Dolly Parton: WWDD?

In this episode, Miles and Jack are joined by comedian Lydia Popovich to talk about the closest thing we have to a living saint:

Dolly Parton!

They'll explore her rise to stardom/sainthood, her influence on the scientific community, her inimitable sense of style and so much more!

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hello the Internet, and welcome to this spinoff episode of
day Zeitgeist, which we're calling the Iconograph. Instead of looking
at the zeitgeist through the day's news and current events
on Monday mornings, we're looking back at the zeitgeist through
the powerful pop cultural hore cruxes that are our icons. Icons.

(00:23):
We use these historical figures and famous characters to create meaning, meaning,
to build identity, to learn how to deliver the greatest
career breakup of all time, to know what the phrase
over the shoulder boulder holder means. In my case, that's
how I learned that phrase was Dolly Parton jokes when
I was six years old. And most importantly, we learn

(00:46):
how to compliment someone into not fucking your man. That's right.
Today we're talking about Saint Dolly Parton, the Dolly Mama,
a modern day religious figure. Among many other things. We
talk about people putting their religion into celebrity culture and
their icons, and as old fashioned religion fades away, this

(01:07):
is maybe our best active experiment in that it really
feels like this is as close to a living religious
figure as we've covered on the Iconograph to this point.
I'm joined as always by my co host mister Miles
grad Dolly Dolly Man, I'm ready.

Speaker 2 (01:29):
I love Dolly, and I know nothing about Dolly Parton,
like truly nothing, like I fuck with the music, but
I don't. I think everything. I'm just so glad we
have the perfect guest today because I'm not gonna lie.
I went from I think I remember very early on,
I like, on the show, I played the forty five

(01:49):
version of Jolene sped up and how it's just like
a fucking whole other banger. And I remember Lydia coming
on and talking about it. Oh yeah, it was getting
me so gassed up about Dolly Partner. Oh, Dolly Parton's
like sick, right, Dolly Parton is tight, Okay, okay, yeah yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:04):
And so I'm ready. I'm ready, tom ready. I don't
know if I'm ready. This is going to be the
first time that we've had a guest who knows more
about the subjects than me. After the week Jack research,
We're thrilled to be joined in our third seat by
a hilarious comedian. One of our favorite guests on TDZ,
Dave Girl, once touched her arm and said, hey, you're

(02:24):
pretty funny, so maybe she can come back for the
Nirvana episode. You can see her on stages everywhere, and
she is our resident Dolly Parton expert. Is Lydia popave.

Speaker 3 (02:37):
Let me just say, first and foremost, I'm so thrilled
to be here to talk about the only thing that
I truly care about in life, which is Dolly Parton.
Is the thing he keeps me moving every single day,
all thinks through Dolly. I love her dearly. She's the
greatest American songwriter of our time. I mean, I could
go on, I could do this podcast literally by myself.

Speaker 1 (02:58):
I'm so glad you guys. Should we just get out
of the way. Honestly, I think we fucked up the
wrong earl. I remember there is a point where chat, wait,
there's a point where you're trying to acquire Dolly Parton
pinball machine, and like I was invested in that ship.

(03:20):
I was like, God, I hope Lydia gets the Dolly
Parton pinball machine.

Speaker 3 (03:24):
And also in my living room, Yeah, it's actually it's
it's in my it's my den where I'm sitting right now,
I'm sitting across from it. It's it's literally I own it,
it is mine, I have it.

Speaker 2 (03:33):
She is me I would say that our like our
our love of Dolly, I think is directly tied to
Lydia's enthusiasm about Dolly Parton, because every time, like when
the airport like renaming the airport thing came up.

Speaker 1 (03:45):
Oh yeah, yeah, I was like, I was like, Lyddy,
you know what. Of course I fucking started it. And
then I'm like, oh, ship, my bad.

Speaker 3 (03:57):
If you hear something about Dolly and it seems in
the streets, we yeah, probably evolved.

Speaker 1 (04:03):
Look, keep watching the news piece, you might catch footage.

Speaker 3 (04:05):
Right.

Speaker 1 (04:06):
I think there's four.

Speaker 3 (04:07):
Times last year, just actually six times last year talking
about Dolly partner.

Speaker 1 (04:11):
Yes, yeah, And now so you're on the news, welcome
to the news talking about Dolly FLA. So just in
summary broadly in terms of where Dolly stands right now,
because we do like to talk about what is her iconography.
She has one of the highest Q ratings of any celebrity.

(04:33):
We haven't mentioned Q ratings much on this podcast, but
it's weird we haven't because it is essentially a measure
of like how iconic somebody is. She's like top ten
most popular celebrities in the world. Also has the lowest
negative rating of anyone that there's just like no negative
sentiment out there towards her. In looking back over her career,

(04:59):
I think the love for her is due to you know,
her career and talent, her personality. Like I feel like
the best lines, like I watched nine to five, you know,
listen to her songs. I think the best lines that
I heard anywhere were not anything written for her. It's
like the shit that she just says off the cuff

(05:20):
rights as a human being. But also like in terms
of the religious part, because I don't think that's just
coming from well, this is a celebrity people like so
much and therefore people have like a affinity for her
that is quasi religious. She does seem to both be

(05:40):
giving off good energy and getting back good energy in return,
like in a way that like there's just a glow,
the like dow of Dolly Parton. Like she contributed a
million dollars to vaccine research that ends up being the
moderna vaccine that Savess of lives. They name a scientific

(06:03):
breakthrough after her as a boob joke, but it ends
up being the fucking cloning of the sheep, like the
most famous and uh, you know, a cloning that before science. Dolly.
She is named after her because they took a mammary gland.
That's how where the cloning came from, and they were like,

(06:23):
we'll call it Dolly Parton. She's the boob lady, all right,
go on fucking facts, uh, one little fact from like
just in terms of the good energy going out and
coming back in. She at one point is incredibly kind
to a country singer who is opening for her named
Billy Ray, and when he has a kid, he makes

(06:44):
Dolly Parton the godmother to a girl, a little girl
named Miley Cyrus my favorite, who then asks her to
Hanna Montana, who on.

Speaker 4 (06:55):
My feet, Jay is on my Feet, who then asked
her to play her godmother on her show, Hannah Montana,
And when that happens, her fan base becomes like massive
and incredibly young for somebody her age.

Speaker 1 (07:11):
It's just like shit, I think, constant yeah, outflow of
good energy from her that then just like comes right
back to her and it's it's wild. It truly like
there does seem to be this religious, like philosophical spiritual goodness.
She like lives in the light and gives off light.

Speaker 3 (07:33):
I feel like one thousand percent man, I mean, honestly,
I've always been a Dolly Parton fan, but it turned
into like a religious experience to me. Like the first
time that I saw her in concert, I saw her
at the San Jose Sharks Arena. I went with my
best friend Coach. I was probably twenty two maybe, uh huh,
and we went because we're like, oh, she's a living legend.
This is someone we need to see that we love her.

(07:55):
There's no way this isn't going to be incredible. And
little did I know that I was going to spend
like the second half of that show, like quite literally
sobbing because it was such an incredible experience, Like she
was singing live at that point, and her voice was
so incredible, and just the feeling of people around me,
Like people around me were just like full of happiness

(08:15):
and full of joy, and like she closes off all
of her shows by singing I Will Always Love You,
And like when that happened, I turned to my best
friend and like he's crying, I'm crying, and I was like,
oh my god, is this like what we do with
our lives now? Like is this this is right?

Speaker 1 (08:30):
Deadhead? Yeah? Quite literally?

Speaker 3 (08:33):
And like I grew up a dead Head in a
dead Head family, so like that kind of like absurd, like,
oh shit, fandom is like in my DNA.

Speaker 5 (08:40):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (08:41):
So like I literally like I've seen over one hundred
and fifty Grateful Dead shows, you know what I mean.
Like I literally grew up in parking lots and shit. Yeah,
like it was nuts, and I just was like, this
is incredible experience. No one had made me feel like
that quite literally since the Grateful Dead plus.

Speaker 1 (08:55):
LSD do you know what I'm saying.

Speaker 3 (08:56):
Right, it had that like on no drugs, feeling full body,
just elation and just feeling full of joy. And the
same thing happened the first time I went to Dollywood, had
the same thing, kind of had this out of body
experience of like, oh my god, this woman's light, like.

Speaker 1 (09:12):
This shines on us all. Well, yeah, like she just
gives you know.

Speaker 3 (09:17):
It's why she's the face of the Kindness campaign, you
know what I mean. And that's my favorite things when
you travel around the country you can be.

Speaker 1 (09:23):
Pass it on. She's one of the faces for the
pass it On campaign in LA. It's her and mister
Rogers are the ones that I always see there. Yeah,
the vibes that her show is like people like I remember,
you know, the Internet, but also you know, there were
like news stories about people like as she's having this,
and there was this podcast, Dolly Partons America that's really

(09:45):
good and they talk about just like going to one
of her shows and it's like this incredibly diverse group
and it's just like the vibes at the show are
just like there's such happiness and joy and like a
spiritual quality to this love affair between her fans and
her and for her to be that when like in

(10:10):
the eighties and like this is I was, you know,
six and living in Appellation part of the country, so
maybe this was me, but she was just the first,
the original stand in for hot woman when I was
like first when I was like it was just like
Dolly Parton jokes and it was like either a boob
joke or like man that yeah, right, like I heard

(10:33):
you're dating Dolly Parton, you know, like right, like just
like she was the hottest person. So like to go
from that to this religious icon is kind of crazy,
just in terms before we dig into her life. Just
the other measure of iconography that I wanted to touch on
is and this is our second icon in the in

(10:56):
a row who had this distinction of being the queen
of the Townloids. Tabloids are basically excess news being created
when someone's icon is like too big for the actual
news that they're creating with their actual life, and so
people have to just like create new create new shit
and gossip and intrigue or like it's just not you know,

(11:19):
it's not enough for people. And yeah, during the eighties,
she was like on the front page of every tabloid.
She found out at one point that this was partially
being fed by her aunt, who was mad at her
because she wasn't invited to a party around the movie Rhinestone,
and so she was talking shit about her to the tabloids.

