that was ahead of its time and like even more
relevant today than it probably was then.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
Which is sad if you stop and think about it.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
No, no, totally sad.
Speaker 2 (29:38):
But it was based on an actual movement called nine
to five, the nine to five movement from the early
seventies that I guess Jane Fonda was aware of because
she was one of the creators behind the movie nine
to five, And that was an actual like movement led
by Secretary starting in Boston and it spread around the
country and they were protesting sexual harassment low p getting
(30:00):
passed over for promotions. And they had a great slogan
that I saw raises not.
Speaker 1 (30:06):
Roses, raises not roses. Yeah, I love that.
Speaker 2 (30:10):
I love it too, like your T shirt exactly.
Speaker 1 (30:13):
But some money exactly. I buy my own.
Speaker 2 (30:15):
Flowers, right, I can buy my own flowers.
Speaker 3 (30:19):
Yeah, that's what the back of the T shirt said.
And then parentheses quit pinching my butt.
Speaker 2 (30:24):
Plus also, that's a Miley Cyrus song. Who is Dolly
Parton's god daughter?
Speaker 1 (30:30):
That's right?
Speaker 3 (30:30):
Yeah, and Dolly credits that relationship with the fact that
millennials love Dolly.
Speaker 2 (30:36):
Yeah. I wasn't aware of this, so everybody knows. Even
I know that Miley Cyrus was Hannah Montana on Nickelodeon
from I think two thousand and six to twenty eleven, right,
and she would have Dolly on here or there as
aunt Dolly like her aunt, Hannah Montana's aunt. And I
guess like millennials just grew up watching that and that
(30:57):
she just exposed herself not literally but figuratively to an
entirely new generation, and it stuck like, that's that's how
they that's how they met Dolly, and they just kept
following her and loving her from that point on.
Speaker 1 (31:09):
I love it.
Speaker 3 (31:11):
She was in a bunch of movies over the years,
Best Little Worehouse in Texas with Burt Reynolds of course
part of the ensemble, and Steele Magnolia's. Very disappointingly, Olivia
doesn't mention my favorite Dolly second favorite Dolly Parton movie,
which was Rhinestone with Sylvester Stallone, one of my big
HBO movies. Early on, I watched that thing over and
(31:32):
over again. Stallone sings. Have you ever seen it?
Speaker 2 (31:36):
No? I never have. I turned I turned the TV
off after Life Force.
Speaker 3 (31:42):
You should check out Rhinestone because still you know that
the premises She's to make a country star out of
Sylvester Stallone, and he has a song in there called
Drinkenstein instead of Frankenstein, and the chorus is Budweiser. You've
created a monster and call him drinking style.
Speaker 2 (32:01):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (32:02):
But still unreally sings, and it's.
Speaker 3 (32:04):
Just I think it's known probably as a bad movie,
but it has a very special place in my heart.
Speaker 2 (32:08):
It sounds like the prequel to Tulsa King. So she
also did you mention sand Dollar yet?
Speaker 1 (32:17):
No.
Speaker 2 (32:17):
She founded a production company with Sandy Gallan, her longtime
manager and friend, and they went on to produce movies
like Father of the Bride, Yeah, Buffy the Vampire Slayer,
the movie.
Speaker 1 (32:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (32:31):
She also did a straight Talk which she was in
where she plays a woman who accidentally becomes a radio
host and of course just shoots into the stratosphere and popularity.
Speaker 1 (32:42):
I never saw that.
Speaker 2 (32:43):
Oh yeah it was. It was okay, okay, not her
best work, but still she was amazing at Steele Magnolia's.
I mean, like, if you if you go back and yeah,
if you go back and watch some of those scenes
between her and her husband in particular, it's she's a
really good actress.
Speaker 3 (33:02):
No, she's good and in fact, but the Shelby I
just did was more Sally Field, not that I think
about it.
Speaker 2 (33:08):
I detected Hannah sally Field in there.
Speaker 3 (33:10):
All right, I think let's take another break and then
we'll This was going to go a little long, but
that's okay because we're about to dive into Dollywood right
after this. Shelby all right, my friend, here we are.
