DOLLY PARTON, FOR THE SONGS AND MORE. MUCH MORE.
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VERY EARLY DOORS TODAY my phone pinged: “Why does this one hurt so much?” my friend Susie asked. Without needing to think at all I typed out, “because she never let us down”. Hours, several albums and a few phone calls later, on reflection, that remained true.
Beyond the greatness of songs like Coat Of Many Colors (even in, or maybe especially in, something like an unplanned live performance in a Kerry pub that becomes a giant singalong and tears closer to home) and The Bargain Store, or the deceptively simple sentiments and smooth pop of Here You Come Again, beyond the sweetened sounds but potent punch of Dumb Blonde and Backwoods Barbie or the harder blow of Just Because I’m A Woman and Don’t Let It Trouble Your Mind, beyond the horniness of Why’d You Come In Here Lookin’ Like That and the lightly-touching joy of Love’s Like A Butterfly or the plain tenderness of My Tennessee Mountain Home, there was something else Dolly Parton gave us – the value of being a decent human being.
Her public support of minority groups in the face of rising tides of racism and economic bastardy, alongside her embrace of LGBTQI communities when large sections of her industry and nation, not to mention fascist tech bros and bigoted children’s book writers, were actively hostile, were done without lecturing but also without retreat. Her encouragement of other writers and singers, especially women – by playing their songs, singing with them, or boosting them in public comments – was untroubled by insecurity or self-aggrandising.
And along with millions donated to dozens of causes and groups over the years with little or no fanfare, her Imagination Library funded and disseminated books everywhere so that people who couldn’t afford to buy, or whose communities couldn’t/wouldn’t afford public libraries and well-funded schools, still had access to books. This didn’t just tackle poverty and literacy but quietly fought back against a book burning, anti-intellectual philosophy that reached the highest positions in her country. Done with her own money, let’s remember, when she might otherwise have just kept accumulating.
As my daughter said, “she’s a perfect example of why there are no truly selfless billionaires: if they wanted to they could be, but most people could never be Dolly Parton”.
(On a related point, as the wits online have been saying today, “the next time you wish for an 80 year old with big boobs and a wig to die, please be more specific”, to which others have added “The grim reaper is a male Instacart shopper providing the worst substitutions”. True dat.)
Now, by decent human I don’t mean soft and pliable. One of the great lessons Dolly gave to songwriters came in what she didn’t do, a time when she said no when saying yes would have been the “smart” choice.
The story, which she was usually too polite to confirm let alone elaborate on, goes like this. Elvis Presley, who had sung the song to his wife Priscilla on the courthouse steps after their divorce was finalised, wanted to cover Dolly’s I Will Always Love You in 1974, and Dolly was honoured. Thrilled for it to happen. Then Elvis’s manager, Tom Parker, demanded the standard arrangement with any song done by the still-king-of-rock’n’roll: a large slice of the songwriting rights would be handed over to Elvis (and of course, to Mr 25-to-50 Per Cent, Parker).
Sure, it took half your money in perpetuity, but such an arrangement had worked for many other writers who calculated half of something was better than all of nothing if E. Presley didn’t record it. You’d be mad to say no, right?
Dolly said no. She hadn’t fought to be recognised as an artist who wrote her own material, sang her own material, and owned her own material, to give it away, even if it was to the biggest name in popular music. Parker cancelled the recording, Elvis did something else, and Dolly missed out. Except, of course, a decade and a half later, Whitney Houston recorded the song and made it a bigger hit than anyone could have foreseen, certainly bigger than Elvis in his last days and waning public interest could have managed. And Dolly cleaned up.
(Incidentally, I am sure I am not the only person for whom the first exposure to Dolly’s work wasn’t her own recording. In my case it was Olivia Newton-John’s version of Jolene and – it can’t be denied – Nana Mouskouri’s Love Is Like A Butterfly. But maybe for you it was Jack White or Whitney, Nancy Sinatra or Billy Connolly, Solomon Burke or Skeeter Davis.)
To be sure, it’s not as if everything she did worked as well. The late ‘70s and ‘80s were often mixing too much refined sugar into the formula, especially with the covers – I know Islands In The Stream is popular and everybody had to have their Barry Gibb moment for a while there, but really, no, no thank you – her concerts eventually leant so hard into the jokes and cliches that the best stuff risked being obscured, and her 2024 album of rock covers, marking her inclusion in the rock and roll hall of fame, was at best just ordinary on every level, and should be forgotten about.
Yet all those songs mentioned so far – just for starters, as I didn’t even get to Light Of A Clear Blue Morning and Early Morning Breeze, the music she made with Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris as Trio, or her turn of the century “return” to old school country in The Grass Is Blue and Little Sparrow – would be more than enough to elevate her to a level above a sizeable chunk of big time music figures regularly regarded as the peak.
But most of all, Dolly was one of the best human beings.
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