(11:42):
But she comes from a huge family and it's like
a Southern family, and sometimes that gets messy. But it
wasn't just the eighties when we started the show, Miles,
I don't know if you remember this, but when we
nineteen seventy seven. Yeah, back in nineteen seventy seven, when
we started the show, we had a segment called Bloyd.

Speaker 2 (11:59):
Wat Watch Everybody wants to boyd Watch Everybody want.

Speaker 1 (12:04):
The idea was that like you can find out about
a lot about America's share consciousness from like what's on
the front page of the tabloids the supermarket, And I
think we ended up stopping because it was somewhat repetitive.
It was just like news over and over again about
a handful of people and mainly Dolly Parton. Still like

(12:25):
in twenty seventeen, like are a lot of is Dolly
Parton sick? Is Dolly Parton going to survive? Is Dolly
Parton having an affair with an alien? So it's just
like Dolly Parton's been an obsession of America since I've
been storing memories.

Speaker 3 (12:42):
Well, and it's kind of crazy too because it is
really a testament to her ongoing popularity. Right literally forty
sixty years later, still say, oh, Dolly Parton plus whatever,
and people are interested and want to look at it
because people are dying to say something bad because no
one says anything bad about her, Right, Yeah, there's she's

(13:03):
never there's never been like a gotcha with Dolly Parton.

Speaker 1 (13:05):
It's never been tried. You know, we've tried. We'll get
to like there was a federalist article and then there
was I mean, we'll we'll talk about the stampede and
the controversy around that, but she she dealt with it
pretty well, all right. But so she just celebrated on
January nineteenth, so you know, five days ago she just

(13:29):
celebrated her eightieth birthday. Tennessee declared that the nineteenth will
now be known as Dolly Parton day she was born.
Jelk day falls on a nineteenth? What do they do again?

Speaker 3 (13:42):
In the South, They're like, well, let's he already got it.
Let's make sure it's covered up with the white lady.

Speaker 1 (13:47):
That was, you know what I mean? Right, people contributed.
I got some AI videos of the two of them
chilling the grand old operation that I think you're gonna enjoy.

Speaker 2 (13:57):
He got a joint in his mouth like with like
a Stanley sheet, right music, and Charlie Kurtz up there too.

Speaker 1 (14:03):
It isn't the background making pot pies. But January nineteenth,
nineteen forty six, born in a one room cabin in
the Great Smoky Mountains of East Tennessee during a snowstorm,
which was eventually especially cramped because she had eleven's fucking siblings.

(14:23):
The one room shack is built by her dad. Newspapers
on the walls because that's like what you did when
you couldn't afford wallpaper. And she was like, and it
was nice because we'd put up a new layer of
insulation and there'd be new pictures on the wall. Her
first dolls were corn cobs that they would like glue

(14:46):
eyes onto, like she was dirt ass poor.

Speaker 3 (14:49):
Yeah that sounds it's actually inspired. One of her first
songs that she ever wrote called tiny Tasseltop.

Speaker 1 (14:53):
Yeah, little China cassel.

Speaker 3 (14:54):
Tops as a little girl after her cornsilk dolls hair.

Speaker 1 (14:59):
Yeah, she called it. She talked about her corn silk
hare And you think it's a metaphor corn cub Wow,
what visual language? No, man, a corn cob in there?
Oh yeah, she wants cut a couple of her toes
off while running around in your yard because there was
like a broken bottle, and her mom packed them with

(15:21):
corn meal and kerosene and sewed them back on without
any pain. Willers, hold on, hold on what I heard
that one. That's a new one for me. They were
they were sliced really badly to the point that like
they were almost her mom they were dangling, packed them
in corn meal and kerosene. Is that even sewed them

(15:43):
back on. You know that was like medicine.

Speaker 2 (15:46):
I really want to know when they're like, what did
you do the corn meal and kerosene?

Speaker 1 (15:50):
Like, of course I did. There's a lot of that ship. Yeah,
there's a lot of ship. Like when she first starts
wearing makeup, she's like very very interesting it and you know,
makeup and stuff like that from an early age. But
like when she first starts, she's using like berry juice
and a burnt matchstick for eyeliner, Like she there's just

(16:12):
a lot of like down home country shitull.

Speaker 3 (16:16):
She actually details all of that. There's these really great
scenes where it's like her and her sisters like putting
on this fake makeup and stuff. It's pretty amazing.

Speaker 1 (16:24):
Yeah, oh I just.

Speaker 2 (16:26):
The corn meal is to absorb the blood. The kerosene
in antiseptor. Okay, there you are perfect.

Speaker 1 (16:32):
Perfect. Don't try this at home unless you grew up
in a one room cabin. That's some shit.

Speaker 2 (16:39):
Only Dolly, I think that's the only I think Dolly
part is the only person like, oh my toes came off,
can you just saw him?

Speaker 1 (16:45):
Thanks? And then you keep fucking moving on with your life.
On effect, she talks about when in her memoir, she
talks about meeting her best friend for life. Judy Ogle
just made up as sounding name, but yeah, really.

Speaker 3 (17:01):
That's Judy Ogle. Real are a real family. When you
drive around Pigeon Forge in Severeville, like you see like
Google Road, like that family, there's like the Ogles are
still out there.

Speaker 1 (17:12):
You see signage with Ogle on it all the time. Yeah,
and they met, and I think it was Judy talking
about seeing Dolly for the first time. It might I
might have it wrong, and it might have been Dolly
talking about seeing Judy for the first time. But they
were both poor, and one of them had what they
call bloomer rubber in her hair as a headband, which

(17:32):
is the elastic on the waistband of like old blown
out pants, and they just like pulled that up and
they were wearing that like like one of the members
of the Junkyard Gang, you know, right, just yeah, straight
out of a fucking big toe shooting out of the
like a hole in the boom. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (17:49):
Like the lore that Dolly describes around the meeting of
her and and Judy, who my dog is named after,
by the way, So with Judy to noodles because she's
my best girl, so of course my dog's miss Judy anyway.
But she says, basically, Dolly was tiny, right, she was little,
and back in those days you had multiple ages and
kind of a schoolhouse. But Dolly used to get bullied

(18:11):
a little bit, and Judy Yogel was a little bit
of a rough and tumble with a bunch of brothers
and Judy wasn't having that mess. So Judy was her
first protector. So that's how they became friends, is because
Judy stepped in and.

Speaker 1 (18:21):
Beat some kids muscle that were.

Speaker 3 (18:23):
Hassling Dolly, and they quickly became best friends. And they
lived basically across the hall or from each other, so
they would, you know, go about their business and meet
and play and be able to kind of like meet
between property lines and hang out.

Speaker 1 (18:35):
Yeah, just another couple details about how poor they were.
They didn't have money to pay the doctor when she
was delivered, so her dad paid with a sack of
corn meal. It was like what they paid with. And
she couldn't afford a coat, so her mom sewed her
a coat using multicolored rags that they had laying around,
which is a big part of her lore because it

(18:57):
later inspired one of her most popular songs code of
Many Colors.

Speaker 3 (19:00):
I also have that tattooed on my arm.

Speaker 2 (19:03):
The coat of many colors, Yes, the actual coat or
the words coat of many colors, the actual coat.

Speaker 5 (19:08):
Nice.

Speaker 1 (19:09):
Hold on, let me see that ship is on your phone?
Oh ship, yeah, my bro Jack but of many colors.

Speaker 2 (19:17):
And then is like, yeah, my best my dog called
Judy colors.

Speaker 3 (19:23):
Wait, I got a pair of titties with stars for
nipples made out of rope and it says what would
Dolly do?

Speaker 5 (19:30):
Wow?

Speaker 1 (19:31):
W w double ds No, no, god damn. Yeah, there's
a lot of wild Like she got beat pretty relentlessly
by both parents, which is you know, was called child
rearing at the time. But like once she like went
missing for a while and like they thought she was gone,

(19:52):
and then like she heard dinner bell ringing on the
cow's neck and like found the cow and like let
it drag her back to the house. She's like all
beat up and like starving, and she still like got
whipped for that, for going dancing. So it is a
tough upbringing for sure, And her dad was illiterate his

(20:15):
whole life. And I think there's something like we talked
about this with Elvis being coming up like very poor.
Marilyn Monroe was born in like a charity hospital, was
in like foster care. I think there's something like a
lot of our most powerful icons of the twentieth century

(20:36):
came up very poor. And I think, like with with Dolly,
like one of the things she says about her dad
is that he is one of the smartest people she
ever knew, but he was illiterate. And I just feel like,
in terms of being an artist, there's a power to
knowing that people are smarter than they might appear, you know,

(20:58):
like that, you like one of the most important things
an artist can know is like not to underestimate how
smart people are, because like that just makes it easy
to like dismiss them and dismiss your audience, and like that,
I feel like that's where a lot of like bad
art comes from, is from, like suits and studio heads
being like, yeah, we'll just like give them some slop

(21:20):
because they're all idiots, and like just having that understanding,
like from an early age that this person who is
illiterate is also like incredibly smart is like an important
part of the way she views the world.

Speaker 5 (21:34):
Well.

Speaker 3 (21:35):
Life teaches us things that books can't write like you
could read every book in the world and not have
a clue how to operate and function in the world.

Speaker 1 (21:43):
Yeah, I know that kerosene is what you do.

Speaker 3 (21:47):
How you fixed baby toes exactly. You got to figure
it out, You got to let it by experience.

Speaker 1 (21:53):
They have like busted up instruments all around the house.
She starts playing. She can play twenty instruments at least,
she says, she plays at them, and guitar is the
lonely thing that she's really good at. She's very self effacing.
Managed to get booked at the Grand Old Opry when
she was thirteen. Johnny Cash introduced her by saying, we've
got a little girl here from up in East Tennessee.