(33:48):
I'll set it up with how it starts, and then
you can just take over because you've actually been there.
But in an interview in nineteen eighty two with Barbara Walters,
Dolly Parton said something about being interest did in opening
up a theme park back home.
Speaker 1 (34:03):
And there was a theme park.
Speaker 3 (34:05):
Silver Dollar City, in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, and the owners,
Jack and Pete Hershand heard this interview, gave her a
call and was like, let's get together on this, and
they did to great success.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
Yeah, four years later Dollywood opened. It reopened as Dollywood.
I should say, just that first year they doubled their
entries to one point three million people coming. And that's
not just a full year, Like it snows and everything
kind of shuts down in the winter time in Pigeon
Forger and the Smoky So I'm guessing they crammed a
(34:40):
lot of those people in in a very short amount
of time, probably summer. I don't know why I'm going
off on this tangent, but it just seemed to work.
Speaker 1 (34:48):
They close in the winter be.
Speaker 2 (34:49):
Quiet too, So it was a success right out of
the gate, I should say. And a little known fact
or it's a rumor that a lot of people don't
realize as actual fact. They period a time capsule there
on opening day and it contains an unreleased Dolly song
No Way that is not to be open until I
think she's ninety nine years old?
Speaker 1 (35:10):
Wow, which is what is she now? Seventy six, seventy eight?
Speaker 2 (35:15):
I think?
Speaker 1 (35:16):
Okay, so it's it's close.
Speaker 2 (35:18):
Yeah, we can wait.
Speaker 3 (35:19):
She sees it yet, Oh we'll wait. So tell me
about Dollywood. I want to I want to know more.
Speaker 2 (35:24):
So it is a you can definitely believe that it
used to be a silver dollar city. They preserved a
lot of stuff. There's a coal fired train that kind
of takes you around on some neat vistas and everything.
There's We went and we went around Christmas time, which
kind of undermines my argument about being shutting down in
the winter. We went for Humi's birthday actually like one year,
(35:46):
and there was like a Christmas show where there was
like singing and dancing. But it was so corny that
I was waiting for everybody to be like, oh, you know,
we're just joking, here's the real show. It never happened.
It was just that like kitchy am in earnest, Yeah,
and just corny, but it was very sweet in retrospect,
especially hard to sit through, but very sweet. And then
(36:07):
there's just a lot of like people dipping candles, there's
tons of food to eat. There's a roller coaster that
neither you me nor I went on. But there's a
museum there that's closed temporarily because apparently they're reimagining it.
But it was originally called the Chasing Rainbows Museum. And
Dolly Parton is a just self professed packrat. She saved everything,
(36:31):
chuck everything. The Coat of Many Colors that she sings about,
it's there. You can see it in real life right there,
and it's the tiniest, cutest little thing you've ever seen
in your entire life. It's so tiny, and.
Speaker 1 (36:46):
When she was a kid, right out of all rags that.
Speaker 2 (36:48):
She sang about in that Coat of Many Colors and
it's what a great song. But then just just to
love that song and then see the actual coat and
then just see how dinky it is. It was just amazing.
Those lists I told you she used to keep, she
kept those, Those are on display, wigs, rhinestones everywhere. But
it's not just like this odor tribute to Dolly. It's
(37:08):
a genuine, like curated look into her whole career, and
it's it was one of the best museums I've ever
been to in my life of any kind.
Speaker 1 (37:17):
Why didn't you guys ride the roller coaster?
Speaker 2 (37:19):
We're both scared of roller coasters.
Speaker 1 (37:21):
Oh, I don't think I remembered that.
Speaker 2 (37:24):
Yes, I've been scared of roller coasters for decades, but
I feel like I'm starting to come out of it. Okay,
And I might go challenge myself and ride a few
roller coasters this summer and see if I'm correct or
if I'm really really wrong.
Speaker 3 (37:37):
Well, you should go to six Flags with Ruby and I,
because there's nothing like getting your courage worked up than
a seven year old who will ride anything, okay, staring
you in the face.
Speaker 2 (37:48):
Okay, all right, I may use that. That's just the
elixir I'm looking for.
