When it comes to Dolly Parton, I was not an early adopter.
When she was writing heartbreaking, tragic songs like “Down From Dover,” a song about teenage pregnancy so grim that her record company refused to release it as a single, I was entering my teen years listening to Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, and, on my more refined days, Traffic.
I was also writing at that young age, though, and I would have appreciated both the lyrics and the song’s tragedy at the end:
My body aches the time is here It's lonely in this place where I'm lying Our baby has been born but something's wrong It's much too still I hear no crying I guess in some strange way she knew She'd never have a father's arms to hold her And dying was her way of telling me He wasn't coming down from Dover
Dolly was much more a part of my world than I knew.
During those early years, in my crowd, she was mocked for her breasts. That was her highlight reel. Little did those who mocked her realize the grit and splendor of her life story. America, you see, is not so different today than it was fifty years ago. Mockery and shame have long been a part of its highlight reel.
When Whitney Houston sang “I Will Always Love You” to Kevin Costner in the flick, “The Bodyguard,” I thought it was her song. I had no clue that Dolly had written it nearly 20 years before the movie’s release in 1992.
So I’m not going to come at you with platitudes based on a lifetime of Dolly love. I can’t make that claim. I only learned about her later in her career through her actions as I discovered what kind of a person she was.
My loss. And a lesson that, if I could express it to a teenage me, would have gone something like this: “Expand your musical horizons.”
This is a lesson I have learned, but it took me too long. I probably didn’t discover one of my favorite songs, “Jolene,” until more than twenty years after it was released.
But one thing was always obvious to me: Dolly Parton was one of those very few people who carried the goodness and light of the universe in her soul. You could see it when she was on talk shows like “The Tonight Show.”
Here, she serenades Johnny Carson, showing her appreciation for him as a star who cultivated other talents, including hers:
She was much more than an entertainer.
Her Imagination Library is said to have been responsible for distributing as many as 200 million books to children during its 31 years of existence. Everyone around her seemed to receive some of her light. Even people who didn’t want it.
Not even the orange menace could find his way to express his usual hate. He ordered U.S. flags to fly at half-mast for a week, probably unaware of the work she did for the LGBTQ+ community and other maligned or disadvantaged parts of society. This is the one thing he’s done right in his life.
What an irony that is. Because, as a writer on Medium wrote yesterday, she lived by beating the devil at his own game.
And now, with no apology, I’ll steal a playlist from the New York Times (with a paywall-free link included at the end that includes descriptions and history about each song):
‘Something Fishy’ (1967)
▶ Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube
‘Just Because I’m a Woman’ (1968)
▶ Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube
‘Mommie, Ain’t That Daddy’ (1968)
▶ Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube
‘In the Good Old Days (When Times Were Bad)’ (1968)
▶ Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube
‘Little Bird’ (1968)
▶ Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube
‘Evening Shade’ (1969)
▶ Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube
‘Just the Way I Am’ (1970)
▶ Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube
‘Down From Dover’ (1970)
▶ Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube
‘Jolene’ (1973)
▶ Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube
‘I Will Always Love You’ (1974)
▶ Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube
‘Here You Come Again’ (1977)
▶ Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube
‘Two Doors Down’ (1978)
▶ Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube
‘Baby I’m Burnin’’ (1978)
▶ Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube
‘9 to 5’ (1980)
▶ Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube
‘Little Sparrow’ (2001)
▶ Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
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I was shocked to find out you didn't know "I Will Always Love You" was Dolly's. She wrote that as a goodbye to her business partner. She wrote many songs for others to sing as well.
A beautiful storyteller and a class act.
Monday night I posted:
...I have a bad feeling. Like something is about to happen.
The feeling I have feels like what wives felt when a car parked on their street and two servicemen got out to give someone bad news about their husband being killed in action while serving his country.
That feeling they all had at first, not knowing whose door they were going to.
Something is about to happen....
Then the next day when the story of her death came out, I posted:
...Maybe Dolly's death was what I was picking up on. The "service men" were letting all of us know. She did die serving her country. She did more for this country than SO many others. She was our treasure. 😢...
You missed " Coat of many colors."