(22:15):
Her daddy's listening to the radio at home, and she's
going to be in real trouble if she doesn't sing tonight,
so let's bring her out here. But her and her uncle,
who was a big part of her early career, had
already he was a songwriter himself and was kind of
they worked together in her early career. But like they
had approached Johnny Cash outside the Grand Ole Opry like

(22:37):
a year before, and they were working on this and
finally got through and she started making a name for herself,
getting on local radio stations on a regular basis. Between
this and her moving to Nashville when she's eighteen, she's
still going to like the local high school, and this

(22:59):
is kind of her first brush with like tabloid because
everybody's like starting rumors about her about how she's like
sleeping with famous people to try and like get to
the top, which you know, is why she moves to
Nashville the day after she graduates from high school. She

(23:19):
uses paper grocery bags as her luggage, and she's so
poor when she first gets there that she has to
sneak into hotels to eat leftover food off of room
service trays and is just like walking around in grocery
stores eating before anyone notices what she's doing and then
runs away. But she's you know, very poor. Immediately starts writing,

(23:41):
also immediately meets Carl Dean, who is her lifelong husband
who just passed away last year, who.

Speaker 3 (23:49):
Can be seen on the cover of her album My
Tennessee Mountain Home. He's actually in the background on the cover.
That's like the one of the most famous pictures of
Carl in one of like four pictures of Carl available
to us previous to his passing.

Speaker 1 (24:03):
Yeah, he was so in the background in her life.
First of all, on their first meeting, she said that
he looked at her face when they talked, which was like,
she was like, nobody looked at my face when we talked.
And then it's her marriage is just kind of coming
off the stories for Malon Monroe where she would like
marry these famous men and they'd be these broken children

(24:27):
who couldn't like deal with her having her own career.
Like Carl Dean goes to one early red carpet event
and leaves and was like, look, I want you to
be successful and have like everything you ever want. I
never want to go to another one of those fucking
things again. And she's like great. And so he's just

(24:47):
never in the limelight to the degree that people start
creating conspiracy theories that he doesn't exist, which she puts
him on one of her album covers. As Lydia has
just mentioned.

Speaker 2 (25:00):
That was like a response to the idea that Carl
was some kind of like creation.

Speaker 1 (25:05):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (25:06):
It's also it's a it's an act of defiance because
at that time her record label did not want her
to be married, right, She's think about that.

Speaker 1 (25:13):
She's yeah, sort of available to.

Speaker 3 (25:16):
TV as a girl singer, you know what I mean.
Girls singers are supposed to be sort of attractive, available,
you know. People want to spin all these tales and
think about in the relationship with her and Porter and
I'm getting a little head But in her musical, she
actually did. I saw it her musical twice. I saw
it the opening week like basically the preview weekends, and
I went and saw it the very nast night when

(25:37):
it left here in Nashville. And there was such a
big difference between But the part I loved about it
the most is she gave the most information about Carl
that I've ever heard, Like I learned stuff about their
relationship watching this musical that was like heartbreaking and beautiful.
She really spends a lot of time talking about the
moment she met him in Nashville and basically up until
when she first moved to Los Angeles and became really famous, famous, famous,

(26:01):
And a lot of that time hasn't been discussed. But
there was a period where Karl was just like, are
you going to be married to me?

Speaker 6 (26:07):
Or not?

Speaker 1 (26:08):
Like because she was There was.

Speaker 3 (26:12):
A letter that was famously rumored about years ago, and
she actually read the letter like the actual like her
character reads the actual letter in the stage show, where
he's basically like, you know, I could have married anybody.
I could have done anything, but like I wanted to
marry you, and I want to be married to you,
not the idea of you, not your music, not this
like I care about you, know, Dolly Rebecca Parton who

(26:32):
I want to be married with. And if I can't
be married to you, then I don't want to be married.
And so she had to kind of make this choice
to like actively like pour into her marriage and make
sure that like he felt loved and like that that
was something that she treasured and it wasn't more important
than her actually going around and doing that. She has
a song called The Sacrifice that she actually addresses everything

(26:53):
she's ever had to sacrifice in her life in order
to achieve fame, and it's written from a perspective of
someone looking back on the life. And she wrote that
in like her mid forties. So it's kind of amazing
to see that she's had this much reflection, you know,
on what her what it cost her as an individual,
what it cost her as a woman to become the
artist and this icon that she.

Speaker 2 (27:13):
Was right even Yeah, that's just so. It's it's really
interesting to hear too. You're like, damn, how are they together?
And like you hear all these details like oh, they're
like they have good communication skills and they're not out
of their minds where he's like, hey man, I'm going
to voice my needs to you my wife, can we
work this out?

Speaker 1 (27:30):
And she's like heard, heard, I love you. Let me
figure this out. And I'm like when she would like
figure it out in song so often, Like there's one
of her early songs is like about a conversation where
he was like getting mad that she had slept with
men before she was married to him, and like she's
a mistake. Yeah, yeah, men are just so I like that.
I had this narrative of like him not being like

(27:53):
need men are just so relentlessly needy, crazy choose you
can choose her career. He like he kept construction. He
was working construction jobs hurt throughout her whole career, Like
she made hundreds of millions of dollars and he just
like kind of did his thing.

Speaker 3 (28:11):
Carl laid the best pavement you've ever seen, and I
mean that as a euphemism and as.

Speaker 1 (28:18):
He must have laid.

Speaker 2 (28:20):
Hey, can you go to places where you've seen where
Carl Dean has laid the pavement?

Speaker 1 (28:24):
Like well, like if Lydia knows, she'd be like, I
know you want to see some of Carl's work coming.

Speaker 3 (28:29):
I know is that she has one of those he
purposely made her. Like the driveway into her house is
like the glittery asphalt. It's not the regular kind. It's
the time that's like all sparkly and ships like, yeah,
so Carl, I've heard I respect you too much to
drive past her home in Brentwood.

Speaker 1 (28:46):
I would never.

Speaker 2 (28:47):
Oh she could, I could under the address and everything,
but I won't.

Speaker 1 (28:53):
She starts dropping albums on all our asses. Her first album,
Hello I'm Dolly, Hello I'm was released by Monument. She's
just has this like music flowing through her at all times.
Just what one little anecdote, like you know, because a
lot of people talk about how she's this like multi instrumentalist,

(29:15):
and she's, like I said, like self effacing and says
she only plays at the instruments. When she first presented
the song nine to five to on the set of
the movie nine to five to Lily Tomlin and Jamee Fonda.
She just like was beating out the click track with
her nails to be like, all right, so here's what
it goes like, Like it's like that pitch perfect cups scene.

(29:36):
She was just like playing the drum track with her
nails and then that is on the track, Like you
can actually hear her nails on the track, which is
a fucking classic.

Speaker 3 (29:51):
That's crazy, But I think it's like that's such a
small thing that like speaks to like not only her
ability to compose the actual musicianship and like the song
you know, kind of layout around the lyrics, but even
her lyrical choices and the songs that she was writing
at the time she was writing was kind of crazy
for women. Like one of her first TV performances, like
on The Porter Wagner Show, she wanted to sing the Bridge,

(30:13):
which is a song about a woman killing herself by
jumping off a bridge. And it's a beautiful, heart wrenching song.
And this is her first opportunity to be singing live
on television. And Porter tells her he doesn't want her
to sing this song, and she does it anyway.

Speaker 5 (30:27):
Yeah, imagine being fucking nineteen sixty seven singing a song
about a fucking depressed woman threw herself off a bridge,
and that's one of like one depressing songs.

Speaker 3 (30:39):
She also wrote songs in that same period, like three
songs about like silbirth. There's a beautiful song that she
sings called Down from Dover that's literally about a woman
getting pregnant and hoping that her her you know, her
partner comes home, and her partner never comes home, and
then she has the baby and then the baby's dead,
like talk about wanting to cry. She has songs about
fucking orphans burning down an orphanage because they're tired of

(31:01):
being abused. Like all of these songs are like heavy
material written in the sixties and seventies when women couldn't
even have credit.

Speaker 1 (31:08):
You know what I'm saying.

Speaker 3 (31:09):
She's out here doing the big work, but the only
songs she's getting credit for are you know, done blonde.

Speaker 1 (31:16):
Sure, because I'm a woman like dipotomy.

Speaker 3 (31:19):
There is like what does it for me? Is that
like it doesn't have to be one way or the other.
For Dolly, she's more than happy to show you like
the private, proper kids and face. But she's also like,
have you heard of death?

Speaker 1 (31:31):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (31:33):
Yeah, just so you know, it's fucking heavy out here
for women and especially too, like to your point in
an era where most people have been like just get
her on medications, she's talking about wacky shit right now.

Speaker 1 (31:44):
Like we don't want to hear an opinion.

Speaker 2 (31:45):
And then yet that's so it's such a beautiful moment
of subversion to have that sort of be your television debut.
And also I'm sure communicated to many of the people
watching were like that probably must have instantly resonated in
a way a lot of the men who are like,
what the fuck is this dude, and other like I'm
sure a lot of people like, yo, I think I
just found my favorite artist.

Speaker 1 (32:05):
Yeah, yeah, Well, and it's.

Speaker 3 (32:07):
Also it's the women can't be sexual, right, and if
they are sexual, they need to not have a brain
on their shoulders, and so like the whole idea that
women can't have is sexuality and still be smart, and like,
I just that's been a through line through her career.

Speaker 1 (32:19):
It's incredible, right. Yeah. They talk on the podcast Dolly
Partons of America about there's this long history of murder
songs in the country and folk music tradition that like
start go back to the UK, But basically the songs
are narratives where a male narrator sings a story about
murdering a woman, and like she was writing songs where

(32:42):
she was like, what if we like told the story
from a woman's personal lit on them from Yeah, yeah,
but like that just the idea that like there's that
many songs where it's like and then I bashed her
head in like they're sad songs, but also it's like, well,
why the fuck are you doing that?

Speaker 6 (32:58):
Man?

Speaker 1 (32:58):
Yeah, and then she was like, yeah, maybe it makes
more sense for me to is yeah. Yeah. So, like
talking from the perspective of a woman who's been victimized,
A lot of people have tried to say that she's
a feminist. She hasn't rejected the idea that she's a feminist.
She's just rejected the word feminist because like her, the

(33:21):
quote about this that are Research or JM put in
here is that I think the words and titles just
have some connotations. When I think about feminists, you think
about the women that are anti men, and you think
of women that have been so mistreated they have to
make some sort of statement I'm all about women. I'm
all about empowering women, but I'm all about empowering all people.