Speaker 3 (37:52):
Yeah, yeah, she'll go on whatever. And she's just like
she wouldn't understand. She'd be like, why don't you want
to go on it? What do you mean you're scared?
Speaker 2 (37:58):
I don't You're of ruining things for me.
Speaker 3 (38:02):
Uh, well, I want to go to Dollywood, so maybe
we can go to six Wags and then Dollywood and
just do a theme park round up.
Speaker 2 (38:08):
I strongly recommend it because there's like all sorts of
stuff in nearby Gatlinburg and Pigeon Ford, Ripley's Museums and
just all sorts of just cool, super kitchy touristy stuff.
I think, Oh, what's his name? Uh, the guy who
sings Proud to be an American?
Speaker 1 (38:28):
Lee Green Greenwood.
Speaker 2 (38:30):
There's the Lee Greenwood Cafe where they no joke, play
those song oh no, loop over and over again. The
whole time You're like, where's the next song? They don't
play the next song.
Speaker 3 (38:40):
I heard that song every night of the summer for
like five summers when I worked at the Stow Mountain
laser shop.
Speaker 2 (38:45):
Oh yeah, I'll bet I.
Speaker 1 (38:46):
Got my fill of it.
Speaker 2 (38:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (38:48):
Uh, So we can talk a little bit more about
her politics she's and this is where the sociologists and
anthropologists come in. There's a sociologist named Treci McMillan Cottum
that has written about how black women have always looked
up to Dolly Parton as a role model, even though
she is like it's a very specific sort of white
Southern thing that she embodies. Again, just you know, testifies
(39:12):
to her crossover appeal that she is to be admired
by anybody.
Speaker 1 (39:17):
Her Q score.
Speaker 3 (39:18):
If you don't know what a Q score is, it's
a marketing tool that basically there's a bunch of things
that go into your Q score, but it's basically how
how much people like you, how much they recognize your name.
And her Q score is like legendarily one of the
top Q scores of all time celebrity.
Speaker 2 (39:33):
Was she has a high positive Q score. They also
do a negative Q score and she's a very low
negative Q score, So she's among the most beloved and
among the least disliked people in the entire world.
Speaker 1 (39:45):
Yeah. I don't want to know my Q score.
Speaker 2 (39:47):
I looked it up. We don't have one yet.
Speaker 1 (39:49):
Okay, good.
Speaker 2 (39:49):
But I was reading this article on the Conversation and
these two Australian marketing people were trying to figure out
who would have been Australia's Dolly, and they landed on
Hugh Jackman. And I'm like, I can't disagree with that.
Speaker 1 (40:02):
He's pretty likable.
Speaker 2 (40:03):
Sure everybody likes Hugh Jackman. Yeah, I would agree with that,
even though he did the Greatest Showman, right people still
like Hugh Jackman.
Speaker 1 (40:13):
The anthropologist comes in.
Speaker 3 (40:15):
A man named Jonathan Zilberg in nineteen ninety five talked
about how she was loved in Zimbabwe, of all places,
and again it's just like, you know, pick a country
and chances are people there love Dolly Parton.
Speaker 2 (40:31):
And in Dolly Parton's America. And then they talk about
how Nelson Mandela, while he was in prison in South Africa,
got his jailers to play Joe Lean for the whole Yeah,
holds in jail basically all Shawshank redemption.
Speaker 3 (40:45):
Uh huh, pretty cool, Pretty cool. And like you said earlier,
she basically just avoids politics. She doesn't let any politician
on either side use her music. If a Democrat uses it,
she shuts him down. If a Republican uses it, she
shuts him down. She just sort of side steps all
that stuff. She's always been, you know, growing up. Of course,
(41:07):
in the seventies there were a lot of playground jokes
about Dolly Parton's breast size.
Speaker 1 (41:12):
She was very well known for.
Speaker 3 (41:14):
It, and she's always been the first one to jump
in and joke about it herself. Instead of being like
the butt of the joke, she can just go along
with it, and that's just that's another really likable quality
as someone who can and can laugh at themselves and
not take things too seriously.
Speaker 2 (41:29):
I also saw it put that she she knows that
these jokes are going to be made anyway, so she
can diffuse them by getting out in front of them
and topping, you know, the lame jokes that like old
talk show hosts would make.
