HELLO DOLLY
The music icon on love, ambition and reinvention
There’s a fantastic opening two lines to 9 to 5, the theme tune Dolly Parton wrote for the groundbreaking 1980 comic movie which Dolly later transformed into a stage musical, that always stop me in my tracks. “Tumble outta bed and I stumble to the kitchen/ Pour myself a cup of ambition.” It’s genius!
Somehow Dolly manages to bring a gritty positivity to the battle of the sexes while also being ironic, all to a thigh-slapping beat. And as I talk to the global sensation that is Dolly
Parton, I constantly catch sight of the razor-sharp mind and wry sense of humour, cloaked in those famous perky Southern vowels and big hair, that power this country music icon.
“That’s one of those lines as a songwriter when you just think, thank you, God,” Dolly explains. “When I wrote that song, I was thinking about how you’re getting up and stumbling to the kitchen because that’s what you always do to pour a cup of coffee, and then all of a sudden that line just came to me. I got so excited. It’s all about your first cup trying to wake up, whether it’s coffee or tea or cola, to get you started and motivated. And I said, ‘oh my God, a cup of ambition!’”
When she played the song on set for her co-stars Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin, they were blown away. “Lily and I had goosebumps,” Jane has said since. “We knew it would become a huge hit and anthem.” It did. Today is a feminist anthem, a term Dolly doesn’t identify with, even though she says she’s “all for women”.
Since the film is about three female employees who plot to get even with their “sexist, egotistical, lying, hypocritical bigot of a boss”, who in Dolly’s words later in the song is one of those executives who, “just use your mind and they never give you credit”, it’s ironic that Dolly opts to pass the line off as a gift from a higher – male – power. “I was thinking, that must have come from somewhere else, because that’s one of my more clever lines, so I always try to credit that to those powers that be. I always say, yes, thank you a lot for that one, up there!” she says.
Dolly does this undercutting a lot.
It’s not that she doubts her own powers, nor that she’s afraid to put them on parade. Rather, I think it’s an inbuilt humility learned from her pious upbringing which clicks in whenever she feels she’s being too boastful. Her maternal grandpa – Jake Owens – was a Pentecostal preacher and she was raised on “love, spirituality and creativity” and – of course – that pride is a sin.
Dolly’s own morning cup of ambition “involves a lot of stuff. I’m a very early riser and I’m a very spiritual-minded person. I like to start my day with my meditation and my prayers and my little ritual that I do to get myself anchored. So, I pour myself a cup of ambition in a lot of ways, through prayer and making little plans, communicating with God as I perceive him to be. I ask for guidance for the day so my cup runneth over with a lot of good things, and ambition is one of them.”
That ambition – and significant talent – is what catapulted Dolly from poverty in the Great Smoky Mountains in East Tennessee, the fourth of 12 children born to Avie Lee Owens and tobacco farmer Robert Lee Parton, onto the lucrative Nashville country music scene. “We were very poor people but the thing is everybody in those parts was poor. It’s more a personality trait back then than it was anything with me,” explains Dolly. “I was always a dreamer, talking about how I was going to be a star and sing on the Grand Ole Opry. The other kids just thought, that’s far-fetched – so I think it was more that people didn’t understand dreamers at the time. I’ve thought about that a lot. I was different in that I always thought that I was going to do something else and go somewhere else and be something else. I really wanted to do something more.”
The Opry was a famous country music stage founded in 1925 as a weekly one-hour radio barn dance to showcase local music talent. It later morphed into a concert hall and it did indeed prove pivotal in launching Dolly’s career.
“I actually got to sing on the Grand Ole Opry when I was about 10 years old. For me, the Opry is like the song New York, New York – if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere,” says Dolly. And at 13, Johnny Cash introduced Dolly on the Opry stage.
She was on her way.
Music was like breathing in the Partons’ house, but for Dolly it held a special fascination. It was part of her heart and soul, a means to express herself and to tell the stories swirling round her head. As the story goes, she composed her very first song at five years old. Little Tiny Tasseltop was all about the corn doll with corn silk hair that her mum made for her. By age seven Dolly was playing the guitar and started to glimpse life beyond Locust Ridge.
“I always believed it early on because my Uncle Bill, one of my momma’s younger brothers, he played guitar and he took a real interest in me because he saw how serious I was and he dreamed of being in show business himself,” explains Dolly. “So we were partners in crime, so to speak. He would take me around to different places to sing and soon I was on a local radio show. I was about 10 years old when the crowd asked for an encore – I had to sing it over and over – and it was incredible. That’s when I thought, ‘oh, they like me, I’m going to be a star. This is what I’m going to do’.”