(33:43):
But it's like she doesn't reject being a feminist, she
just rejects the word feminist. And like how people are
going to respond to that word? Right?

Speaker 3 (33:52):
I mean, Dolly is a master in politics. Like this
woman has been able to straddle the line saying every
thing and saying nothing at the same time. She is
a really remarkable way of not offending anyone. But like
there is no doubt whether or not Dolly likes the
word feminist or not. Dolly is a feminist, Like there

(34:12):
is no two ways around it. You look at her
body of work, you see the presentations, and I keep
referencing this musical because it's her most recent, most like
autobiographical piece of work. And she literally like it came
out three weeks after Carl died, so like she made
all these insertions and all of these subtractions to kind
of account for that. So, like you're talking about a
woman in her late seventies at this point, seventy nine,

(34:35):
you know, about to be eighty, who's revisiting the entirety
of her life, right, And what are the through lines
that she wants to present to represent Dolly My Life,
the musical, and two thirds of that final musical are
about being a woman in this industry. She addresses the
paparazzi and all of it from a female perspective of like,
I do what I need to do because I'm a

(34:56):
woman and this is my power and these are the
things that are lined up against me, and this.

Speaker 1 (34:59):
Is how I want.

Speaker 3 (35:00):
But she always does it through the Dolly lens, and
that's how she kind of escapes that like feminist shawl
right is by being no, no, this is just my story
me as a woman.

Speaker 1 (35:09):
And also if you're if you're a woman, you don't
know what to put up with that shah. She's like,
what time it is. There's a great quote from her
about being awesome at business, which she clearly is. As
she said, there are basically two types of men you
have to deal with in business, the ones who want
to screw you out of money and the ones who
want to screw you period. The second guy is easiest

(35:31):
to deal with. If I catch a man who's not
looking at my eyes when he talks to me, I
have scored two really big points with him already. A
smart woman can take a man who thinks with his
small head and turn the would be screwed into the
screw e. She's great.

Speaker 3 (35:48):
Another famous one I have from her, and I took
a scree shopping that because it's like, ooh, that is
that's exactly how she said it.

Speaker 1 (35:53):
I always fuck it up, but.

Speaker 3 (35:53):
It's I'm up front and I will tell you where
to put it if I don't like where you got it.

Speaker 1 (35:58):
That's right, Like that's perfect, you know.

Speaker 3 (36:02):
And then she talks about her age and she says,
you know, I'm whatever age I have to be. I
always say I'm as old as yesterday, but I'm as
new as tomorrow. Yeah, she's just that's very mean about
she like a mastery.

Speaker 1 (36:13):
Yeah, she's like yeah, yeah, she gets very slick with it. Yeah,
just real quick. Some of her songs are extremely dark.
There are other ones from this period that could have
been so much darker. Found this detail from uh. I
think it's her memoir where she talked. So there's this
nineteen seventy seven song apple Jack. It's just like a

(36:34):
fun tune about a banjo player and an old orchard
check and in her memoir she reveals that it was
inspired by a real life local near where she grew
up who was rumored to be having sexual relationships with
his dogs and also was believed to have murdered and
eaten his mail order bride and her daughter, like by

(36:55):
the local people. So like, she turns it into this
like sunny happy song, and she says people tend to
fear what they don't know and what they feel they dislike.
All kinds of rumors circulated over the hills about the
old man. He had a bunch of old, mangy dogs,
and some said he had sex with them. Well, there
was no doubt he slept with them, It's not likely

(37:16):
the relationship was actually consummated. There was one time when
he sent away for a mail order bride. After a while,
this woman came to live with him. She was large
and unsightly. The woman had a grown daughter, and right
away rumors started to fly that the old man did
them both. It seems like they stayed for about eight
or nine months, and then they disappeared. Naturally, the rumor

(37:37):
milk kicked into high gear. Of course, the old man
had killed them. The only disagreement among the rumormongers was
as to whether or not he had fed them to
the dogs or eaten them himself. So I love it.
I love appellation lore. That's what I know. Yeah, there's
so much good appellation lord wildly.

Speaker 3 (37:54):
Spun out of and like what a better way to
become a songwriter just speak these extrapolations of stories and
turn them into these allegories right there that sort of
time and space and culture, but.

Speaker 1 (38:05):
Has a bunch of really good, like spooky ghost stories
that like actually happened to her. There's like one time
where they're like living in la I think, and like
the or maybe it's Nashville, but like they have their
doors locked and they hear somebody walk in and they
think it's Judy, who like would just like come and
go in their house. And then they wake up the

(38:28):
next morning and the doors had been locked. But then
like all the faucets are on, and like she said,
she woke up in the middle of the night and
like watched one of the faucets turn on and it
was lydiopapa to sorry sorry, I mean it was like that.

Speaker 2 (38:41):
Whole thing too, like was just even at like the
apple Jack song and her being like, yeah, this guy
had dogs and like yeah, he's fucking them or whatever.
I think also like it's another sort of arrow in
her quiver in terms of how she knows how to
manage narrative and perception too, because she's coming from a
place where she's like, I've seen the shit. I see
this shit all the time. Okay, this dude who had

(39:02):
a couple dogs in his bed.

Speaker 1 (39:04):
Yeah, everybody there.

Speaker 2 (39:06):
Yeah, Like people will just fucking lose their minds. And
because I've seen like some of the most intense versions
of that, I'm really adepth at navigating it, especially as
someone who's the subject of so much conjecture throughout her career.

Speaker 1 (39:17):
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (39:17):
She has this song called Joshua that really lyrically, it's
like it's upbeat, it's fun, but like if you listen
to the lyrics, it's about this scary man that lives
out in the middle of nowhere that like is big
and like bearded and like intimidating, and it's hard to tell,
like what age the woman who it's singing from a
woman's point of view, and it's not a real story,

(39:38):
but it's one of these stories. But it's like, you know,
she decides to go and show up to Joshua's house
and she breaks into his house to like see what's
going on and to find out who he is. And
he comes home and she's like, oh shit, and instead
like she just like has a cup of tea with
him and ends up going over there on purpose regularly
and basically ends up like having a good time with
this dude and like marrying him and like fucking him down.
And I'm just like, what a wild story to be, Like,

(40:00):
I've heard of this fucking creep in the woods.

Speaker 1 (40:02):
Let me go check it out. Let me let me
find out he's actually had a whole And then she's like, actually,
that's my cool.

Speaker 3 (40:08):
Yeah, Joshua could put it. Actually, hell yeah, find is
fucking the woods. BORDI ship, big old dick.

Speaker 1 (40:16):
You know he figured a zoo glass. Okay, Yeah, She's.

Speaker 3 (40:21):
Just like listen, but let me tell you about me
and Joshua, all right, Like yeah, yeah, yeah, it's fucking
so good.

Speaker 1 (40:27):
She has so many of those songs, and I'm just
like what it's like, it's so great. I love it.
This research also gave me some good insight into the
movie Nashville, which I don't think I fully understood until
doing this research. And we're getting to the Porter Wagner
of it all. So she gets a big break in
nineteen sixty seven when she's hired to replace the female

(40:49):
singer on The Porter Wagner Show, and she begins dueting
with this guy who's like twice her age and releasing
albums with him. Their album covers are insane, like the
outs that we Are is so funny, But wait, what
are the way what are the albums called? It's a
lot of like we found it, Peter Wagner and Dolly Parton.

(41:11):
We found it is a good one to look at
because they're wearing match suits. Is this ship? It's a lot.

Speaker 3 (41:18):
Porter Wagner was a very like dandy, fancy gentleman, but
in a country way. Like literally Wagner is like the
founder of country glam. This man did not have a
suit that was not been dazzled. He is famous for
being incredibly vain. We're talking head to toe all kinds
of things there. They're called nudy suits by the gentleman
who actually his last name was Nudy, who was like

(41:40):
kind of the creator and the tailor of these suits.
Porter Wagner made this style of suit famous that you
now see people like post Malone whenever he wears like
a suit.

Speaker 1 (41:49):
Right right, oh yeah, yeah yeah.

Speaker 3 (41:52):
Porter Wagner had a bufont that made fucking Elvis's look
like playtime.

Speaker 1 (41:56):
Yeah, and at one point he had a crazy per
on one of the cover he has a crazy perm.
That's what you know the character in Nashville who has
the perm and he's like the older He's like the older,
very established country singer. I was like, oh, that's Porter Wagner.
Like as I was doing the research, I was like,
oh shit, that was totally based on this guy. And yeah,
his suits, yeah, full blown, full blown zee on the narcissism.

(42:21):
So she when she first starts, the audience hates her
because the previous singer had a lower, richer voice, and
the audience is just immediately like, hey, fuck this lady.
She's not the other lady, and so they had to
do duets to get the audience on board. It was
kind of creepy because he's literally like twice her age

(42:42):
and some of the songs. Some of the songs were
like Daddy Daughter and then some of them are like
hornyish love songs. And I think so this like gives
him a belief that he's like rescued her from this
initially hostile audience, which, by the way, every audience is
always initially hostile to change. Just every time you try

(43:03):
and do something different, they're going to be.

Speaker 3 (43:04):
Like heytes ship, yeah, yeah, are you getting me Yeah.

Speaker 1 (43:11):
So he is completely convinced that she needs him and
is shocked when she decides to eventually move on. And
also it's like this feels in a normal Hollywood arc
that like this would have been the second husband that
you know. They there's like all sorts of rumors that

(43:31):
they were sleeping together. They definitely had like a very
like emotional relationship that she says was never consummated or
anything like that, but ever there were the rumors flew.
But they never get together, and he tries starts trying
to control her and her career as she's becoming a

(43:53):
major star. He wanted to prevent her from taking career
opportunities and keep her under his fold. And and so
she eventually leaves the show in nineteen seventy four, and
the way that she does that is she walks into
his office and is like, I wrote this song for you,
and she sings him, I will always love you like

(44:17):
the most famous love song of all time, and he
like by the end, they're both crying and he says, well,
I guess you can go if you let me produce
that song for you, since it's the best thing you've
ever written. She's like fine, But first of all, just like,
what a way to get out of an unhealthy, controlling
relationship with a boss who is clearly like in love

(44:39):
with you by writing them the kindest breakup song. Like
when you look at the lyrics to that song, it's
basically a song that's like, look, you are my king,
I have to get out of here because if I don't,
I'm gonna get in your way king, so, which I
always thought was like in the context of the Bodyguard

(44:59):
all So, I always thought those lyrics were funny that
like Whitney Houston is being like, we have to break
up because I, a world famous artist, would only be
in the way of you, a professional bodyguard. But like,
you know, it's just he's just he's just trying to
be a normal guy who can kick shit, you know

(45:19):
what I mean.