Speaker 1 (41:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:43):
I saw once she said that she burned her braw
and it took the fire department three days to put
it out, like that kind of stuff. That's hilarious. That
was her joke.
Speaker 1 (41:53):
Yeah, that's good, that's very funny.
Speaker 2 (41:55):
So I think we mentioned this before. Do you know
that Dolly the sheep, the first cloned animal on the planet,
was named Dolly because she was grown from a mammary gland.
So yeah, I can't remember where we talked about that,
but it really just goes to show like that's how
ubiquitous Dolly Parton's boobs were in the twentieth century, Like
(42:16):
they were as big as she was. Basically, Yeah, they
were definitely part of her intended they were definitely part
of her brand for sure.
Speaker 3 (42:24):
Yeah, you know, she was smart enough to lean into it.
Another thing that she had done over the years is
there are a lot of really dark songs that she's
written about. Even though she's never kind of outright considered
herself a feminist, she very much is and a lot
of the songs she's written over the years have been
very dark songs about women who are either abandoned or
(42:47):
suffering from sexual double standards.
Speaker 1 (42:50):
Or there's one brutal song.
Speaker 3 (42:51):
From nineteen seventy called Daddy Come and Get Me about
a true story of a relative in her family that
was basically institutionalized by her husband. So she's never been
afraid to go down sort of in the tradition of
the old sort of dark country murder ballad thing, go
down these darker roads with some of the songs she's written.
Speaker 2 (43:08):
Yeah, I saw that she considers herself not a feminist,
but in favor of all women. She's for all women.
So it's like she doesn't subscribe to the movement part,
but what the movement's ultimately about, she's totally in favor with,
and that's super her. She made a very rare, overt
(43:29):
statement when she came out in support of Black Lives Matter,
and at a time where it was like, you're casting
your lot one way or another, and she stood up
for it, which is pretty.
Speaker 1 (43:42):
Cool she did.
Speaker 3 (43:43):
She also in twenty eighteen that was at Dollywood, the
Dixie Stampede, she changed the name to Dolly Parton Stampede
after people complained about the whole Dixie connotation and Civil
War theme.
Speaker 1 (43:57):
She changed that up, and she was.
Speaker 3 (43:59):
Just like, you know, I never really thought about, you know,
the Confederate imagery, meaning what it meant to people, and
so she was happily changed it. And that's just the
kind of person she is, I think.
Speaker 2 (44:10):
And she got gufh for that, and she got guff
for supporting Black Lives Matter from some of her her
right leaning fans. But she can always explain herself, you know,
and she does so in such a great way that
you're just kind of like, well, fine, it's hard to
be you can't keep a grudge against her, even if
she goes against you politically, but she just so rarely
(44:30):
does it.
Speaker 1 (44:31):
Yeah, agreed, she is.
Speaker 3 (44:34):
We're gonna wind it down with her business in philanthropy,
very savvy business person from the very beginning. She was
smart enough to hang on to her the rights to
her own music and never give him up. Even when
Elvis Presley came Colin and wanted to cover I Will
Always Love You. He wanted half the publishing rights, and
she was like, no way, He'd take a walk Elvis Presley.
Speaker 2 (44:55):
He didn't. Apparently, Colonel Tom called her up on the
morning of the scheduled record varing session and sprung that
on her, and she turned him down. And she was
hoping that Elvis was as disappointed as she was. But
that took a lot of gumption, especially to have it
sprung on you like that, and she said, Nope, not
doing it. But that's one of the things that made
her so incredibly wealthy. Like apparently her music catalog has
(45:18):
a net worth of about one hundred and fifty million
dollars and brings in about six to eight million dollars
a year for her, according to I think Forbes, and
then her steak in Dollywood is her her most valuable asset.
I think it's like one hundred and sixty five million dollars.
Pretty neat.
Speaker 1 (45:36):
She has done quite well for herself.
Speaker 3 (45:38):
Yeah, she I mean these days she's she's not stopping either.
She's she's on Duncan Hine's buttermilk biscuit mix with her
little cartoon face. They have fragrances branded by Dolly. They
have pet clothes that she's branded with, Like just all
(45:58):
kinds of things. She's not afraid to license her image
for sure.