Dolly says there was no doubt in her mind. “I felt that power of the energy that came from that surge of excitement, that thrill, of thinking that applause was for me. It was a tingling kind of feeling that gave me an inspiration and drive to think this is my calling.”
While her family lived in a one-room cabin, sharing beds and eking out a living, Dolly says she never felt poor. “My mother always taught us that there was always somebody in worse shape than we were, no matter what we
“We were very poor but everybody in those parts was poor.”
were going through, somebody had it harder, and somebody had less food than we did, somebody had less covers on their beds than we did. So she made us count blessings and realise that we were not poor. She always hated that word. She’d say, we’re not poor people, we’re rich in things that matter like loving, kindness, understanding and just togetherness.”
The stability of her parents’ marriage was key to the Parton siblings’ upbringing and while the children all played a part, raising each other, Avie and Lee were significant role models. “I think the fact that Mom and Daddy stayed together was very, very helpful,” muses Dolly. “We didn’t have what some kids have where their parents are not there. We were always together and I think just knowing that gave us a certain kind of strength, too.”
I ask Dolly if there was a secret to her parents’ marriage. “Well, love,” she replies laughing. “Mom and Daddy were really passionate. Even as they got older, they’d argue back and forth but it was still passionate. They were cute and stayed with that childhood sweetheart kind of power and that kind of love. Obviously having one kid after another, they never lost their sex drive nor their passion for one another! We’d see them sneaking off somewhere or walking down by the creekside, holding hands, Daddy with his arm around Mom’s waist, and we’d think ‘uh-oh, we’re going to have another baby before you know it’.
“My mom was also very jealous, because Daddy was very good-looking. Other women found my dad very appealing because he had a great sense of humour, and a magnetism about him. And so even if it was just Daddy being friendly, Mom would take it as Daddy flirting. She’d say, ‘Lee, now you didn’t have to talk that much; Lee, you don’t have to rag on her that much’. Lee this, Lee that. He’d say, ‘Oh Momma’s getting jealous.’ We thought that was cute too, because we thought it was romantic.”
But beyond the romance, having 12 children over more than two decades would have been physically exhausting for Avie and taken a huge toll on her body.
“There’s only 18 months to two years’ difference in all of our ages. Momma was married at 15, she was 16 when she had my sister Willadeene, the first one, and she was 35 when she had the last one. She had one set of twins. Six of us were born at home in the mountains with my grandma, my aunts and my daddy to help. When she had problems the local doctor, who was actually a missionary, would ride in on horseback to help. But Momma had one right after another and she never had vitamins, no follow-up care, no nothing. The last three children she had trouble with. Rachel and the twins just before that, so she had them prematurely and we almost lost the babies and almost lost Momma, too. That’s when the doctor said, no more. Her body was giving out. Although she got back on her feet after that. She was strong. Until she died at 80, she was in pretty good health.”
Despite leaving home for Nashville as soon as she graduated from school, Dolly remained very close to her mum. “I learned faith and a positive attitude from Momma. She would quote those old sayings like, ‘To thine own self be true,’ which to me is one of the greatest sayings ever. If you really tear that apart and analyse it, it means know who you are. One of my sayings that I made up is, ‘Find out who you are and do it on purpose.’ Just know what you’re about, who you are, accept yourself as you are.
“Momma always taught us to love people, to try to be caring and giving and understanding, to try to put ourselves in other people’s places.
She said everybody feels just like you, everybody’s tears are wet, everybody’s blood is red, everybody’s heart is soft and tender.”
Dolly didn’t want to leave home; she loved her family, but felt compelled to grab on to her chance for a bigger life. “I had a drive and an inner compass that was pulling me toward it. I knew I could always go back home if I didn’t make it. I always had that as a safety net. I prayed every day that God would bring all the right things and all the right people into my life, and take all the wrong things and people out.”
One of those people was her husband Carl Thomas Dean, whom she met on her first day in Nashville outside the Wishy Washy laundromat. Carl has since said, “My first thought was I’m gonna marry that girl,” which is pretty much what happened. “I left two boyfriends back in East Tennessee and
“Momma always taught us to love people, to try to be caring.”
I thought, the last thing I want is a boyfriend. I don’t want anything to slow me down. I was just going to get a grand start on my career before I got caught up with any boys again. But I met Carl the first day I got to Nashville and just fell head over heels in love with him,” says Dolly, chuckling. “We’ve been together 56 years in May – married 54 years and we dated for two years before that, so my goodness, I think it was meant to be, I really do.”