Speaker 3 (45:21):
If you got fucking a beautiful black queen on your
arm who was fucking worldwide, you can't just kick any
ship you gotta kill.

Speaker 1 (45:28):
That's true. That's true. She is getting in his way.
That's a good point. Pick up a hot pocket and
scratch his balls. He's fucking Houston. Yea yeah, yeah, yeah,
too close. I love from this period that making the
decision to leave was easier than the leaving, which I
feel like every breakup I've been involved with like that

(45:49):
is like a perfect way of encapsulating that. Also, every
relationship is like a house with a second floor. It's
got two stories. Yeah, come on.

Speaker 3 (45:59):
It was interesting too because when I saw the musical
the first time, I was shocked she spent so much
time on that Porter stuff. And again I saw stuff
in that musical I had never read before, I'd never
heard her talk about, and she really portrayed him extremely abusive,
like he was so abusive to her to a level
that like I didn't understand until I saw it visually,

(46:20):
you know, being acted out by actions, but.

Speaker 1 (46:23):
It's just different.

Speaker 3 (46:24):
And then I was like, God, this must have been
even so much worse because reflecting on it this long,
like this much later in life and to still feel
this strongly about.

Speaker 1 (46:31):
It, yeah, you know.

Speaker 3 (46:32):
And she ended up the current version like they've edited
a lot of that out, and I think that was smart.
But I'm glad I got to see the first version
of it. It was fucking four hours long. It was
very long, Jesus. But you know in the final I
think is two and a half, you know, so they
cut out an hour and a half.

Speaker 1 (46:47):
Hiteah, Yeah, but it was So that's also wild that,
like that is her version of events now in retrospect,
because so he sues her for three million dollars and
like goes on a in the media be talking like
cash shit about her. She is never like very which

(47:08):
is the high road? What does he What did he
sue her for?

Speaker 3 (47:12):
He basically sues her for for ownership and rights, and
basically he believes he made Dolly parton, So when she
went on to record Joline and everything else, he feels like.

Speaker 1 (47:20):
That, oh, you're taking money out of my brid Oh
she also did, I mean, you know, had her sign
a predatory contract at this time, so like solutely by
the letter of the law, she did owe him a
lot of money. But it's wild though, like she has
like you know, come out and talked about how abusive

(47:41):
he was because towards the end of his life she
does like go reconnect with him before he died in
two thousand and seven. He's he is kind of ruined
by her when she leaves, like he just can't fucking
where She also like takes his right hand with her,
Like the all the musicians like are like, well, we're

(48:02):
going to go with the lady who's so talented and
not a monster.

Speaker 3 (48:09):
And also it's like he's aging out as well, right,
like he's still a songwriter, but like he's not. He's
battling his ego during this time. So his ego is
making it difficult for him to actually move forward, and
he is so caught up in her actual success it's
he wants credit for her success, impedes his ability to
even move forward in his own career, you know, and

(48:31):
ends up selling off his publishing because he can't afford
it because he's he's broke, he needs he needs to
pay his bills, and he ends up getting sick. And
the Lauria is basically Dolly Parton went and purchased she
purchased his catalogy.

Speaker 7 (48:43):
His.

Speaker 3 (48:45):
Catalog, and then she gave it back to him when
he was on his deathbed so that his children would
have something to live forward on without being asked?

Speaker 1 (48:55):
Is that a rumor that?

Speaker 3 (48:57):
Damn?

Speaker 1 (48:59):
She just always is going out of her way to
like make things right. And just like, even though this
person has been like publicly a complete monster, to her,
is just like, all right, well he's clearly hurting, let's
take care of this.

Speaker 3 (49:14):
She acknowledges like she wouldn't be where she was if
she didn't have certain opportunities. So she's I don't want
to discredit his his you know, participation in my success however.

Speaker 1 (49:24):
Yeah, And also she's not getting sucked up.

Speaker 3 (49:29):
To Jack's point, it's like it's her larger giving spirit,
which is like why should his children suffer because their.

Speaker 1 (49:35):
Dad was an asshole?

Speaker 5 (49:36):
Sure?

Speaker 3 (49:36):
Sure, yeah, right right like his children his children's children
shouldn't have to suffer because of that. If she could
do something, she's going to pay it forward because it's
like it goes back to her overall thing, which is
like I have more than I need.

Speaker 2 (49:48):
I mean, I think that's like what's really interesting too,
Like we're just I'm hearing about her upbringing, all this
shit she's been through, the tremendous amount of empathy she
has just based on her upbringing in her life just
already gives her an in insane amount of wisdom on
how to really operate and treat people to always know like, okay,
this is the right move in terms of helping a

(50:08):
person or knowing the sins of the father shouldn't apply
to the children. It's yeah, I'm like, I'm like, I'm
starting to see the matrix of Dolly Parton's wisdom more
and more.

Speaker 3 (50:19):
It's amazing too, because we think, I mean something right
now that young artists have really I feel like leaned
into in sort of a negative way, is like this
hustle mentality, like I always have to be working, I
always have to be hustling to it doesn't matter who
gets in my way.

Speaker 1 (50:31):
It's about me.

Speaker 3 (50:32):
And it's like I feel like Dolly Parton's life and
career shows you that, like, yes you should hustle, Yes
you need to make sacrifices. However, you don't need to
leave a wake of fire and blood behind.

Speaker 1 (50:42):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. There is a way to.

Speaker 3 (50:44):
Move forward and to put yourself first and to prioritize
your art without sacrificing your immediate family. The greater good
the world, Like if there's no one around to receive
your art and what the fuck are you doing? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (50:56):
What's it for? So just a little more and I
Will Always Love You went to number one on the
Billboard Charts in nineteen seventy four and again in both
the eighties and the nineties. In the eighties because she

(51:19):
performed it in the Best Little Whorehouse in Texas the.

Speaker 3 (51:23):
Movie ranch depending upon which station we're on. Yeah, they
changed the name for the TV friendlies.

Speaker 1 (51:30):
Oh watched the Best Little Chicken Ranch in Texas. That
sounds so good and intriguing. And then the Whitney Houston
version became a sensation thanks to the bodyguard and being
just a fucking complete banger. Dolly says she was driving
her car when she first heard it and it like
she like had to pull over. She was like, it
knocked me off the road. Elvis Presley was a massive

(51:53):
fan of I Will Always Love You, saying it to
Priscilla as they were walking out of their divorce and
try to record it. And then the night before the
recording session, our old friend Colonel Tom Parker you can
listen to our Elvis Icons episode but called part and
was like, hey, by the way, Elvis gonna need at
least half the publishing on this motherfucker if she's gonna

(52:15):
record it, And she was like no, So Elvis never.

Speaker 3 (52:20):
Yeah, you wager would I give it to you? Get
off my phone?

Speaker 1 (52:26):
H cooy. He probably would have filled her though. I
feel like Elvis, that would have been a good one
for Elvis. But another big fan of this song, speaking
of narcissists, uh Saddam Hussan was a massive fan, and
an Arabic cover became his official campaign song in two

(52:46):
thousand and two. I am kind of shocked he had
the restraint to not sing it himself. I have it
here that I'm just gonna play it for you guys
real quick. That's supposed to be wallas, not a little.

Speaker 8 (53:08):
In song with a hoose bed, you know, the little
hotel fukerriphy wei hote.

Speaker 1 (53:36):
Damn still works. Still doesn't matter the language. That song
fucking rips every sting of the way. So that's not
wrong wrong, all right. So that gotta give you that

(54:00):
in case you're wondering why it sounds like they've like
got you know, eight bit waves going in the background.
The music video for that one takes place on a beach. Okay,
so There's also iconic lore that Dolly wrote JOELENEA and
I Will Always Love You on the same day. Yep.
In hindsight, she's like, I don't know if it was

(54:20):
the exact same day. They were recorded on the same
like session tape like where or like the you know where,
She like takes down the songs they were like right
next to each other, and I feel like she might
have been a little haunted by this r two greatest songs,
two of the greatest songs of the twentieth century being

(54:40):
written like on a single day.

Speaker 4 (54:43):
Like.

Speaker 1 (54:43):
She later talks about how she is, She's like, I'm
sure I've like forgotten so many good songs right like
just it like suggests that sometimes you're just in like
god mode and if you're not writing it down in
that moment, like you won't catch it. It's like a
terrifying thought for any creative person to have, is just

(55:06):
like you, you might not know it, and it might
be the day that like fucking Jolene and I Will
Always Love You, like come to you.

Speaker 3 (55:14):
I talk about that in my stand up back it's
sometimes how I close my show and I tell people that,
and I say, like I'm a huge Leparton fan. And
I say that that thing and then my whole thing
and my messages is like, think about that next time
you think you've accomplished something, right, like you.

Speaker 1 (55:26):
Haven't done shit.

Speaker 3 (55:27):
Like you haven't done anything, just like getting up and
writing two great songs, even if it's like one at
breakfast and one at lunch, do you know what I mean?
And that session tape, by the way, that she's referring
to is quite literally a cassette tape.

Speaker 1 (55:39):
Yeah, She's just like.

Speaker 3 (55:42):
Literally like a tape recorder is like push down the
two buttons into record, and.

Speaker 1 (55:48):
Like she did that well into the two thousands. As
for what Jolene is inspired by, she says that once
she was going to the bank with Carl and there
was a hot redhead bank teller who she said, she
had everything I didn't, like legs. You know, she was
about six feet tall and had all that stuff that
some little short sawed off honky like me. Don't how

(56:12):
she described herself when she was like the fucking number
one sex symbol in the world, man, But honestly, I
want to see what that fucking teller looked like.