Speaker 2 (46:02):
We've got that the Duncan Hines frosting in our pantry.
Do you the chocolate chocolate cream frosting. And then one
other thing I saw, chuck. She wrote a book. Co
wrote a book with James Patterson, one of the best,
one of the most favorite novelists in the entire world.
It's called Run Rows Run, and it's a thriller based
kind of loosely on Dolly's story of making it in
the music basins. Oh wow, yeah, I think it just
(46:24):
came out.
Speaker 1 (46:25):
Okay, let me have to check that out. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (46:27):
She is very charitable as well. She started the Dollywood
Foundation in nineteen eighty eight just to get literacy going
in her home county, and it grew and grew and
grew to the point where it is now in the US, Canada, Australia,
the UK, and Ireland, and to date the program has
given out more than two hundred and four million books
(46:50):
may across these countries. And you know she'll build a
hospital in her county. Anytime there's like wildfires nearby, she's
chipping in. She very famously donated a million dollars to
Vanderbilt University Medical Center for COVID nineteen vaccine research. And
(47:10):
you know, people don't credit her with the MODERNA vaccine,
but they're like, that million dollars was instrumental in getting
that vaccine to trial.
Speaker 1 (47:19):
Well.
Speaker 2 (47:19):
Yeah, she also was like everybody go get jabbed.
Speaker 1 (47:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (47:22):
There was a video at one round of her getting
her own vaccine, the first one, I think, and she
was singing vaccine to the tune of Joe Lene and.
Speaker 1 (47:33):
Sing pretty nice die in.
Speaker 2 (47:34):
Yeah, exactly. It was great. So one other thing though
about her foundation. One reason she got into literacy programs
was because her father never learned to read, and apparently
he told her just before he died that he was
most proud of her for that work that she'd done
with promoting literacy around the world. It's pretty cool. It
(47:55):
makes it even neaterer.
Speaker 3 (47:56):
And in addition to the vaccine Jolene song, she also
did a version of I Will Always Jab You.
Speaker 2 (48:03):
It was less popular. Less popular sounds a little aggressive.
Speaker 3 (48:07):
She's been nominated for fifty three Grammys. Fifty three she's
won ten, which I think that number should be higher,
But you know, they have given her Lifetime Achievement Awards
and Joelene and I Will Always Love You were inducted
into the Grammy Hall of Fame, so they have like
heaped awards on her even when she has not won
(48:28):
the actual Grammy. And she's also won an Emmy, right yeah.
Speaker 2 (48:32):
She was also up for two Oscars for Best Song
for Traveling Through for trans America and I think two
thousand and six and then.
Speaker 1 (48:44):
Nine to five not win.
Speaker 2 (48:46):
No, it was beaten by Fame.
Speaker 1 (48:48):
Oh boy, tough year.
Speaker 2 (48:50):
Traveling Through was beaten by hard out There for a
Pimp from Hustle and Flow.
Speaker 1 (48:56):
That's a good song too.
Speaker 2 (48:57):
Are you gonna top that?
Speaker 3 (48:58):
It's really hard. I was getting getting ready to trash
whatever beat out nine to five? But yeah, Fame is
a great song.
Speaker 1 (49:04):
That's a tough year.
Speaker 2 (49:05):
That's a very tough year. But she also has two
Guinness World Records to her name, one of which is
Most Decades with the Top twenty Hit, which really just
goes to show how long she's been around it, how
long she's been.
Speaker 1 (49:18):
Huge you know what else?
Speaker 3 (49:19):
She has two of what stars on the Hollywood Walk
of Fame, DOWO.
Speaker 2 (49:24):
I know, is there anybody else who has that?
Speaker 3 (49:26):
I think so people in different media, although probably not
a lot of people.
Speaker 1 (49:31):
I bet it's a pretty short list.
Speaker 3 (49:33):
One in nineteen eighty four and then one in twenty eighteen,
when I guess the final Trio of Trio albums came out.
Speaker 2 (49:42):
So if you think Dolly's slowing down, friend, you are
dead wrong. Yep, she's got a new album coming out.