Carl never took to Dolly’s music – he’s more of a hard rock, Led Zeppelin fan – though he has inspired many of her songs. And he rarely goes to see her perform, but in many ways this has helped Dolly thrive. “He certainly didn’t slow me up; he gave me freedom to work and gave me strength and inspiration. He gave me a safe place to come home to, a safe harbour,” says Dolly.
“It was the same thing with my best friend Judy [Ogle]. We met back home when we were in 3rd or 4th grade. We’re with each other all the time [Judy has been by Dolly’s side at most of her concerts around the world] and we’ve travelled together and stayed best friends. Judy and Carl have been my support system, my leaning posts all these years.”
Coming from such a big family, having children was always something Dolly imagined she would do, but this was one thing not even Dolly could make happen. “In the early days we thought we would have children. We didn’t do anything about having them or not having them, and when my career started coming along pretty well I thought, well, I don’t need to have them right now so I took birth control pills. I came off those because they were causing me problems but we never did get pregnant… Then I had some problems with my apparatus later on and life went on. I had to have surgery, which meant I then couldn’t have kids.”
Yet in typical Dolly style there are no regrets. “I think it was meant to be and I say that because I’ve brought several of my younger brothers and sisters to live with me, from the mountains, not long after Carl and I got married, and all of them went to school here, we raised them like our own kids. Then when they got married and had
kids, their kids are like our grandkids, although they’re nieces and nephews.”
Dolly feels it’s all part of a divine plan, especially since not having her own children inspired her to set up her Imagination Library, a book-gifting charity that sends free books to preschool children all over the US. “I always say when talking about my literature programme, God didn’t mean for me to have kids so everybody’s kids can be mine.”
Dolly says that at 74, “I feel wiser and I know I’m older. I never think about being old unless I’m sick, when my husband’s always quick to remind me, ‘well, it’s your age.’ I don’t have time to get old. I tell him I may not be as young as I used to be but I refuse to get any older, even though I might in time. If I want a little nip and tuck here and there I’ll go do it. Anything that makes me feel a little better about myself. I’ll do whatever and I think everybody should, if you’ve got the nerve and the money to do it, and the desire.”
Her high-glamour look – the wigs, the acrylic nails, the skin-tight rhinestone studded outfits and high camp make-up – are all part of Dolly’s image, famously inspired by the “streetwalkers” whose sparkly look she admired as a teenager. But it’s also part of her mystique. “I’ve always thought that a certain bit of what magic I may have had in the minds of people was based on the fact that I look completely artificial,” she says. “But I am completely real as a human being.”
Dolly seems to come from a bygone era, from those Smoky Mountains of her childhood and a country music background that is also part of conservative bible-belt America. Yet beyond the country music ballads, which are the brilliant bedrock of her global success, there are many layers to Dolly. Her dogged control of her own career is impressive, especially in an industry where so many fall prey to unscrupulous managers. Her creation of a theme park – Dollywood – which not only supports her view of the world and builds her brand, but provides tourism and employment in Tennessee, is shrewd.
And now Dolly is having a new moment in the spotlight. It’s partly thanks to a podcast series, Dolly Parton’s America, in which cool US radio host Jad Abumrad interviews the icon and follows her around.
Added to this is a TV series on Netflix dramatising the stories behind eight of her songs.
The timely revival of 9 to 5 The
Musical, which comes to Australia in April after a hit run in London, is another piece of Dolly’s genius. “I think with the #MeToo movement last year and the year before, the issues around women in the workplace have started up again and needed to be addressed,” she says.
Our time to talk is up, but as a parting question I ask Dolly to name five guests, living or dead, she would ask to her ultimate fantasy dinner party. “Well… I talk to Jesus every day but I’ve never had dinner with him, so I think I’d love to have Jesus at the head of the table because there’s a lot of stuff I’d like to talk about in person. And, of course, I’d like to have Elvis – we’d have a lot to talk about, being Southern people. We’d talk about Graceland and Dollywood and how we’ve both loved our mommas. Maybe I’d also have a chance to hear him sing. You know, I never did, but he almost recorded I Will Always Love You and that didn’t happen so maybe we could lean over in our chairs and sing a little chorus together. Then I’d have Momma there because she loved Jesus and Elvis, and I miss her. And James Corden [British actor and host of The Late Late Show on US TV]. He does the [carpool] karaoke. He’s so funny and crazy and we could all do some singalong and I imagine the two of us would have some belly laughs. Finally, I would have my best friend
Judy, just because I think she would enjoy it so much.”
I offer to be the waitress and Dolly promises me a big tip with extra cash from Elvis adding, “Oh… if Jesus is there we may not have anything but bread and wine,” as she collapses into laughter.
“If I want a little nip and tuck here and there I’ll go do it.”