Speaker 3 (56:22):
Can you imagine Holly Parton shook like that, yes, but
maybe she was just homely as fuck, and Carl was like,
this bitch ain't going nowhere.

Speaker 1 (56:30):
This is nice Bright. The teller wasn't named joe Lene.
That name came from a young fan who has for
Dolly's autograph and she'd never heard the name and was like, Okay,
that's pretty I'm gonna write that into a song that
will define generations. But on Dolly Parton's America, you get

(56:50):
to hear her tell the story, and it kind of
reminded me of that part in the Beatles documentary Get Back,
where you watch Paul McCartney kind of like will the
song get back of his bones? Like he's just like
like it's just like he's like mumbling shit, and then
like it just like starts like vibrating out of him,
like she's talking about how she's like, so I heard

(57:11):
the name, and I was like, that should be a song,
and so I was just like insisting on trying to
trying to remember that song, and so I kept being
like Joelene, Jolene, Jolene jo Lene and like just reminding
herself of it, like gives her the chorus to it.
And then sometime later she gets jealous of the bank

(57:32):
teller and writes in one of the great songs. All
the time we talk so.

Speaker 3 (57:36):
Much about like how Jolene came to be in sort
of like the name the song, who was Joelene, But
we don't spend enough time talking about that fucking guitar.

Speaker 1 (57:43):
Like so good.

Speaker 3 (57:44):
We don't spend time that is incredibly difficult in such
a unique riff, Like you don't hear that type of
guitar instrumentation on a lot of songs and even a
lot of country or bluegrass songs. But it's so remarkable
and it shows the level of sk ill with guitar
that Dolly had to be able to put that neandering
riff into. Like the recording that she's she has around

(58:06):
that song is like pretty intense, Like that is not
an easy song to just stumble into the arrangement on.

Speaker 1 (58:12):
It is phenomenal because it wasn't a lot of her gets.

Speaker 2 (58:16):
I remember reading a thing just like as a music person,
like her fingernails dictated a lot of how she played guitar.

Speaker 3 (58:22):
Yes, she holds and plays guitars different and she also.

Speaker 1 (58:25):
Like different tunings too, like because the guitars.

Speaker 3 (58:27):
Are also smaller because she's tiny, yeah, hard like bodies
are so much smaller.

Speaker 1 (58:35):
She's a song she needs a little tiny guitar, hand
on the pump, sipping on a forties, smoking on a blot.
Sorry I had to bring red Men and method Man
into it. Oh okay, that's like so funny. Yeah I would.
That'd be funny to probably see her with her regular
guitar and like, oh, you look like the.

Speaker 3 (58:54):
Cartoons stuff as custom. She's played Custam Martins for a
very very long time, so it's just it's an intense sound.
But yeah, the way that she holds your guitar, the
way she plays her instruments totally different because of her nails.

Speaker 1 (59:04):
She has special picks and stuff. It's right. Yeah, the
music's great. The lyrics are also really like it's such
a unique like trying to like it, like I said
on top, like compliment someone into not fucking your husband
and just but but also like she's clearly taken by Jolene,
Like it's almost a love song to the person who

(59:26):
is going to steal your man. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's
like written a song written from the cuck chair.

Speaker 3 (59:32):
But also seriously though, imagine like I hope that that
lady before she died, because or maybe she's still alive.
I hope that bank teller is somewhere, just like telling
her grandkids, well, you know, yeah, I'm Jolene. Motherfucker.

Speaker 1 (59:43):
Yeah, y'all's daddy could have been named Carr. How how
have you not figured out who this bank teller is?
I know that podcast.

Speaker 3 (59:51):
Honestly, it's a whole thing is like who is Joline?
Where is Jolene? This has been a question, that is.

Speaker 2 (59:57):
What's the fever identifying you?

Speaker 1 (01:00:01):
I just know the bank maybe that yeah, she worked out.

Speaker 3 (01:00:04):
There's well, there's two things, right, There's who is the
little girl named Joline that the song actually got named after?

Speaker 1 (01:00:09):
And then who was the bank teller? Right right, right,
right right, So.

Speaker 3 (01:00:13):
It's both like I'd love to meet either, right, like
do we know where this little girl is that was
named Jolene that met Dolly Barton when she was five
years old and has a sign named after her? And
then is this bank teller still alive? And well how
many kids does she have? Does she even know?

Speaker 1 (01:00:27):
Yeah?

Speaker 5 (01:00:28):
Right?

Speaker 1 (01:00:28):
She was yeah, yeah, yeah right right? Does she know?
I mean there's there's no much clue, yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:00:33):
Right, Because It could have just been a bank teller
who's like, and there you go, mister Dean, there's your
deposit slip.

Speaker 1 (01:00:38):
And he's like thank you. And Dolly part's like this
motherfucker traffic mo man and she's like, money, I don't
even know you or him what I'm at my child,
all right. So this is when around the time when
her movie career kicks off. It's also when country fans
start getting mad at her for selling out and going pop.
She has another good quote around this, She said, I'm
not leaving it, take it with me and taking it

(01:01:01):
to new places about country. I just want to also
say this is I remember from you know, the aughts,
this same backlash happening to Taylor Swift totally. And I
just want to say, if you're if you're a country
singer and you ever start getting ship for going pop
and you're not making up a fictional character named Chris Gaines,

(01:01:22):
you're probably on the right track. It seems to work out, yeah,
for country singers when they go pop and their fans
are like, this is tupop Taylor Swift did? I think
it worked out for her and Dolly likewise, And.

Speaker 3 (01:01:34):
I feel like in the last year and a half
two years, we've been going through a thing of now
pop stars wanted to go country. Everyone in their grandma
will wants a country song.

Speaker 1 (01:01:40):
Now.

Speaker 3 (01:01:40):
Yeah, you know what I mean, You've got people that
are sort of splitting the difference. I mean, Sabrina Carpenter
came and did the Opry, you know what I mean.
She's you know, she did a song with Dolly Parton.

Speaker 1 (01:01:49):
She seems very influenced by Dolly Parton. Really yeah, I.

Speaker 3 (01:01:53):
Feel like she's kind of a little Dolly reincarnate. To
be honest, Like I wasn't really aware of who she was,
and then I like listened to sumb of her music
and then did a research on her songwriting, and I
was like, well, look at this little makes She's a
little tongue.

Speaker 1 (01:02:04):
And she Yeah, her sexual double entendres. Like really feel
like any anytime you get just a quote from Dolly
Parton talking about sex, it's always sounds like a Sabrina
Carpent earlier. Yeah, she is friends with Jane Fonda and
Jane Fonda's friend Karen Nussbom started a real life organization

(01:02:26):
for female office workers called nine to five, and they
decided they wanted to make a movie about it. At first,
it was going to be a drama about three secretaries
murdering their boss, and then they eventually decided to make
it a comedy, and they write the character of Dora
Lee specifically for Dolly Parton, even though she'd never acted before,
and fond of reason that Parton songs have a kind

(01:02:49):
of depth in humanity that made me feel like she
could act and people would want to see the movie
because of her, because at this time she was again
like famous for being the hottest person on the planet.
The only condition she had for doing the movie was
that she could write the theme song, and that's when
she writes the song on the back of her script
on set and then is like, hey, Jane Fonda, Hey,

(01:03:12):
Lily Tomlin, come over here, starts tapping her nails and
is like.

Speaker 2 (01:03:18):
They're like, yeah, I think that's that fucking works Jane
Fonda and then Lily Tomman like turned.

Speaker 7 (01:03:23):
Their back, like this motherfucker's so the fuck fucking deal
with this up of ambition. That's such a fucking great
throwaway and the way to describe coffee. She was, by
the way, sued by the writers of a song called
money World, who claimed that nine to five was a
rip off. It's unfortunately impossible to find that song on

(01:03:44):
any streaming platform because there are three million rap songs
called money World that have come out in the past
three years alone.

Speaker 1 (01:03:53):
Best Little Whoreuse in Texas comes out. She's described the
difference between making nine to five and the difference between
making Best Little Hohouse in Texas is the difference between
like your first sexual experience with like a very gentle
lover and then being sexually assaulted. The Best Little Whorehouse
in Texas was apparently a fucking nightmare. There was a

(01:04:16):
bumper sticker at the time in Hollywood that said, hunk,
if you've been fired from Best Little Whorehouse because so
many people were being craziest said of that, yeah, that's hilarious.
But it was a big financial success and people, you know,
loved her in it, and that's where she's saying, I
will always love you. That gives that song another second life.

(01:04:38):
Then she makes Rhinestone and it's a critical and commercial failure.
Sylvester Saloon talks about it as the most fun he's
ever had making a movie. Where's the Story from Dolly
Parton from it make him sound like the biggest fucking
asshole in the history of the world. At one point

(01:05:00):
on set, she saw an unhoused man while shooting on
location in New York, wraps a shawl around him for
a warmth, and Stallone comes up, pulls it off and
says that the man's poverty is his own fault, and
Dolly quote says, I grabbed the shawl back from him
and wrapped it back around the man. Then I stood

(01:05:21):
up right in SLID's face and said, hey, look that
could have been you, you ungrateful son of a bitch.
Except by the grace of God. Stallone still calls Rhyinstone
the most fun. It was really fun. Made a movie
a lot Dolly Parton loves Bums or something, so a

(01:05:43):
wild movie. I do love it.

Speaker 3 (01:05:45):
I own it on DVD when I bought my car
in twenty sixteen. I have a different car now, but
it had a DVD player in it, and I specifically, yeah,
I could watch right like. I literally had three DVDs
in my car and it was Rhyinstone.

Speaker 1 (01:05:57):
It's so good. The other one was trapped in the
claw it. I'm not proud of it, but you're watching
the art Kelly Trapped in the closet, DVDs in your car.
I had it in the car.

Speaker 3 (01:06:06):
Would be fun, just a pop I used to think
it was a funny bit. Yeah, yeah, it on and
people and they'd get in and they'd open the door
and they'd be like and they open to the door and.