So she was inducted in the Rock and Roll Hall
of Fame despite her protests. She's like, I'm not a rocker.
Apparently she's like, all right, well I better go be
a rocker and earn that honor. She's so, her next
studio album, her forty ninth, is coming out I think
(50:02):
this fall, and it's called rock Star. And she's going
to be singing with some other rock stars too.
Speaker 1 (50:09):
Yeah, Stevie Nick's, Paul McCartney share, I love it. Yep.
Vince Neil, No, not Vince Neil.
Speaker 2 (50:17):
That's correct, Not Vince Neil.
Speaker 1 (50:18):
No, just kidding, that'd be pretty amazing.
Speaker 2 (50:22):
Actually, you got anything else about Dolly Parton?
Speaker 1 (50:25):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (50:25):
I've got one other thing before you answer. She wakes
up at three am every day.
Speaker 1 (50:30):
Oh and just daughter of a sharecropper. Yeah, I guess
that's amazing.
Speaker 2 (50:36):
Okay, you got anything else?
Speaker 1 (50:38):
I got nothing else?
Speaker 2 (50:39):
Okay, I don't either. I don't think, but I'm gonna
think of ten things after we're done recording.
Speaker 3 (50:45):
I know I'm gonna I've been listening to Dolly Parton
all day, so it's gonna continue on.
Speaker 2 (50:49):
Yeah, it's not hard to do. If you want to
know more about Dolly Parton, friend, go listen to Dolly Parton.
Go watch videos of Dolly Parton, Go read interviews with
Dolly Parton. She was once described as a black belt interviewee,
so you'll never be disappointed with a Dolly Parton interview.
And since I said you'll never be disappointed by a
Dolly Parton interview, that has opened up listener mail.
Speaker 3 (51:12):
I'm going to call this great email follow up from Arcades. Hey, guys,
want to tell you a story of my very traditional grandmother.
She was very traditional in the Midwestern sense, and she
was a homemaker. Oh yeah, have books for my grandfather's
iron working concern. She didn't tolerate cussing or fussing, and
was a conservative dresser.
Speaker 2 (51:32):
She liked the calico.
Speaker 1 (51:34):
She didn't have any obvious vices save one. Pac Man.
Speaker 3 (51:38):
Oh yeah, to hear her tell it, there was a
time where she would wake up before her husband and
five children, power up the atari, and start a pac
Man game. After thirty minutes or so, she would get
breakfast on the table, get her family out the door,
and do the books, clean the house, and then finally
get back to her paused pac Man game, which she
would play until it was time to start dinner when
her family came back home.
Speaker 2 (51:57):
That's awesome. She had pac Man fever.
Speaker 1 (52:00):
That's good.
Speaker 3 (52:01):
It wouldn't be much of a story, guys, except here's
the thing. She was really really good at pac Man.
She once told me she had the first forty something
levels memorized and could use them to rack up points
and then thus extra lives. She got to a point
where she could play the same game all day long. Eventually,
she would describe getting to a high enough level where
the game would freeze. Oh and what she was describing
(52:23):
was level two fifty six to kill screen, and said
she was home alone every time she reached it, and
the Internet wasn't a household thing. No one ever knew
what she was talking about.
Speaker 2 (52:32):
She just rolled the door be like somebody, anybody come look.
Speaker 3 (52:37):
It was until many years later that I saw King
of Kong and saw the footage of the kill screen
my grandmother had described. Couldn't believe my eyes or the
fact that my conservative grandmother was such an early skilled
gamer neat. She since passed away, But every time the
subject of pac Man comes up brings a smile to
my face.
Speaker 1 (52:53):
And I remember her and her high scores. That is
from Aaron Miller of Kansas City, that Kansas.
Speaker 2 (53:01):
Oh, that's rare. You don't usually hear from those people
Kansas side. Well, thanks a lot, Aaron, that's a fantastic story.
I'm glad you could smuggle that message out of the
Kansas side of Kansas City to us. And if you
want to be like Aaron and get in touch however way,
you can try putting it in an email sending it
off to stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1 (53:25):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,
Stuff You Should Know News
Hosts And Creators
Chuck Bryant
Josh Clark
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