Speaker 1 (01:06:17):
Yeah, yeah right, I just this little person doing He's like,
come on, keep watching, keep watching, keep watching, keep watching.

Speaker 7 (01:06:23):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (01:06:24):
So this is also the time that she becomes like
a national sex symbol, international sex symbol.

Speaker 7 (01:06:32):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (01:06:33):
She's talked about how the inspiration for her style was
the town tramp. When she was a child, she saw
a woman in her town who people would call trash
because she dressed in tight dresses and had high heels
with plastic goldfish in them. Oh, what she's describing is
basically like a what what a move? How a movie
dresses someone to be like this is a sex worker.

(01:06:55):
And she was just like that's fucking fire, Like that
looks amazing, And she would like get punished for dressing
the way she did, but that was just like her
first experience with being like that's just me being me,
Like I just think this is fucking cool, which I didn't.
I didn't realize it was like such an early affectation.
I assumed it was like a thing where the people

(01:07:18):
like the label was like we got to sex this
up or something. She's just like always been like that.
I think that looks good. I think that's like the best.
That's what I did.

Speaker 3 (01:07:28):
Things is there's not as many of them as there
used to be. At Dollywood, there was a museum called
the Chasing Rainbow's Museum that predates the current like Dolly
Parton experience, And it was this two story museum that
was filled to the brim and I'm talking like walls
collaged with notes, handwritten things, pictures, people, places, things that
she had all these pictures, and there was lovely pictures

(01:07:49):
of her and like the sixties and the seventies just
like off like like not on a TV show, like
her and hot pants next to a fucking horse, you
know what I mean, Like her walking down the shore
holding kitty cats in hot pants and you're just like.

Speaker 1 (01:08:02):
Oh so you really were just about like.

Speaker 3 (01:08:05):
You are in the skin tight sweater and the smallest
shorts I've ever seen and nine inch high heels walking
down a gravel road a horse like, let me go, bitch, Yeah,
give it, yeah, no wonder. Carl was like, Babe, as
long as you come home and put those shorts on,
she swear for the week.

Speaker 6 (01:08:24):
Yeah, I will be in a dark room. Yeah yeah,
by myself if that's what it takes. Also the pavement,
I'm curious the idea of the goldfish in the shoe
that first came to me from I'm going to Get You, Suka,
where there's you know, a fly guy who was the
pimp who had the goldfish in the heels And now.

Speaker 1 (01:08:44):
I'm like ripping off Dolly Parton. Lord, Like how far
I mean have a false memory from yeah?

Speaker 3 (01:08:52):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:08:52):
Or like did she because it like I I got
that from movies? But she does like say that in
her story about like being the town tramp and being
everybody calling her trash and her being like, no, that's
what I want to look like. That fucking rules. So
I don't know. Yeah, well no.

Speaker 3 (01:09:09):
Pleasers have existed for a very long time. Pleasers is
a company that makes a specific time when you think
of stripper shoe that's a pleaser, and Plesures does make
a like a version that is the bigger crylic that
has a hole that you can fill it with whatever
you want. You could quote litter, you could fill it
with sand, you can fill it with water and fish,
you could fill it with money like and those have
been around forever, so I think both can be true.

Speaker 2 (01:09:30):
I think that, Yeah, you know, I'm just saying, like,
you know what I mean, That's all I feel like
you're in my mind. Keenan Ivory Wayne's was referencing uh,
Dolly parton.

Speaker 1 (01:09:39):
Yeah, Yeah, there's a good anecdote from her first time
visiting New York City where I think it was her
and Judy were interested in seeing a porno movie on
forty second Street because that's what Time Square was back then.
I love that for them. And they were there and
she was dressed as she dresses, and they were mistaken

(01:10:00):
for sex workers and her asked by some guy and
Dolly was packing a gun and pulled a gun on
the guy and threatened to quote, turn him from a
rooster to a hen. And that line was later worked
into Nine to five. She does say that in the
movie Nine to five, like she just like has movie
lines coming out of her at all times. She posed

(01:10:22):
in Playboy, not nude, but was the cover model and
Barbara Walters interviewed her at this time and was like
trying condescending, Yeah, condescending as fuck, but then like eventually
was like I eventually realized her insides. One tas phony
is her outsides, and basically like fell in love with

(01:10:44):
her Episoda America. But I feel like that's the journey
everyone who found out about her as like sex symbol
boob lady. You know, eventually you get to know her
and you're like, oh my god, Like fuck, mother, Teresa,
We've got you get a real living scene here. Yeah,
so not everything she touches turns to gold. I do

(01:11:06):
want to talk about this sitcom that has just a
crazy story. So nineteen ninety three, CBS creates a show
called Heaven's to Betsy that's about an egotistical country star
who dies gets sent back to Earth make amends. So
this feels like the character she was made to play,
an angel country singer. The production was a disaster. The

(01:11:30):
show was hampered by behind the scenes problems because the
writers were in LA The show was filmed in Orlando
and a new producing team was hired and they actually
like got into a kicking and punching fight in the
writer's room. Wow. So they produced six episodes in six
months and airge zero.

Speaker 3 (01:11:52):
Oh shit, I just can't imagine caring that much about
a script I'm writing to like punch somebody in the
face and be like, all right, right your way before
like all right, okay, you're obviously big bad do it.

Speaker 2 (01:12:05):
I've been I've been at writers like people get super
like you can hear their voice shaking, like they're about
to start crying over some shit, and that's when you go, okay, yeah,
let's try let's try that.

Speaker 1 (01:12:16):
But when it comes to Havings Tabetsy, the steaks are high.

Speaker 5 (01:12:19):
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:12:20):
Because she was also indirectly responsible for one of the
biggest disasters in TV history, of the Chevy Chase Show,
because Fox approached her about hosting their late night talk
show and she was like, fuck, you know, I'd really
love to what about Chevy Chase from SNL He'd be
good And they were like, oh okay, and they hired

(01:12:44):
Chevy Chase and it was a fucking disaster. Wow. But
she's also has a production company. It's called sand Dollar
because it's Sandy I forget his last name, but her
producing partner who passed away. I want yes, Sandy Cofaxes. No, no,
that's a Koenig maybe. Oh god. Anyways, the things called

(01:13:08):
sand Dollar. They produced the movie Father of the Bride
and the TV show Buffy the Vampire Slag. That's right,
I remember that. Yeah, she still sends the cast Christmas Presents.
I wonder she involved in the reboot because they're rebooting that.
I know, but I don't know. Yeah, let's see. She

(01:13:28):
once entered a Dolly Parton lookalike contest that was like,
you know, a drag contest at a LGBTQ bar and
competed against drag queens who were doing Dolly Parton uh
and were quote prettier than I could ever dream of being.
She lost and received the least applause of any contestant

(01:13:50):
when she took the stage, like on the low or
she was like, yeah, they're not going to.

Speaker 6 (01:13:57):
It was.

Speaker 1 (01:13:57):
It was a place that was in Knoxville that she
went to.

Speaker 3 (01:14:00):
They do like a Dolly Parton, Like Night of a
Thousand Dollies is a big thing out here for drop clubs,
So it was like a Night of a Thousand Dollaries thing.

Speaker 2 (01:14:08):
And she also yeah, you like there's already yeah, yeah,
big blonde wigs going around, so it's not you're gonna
notice the other Wow.

Speaker 1 (01:14:15):
She's even thirties. Yeah, I mean I get it. She's
not you know, she's she's she's not quite drag queen.
But she was the real deal, I guess.

Speaker 3 (01:14:23):
I mean she had her own variety show too. You
didn't talk about that. She had a whole show called
The Show that was.

Speaker 1 (01:14:27):
Five years right, those very popular broke a bunch of people.

Speaker 3 (01:14:32):
There was weird sketches. There's a weird sketch, but she
like Mary's Hulk Hogan. There's like a lot of weird stuff.
Like Bobcat Goldfoot was on it. I had a really
good conversation with Bob Cat about like what the hell
was not like being on like the Dolly Parton Show,
And he was like, yeah, I was really on drugs
at that time.

Speaker 1 (01:14:46):
But like it was crazy. He's like those episodes are
like that.

Speaker 3 (01:14:51):
That show was all over the place, but like the
set was beautiful, Like they used to have the swing
from the set and then the backdrop at Dollywood at
that museum I told you about, but it does they've
taken out now, it doesn't exist now.

Speaker 1 (01:15:01):
It's in their archives. But so much. Yeah, I know,
there's so much. Like so she opens Dollywood in eighty
six I think, which it had been another amusement park
that was like Civil War themed.

Speaker 3 (01:15:16):
Yeah, basically it's like she's in partnership with Herschel brothers
who own a lot of parks. They also own parks
that are up in Branson, Missouri. But I think it
was called like it was like a Silver Dollar City
or something like that.

Speaker 1 (01:15:26):
Yeah, Silver Doors City is what it was called. Yeah,
and it's massive. It has a like exact replica of
the one room cabin that she was born in, so
you can go in there look at the fucking newspaper wallpaper.
But it also had a show called the Dixie Stampede.

(01:15:48):
I remember the Stampede.

Speaker 3 (01:15:50):
This is separate than Dollywood though, let me be Yeah,
it's near the Dollar Yeah, it's nearby. It's in downtown
Pigeon Forge. There's a lot of sort of dinner theater shows.
The exists, so there's like a hat feel and McCoy one.
This was used to be called the Dixie Stampede. I
believe it was. What it was, is that what it's
called NOLLA that was used to call it.

Speaker 1 (01:16:09):
It used to be called Dolly Parton's Dixie Stampede, and
now it's just called Dolly Partons Stampede or Dolly Stampede. Yes,
but it is the most visited dinner theater in the world.
It's incredibly successful. It's pretty fucking cool. It's and that's
where they took down all the Confederate iconography. So that

(01:16:32):
so that happened, and they took down the iconograph. Yes,
so it became a major controversy. In twenty seventeen, Aisha
Harris wrote an article for Slate basically pointing out that
it's basically civil war medieval times. They restaged battles between
the North and South, with audiences cheering for both sides.

(01:16:53):
Nobody mentioned slavery At a Branson, Missouri location. The building
is designed to look like a plantation and there's also
like a the bathrooms are segregated for Southerners only and
Northerners only. Wow, So it's.

Speaker 9 (01:17:13):
It wasn't great that Jim Crow shit, like exactly, she
is so wild. It's like just just between North and South,
you know, not race to be fair.

Speaker 3 (01:17:24):
Like Pigeon Forge is literally like take the worst parts
of Florida that you've ever imagined, and take like the
shittiest part of Las Vegas and then like put all
of those people together, Like that's kind of what Like
it's like Pigeon Forge. It's just terrible people from the
South visiting. It's like the people there are not it's
not not people that live there. People that live there

(01:17:44):
are great, But like the tourist influx is a it's
a little rough.

Speaker 1 (01:17:49):
It's a little rough. So after that article, she does listen,
she changes the name. She takes out a lot of
the Civil War shit. They changes the name to Dolly
Parton's Stampede. The North still fights the South, but in
pig races and chicken catching contests, and the overt references

(01:18:11):
to war removed. The colors of their uniforms are changed
so that Northerners wear red in the South wore blue,
and then around Christmas it's like between red and green.

Speaker 3 (01:18:21):
But and honestly, I've gone there's not even a lot
of that, like sides cheering, Like for the most part,
it's a horse show horse really cool shit on horses,
like jumping through coops, on fire and barrel racing and
all that stuff. And then they have these little tiny,
like let's race these pigs. Who wants this pig to win? Right,
Like they don't really mention any of that. And then

(01:18:44):
like the meal they serve you is I was gonna say,
it's crazy, Like it starts with bread rolls. Then they
bring you this like milky like corn chowdery vegetable soup thing.
Then they bring you a whole chicken. Hell yeah, and
slices of pork loin if you'd like that in addition
to your chicken. Then a whole baked potato. Then like

(01:19:07):
a pile of vegetables or a salad I forget. And
then at the end, it's like apple crisp like there
it's so much food, Like I didn't I didn't even
take the pork, like I barely.

Speaker 1 (01:19:16):
I was like, I am wasting so much food.

Speaker 3 (01:19:18):
Like she's so crazy, Like you give my four year
old a hold chicken? Yeah, we were like can we
just split one? Yeah, it's like literally the old chicken.
You're like sick, I'll eat this old chicken.

Speaker 1 (01:19:28):
I'll eat the leg. Okay. She said about this controversy.
As soon as you realize that something is a problem,
you should fix it. Don't be a dumbass. That's where
my heart is. I would never dream of hurting anybody
on purpose. She is very involved in philanthropy, mentioned that
she donated a million dollars to vaccine research right when

(01:19:49):
people started doing that, and they credit her with being
very helpful. She's indirectly connected to one of the most
headline grabbing moments and scientist history with Dolly the Sheep,
and there's just like boob jokes about her all the time,
and like they're like you see her go on talk
shows back in the day, and uh, fucking Johnny Carson's

(01:20:13):
like I'd give a week's salary to get a look
under there, and like she just has the best Yeah,
she has the best boob jokes though, She's like, I
think the best one was she was like I burned
my bra once and it took the fire department like
three weeks to put out the fire. Pretty solid. But
like in the case of the Dolly thing, she told

(01:20:33):
the press that she was flattered that the clone was
named after her, so she just just kind of like, yeah,
fuck it, you know.

Speaker 2 (01:20:40):
It's like, yeah, okay, one of the most famous scientific
breakthroughs is named after me.

Speaker 1 (01:20:44):
Oh yeah, go ahead, Yeah, I love that for the brain.
Not only did she donate to the vaccine, she was
one of the first people to get vaccine on camera,
singing a new version of Joe Lene with the lyrics vaccine, vaccine,
I'm begging of you, please don't hesitate, because once you're
dead then it's a bit too late. Also donated millions
to AIDS research. Her Imagination Library charity has distributed more

(01:21:06):
than one hundred million books to children across the world,
motivated by her dad, who was the smartest person she
ever met and illiterate. So she really missed with that
TV career. Yeah, I mean she launched on The porter
Wagoner Show, which was a TV show and had some
like great small moments on TV, but like didn't really

(01:21:30):
and Hannah Montana and Montana, you know, broke her to
a new generation.

Speaker 3 (01:21:34):
So but that's why I think it's important that we
stop and we acknowledgable then if she didn't make TV money,
she made some movie money.

Speaker 1 (01:21:41):
How did she make all this money?

Speaker 5 (01:21:43):
Right?

Speaker 3 (01:21:43):
And that's why we need to point back to the
best business decision she ever made that many musicians do not,
particularly women in her era and songwriters in her era.
This woman fought for and retained the entirety of her
publishing rights for the entirety of her career.

Speaker 7 (01:21:58):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:21:58):
Yeah, that is so huge.

Speaker 3 (01:22:00):
Not to give like a mini like dissertation on how
royalties work, but like basically, you know, there's several parts
of that pie, and most performers receive a quarter of
that pie because they're just performing the song and that's it.
On the other hand, Dahlia's composed the song, Dahlia's written
the lyrics, Dahlia's performed the lyrics, and Dolli has recorded
it so that bitch gets paid on all four sides
of her record, which is how she has made money,

(01:22:22):
and not selling her songs or giving away publishing rights
to people like Elvis Presley the biggest songs to Whitney
Houston didn't get publishing on that song, and Whitney Houston
still did just fine, you.

Speaker 1 (01:22:34):
Know what I'm saying. Yeah, So that's what she's doing.
She's killing it off that Whitney Houston song to this day,
killing and just making so much money.

Speaker 3 (01:22:42):
And she's I think one of the unique examples of
truly wealthy people that should be a billionaire that are
not because they give back. You didn't even talk about
like the amount of like local level sort of support
that she's given. She has songs that she is given
to local people, Like every time I'm there is a
tragedy here, this woman literally pays people. She was paying

(01:23:04):
people families I think upwards of four thousand dollars a
month during fires when the first round of fires that
plays through the appellationians. She also has a thing in
Severeville that if you are a resident of severe For
and you graduate high school, she was giving kids three
hundred bucks if you just like sent her your thing
that you graduated college, I mean graduated high school. Like,
she has low level incentives that are just for people

(01:23:25):
that live in the area that she was like raised
in and like the dedication to that is pretty remarkable.
And obviously Dollywood makes a shit ton of money. It's
not the only like resort that she has. She has
a whole universe of resorts and attractions that are in
Pigeon Forge now that people go through that. She provides
employment benefits if you work from me.

Speaker 1 (01:23:45):
She treats her employees really well. Evaluate but she will
put you through college. You through college, yeah, for work.
You had an amusement park.

Speaker 2 (01:23:53):
Yeah, such a just good just it's a good lesson
I think generally, not even if you're a celebrity of
like it really is what you put out in the world, Yes,
you know, because that it can come back, Like you
you really need to think of like what your output
is into the world, because if you're very generous in
giving with that, like not to say you're going to
be Dolly Parton, but not only will you feel better,

(01:24:15):
but chances are you're going to build enough goodwill with
other people in your community or whatever that well, you're
going to have you back.

Speaker 1 (01:24:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:24:23):
And how you define wealth is your own personal thing,
you know what I mean. Like I considering myself very wealthy,
but like I'm not Dolly Parton.

Speaker 1 (01:24:29):
Rich, you know what I mean.

Speaker 3 (01:24:30):
Yeah, but I've spent time in enriching my life and
trying to give back, and I feel wealthy and like
the relationships and the friendships and like everything that I
have and that is so meaningful. And that's one of
the biggest things I take away from watching her is like,
how can I downplay this? How can I make a
mini version of this for my life?

Speaker 1 (01:24:46):
What do you think you would be a shitty person
if you didn't go to that concert and then have
your head, like your mind totally blown by seeing Dolly Parton,
like and you would yeah, yes, I do.

Speaker 3 (01:25:00):
Like I was a wild piece of shit and like
it took me a while to figure things out, And
like I was before I started comedy, I was in
a very like intense career. It's like I worked for
a record label. I was in the music business, Like
I was being taught to be ruthless and the only
thing that mattered was my job. And like she truly
did teach me balance, you know what I mean, And
then me being like, oh I do I can be

(01:25:22):
creative and be a business person at the same time,
and like gave me the like passion to follow my
own passion, and then also realizing, oh, I can't also
just only do comedy and not think about my family
and friends and not have time for myself. Like honestly,
like she taught me balance, she taught me perseverance. She
taught me also taking risks and not being afraid to
take risks because if you fail, who cares? You can

(01:25:44):
be broke anywhere?

Speaker 1 (01:25:45):
You know what. Yah, she absolutely did.

Speaker 3 (01:25:47):
I think I would one thousand percent be a shitty
person if I didn't have Dolly Parton and her light
my life totally all right.

Speaker 1 (01:25:53):
So this is a question I haven't asked any of
our guests before, but I'm going to ask you because
you know more about this than me. What's the biggest
thing that I've missed? Is there one thing that we
haven't talked about in her life that like we need
to we need to tell the listeners about.

Speaker 3 (01:26:11):
Yeah, I mean, I think we should also talk We've
kind of danced around it, but I think we should
also talk about femininity and fashion. You know, she is
someone that never let anybody shape what she looked like
in that fashion, right, Like nobody dresses like Dolly Parton.
Dolly Parton dresses like Dolly Parton. And then when you

(01:26:32):
see people like, oh, that reminds me of Dolly Parton.
But like, she has a very specific style in fashion
road that she has driven down and all of her
clothes and all the shoes. I mean, she's the only
artist that I know that has like a full time
archivist and has whole museums dedicated to just her clothing,
just her outfit. She wrote a whole book about her fashion.

Speaker 1 (01:26:53):
She is a wig for every day of the of
the year.

Speaker 3 (01:26:57):
They have a whole wig display now at Dollywood. That
is like my favorite thing because they changed the weeks
out seasonally, so I love going to see the new wigs.

Speaker 1 (01:27:03):
I'm like, ooh, the new wigs.

Speaker 3 (01:27:05):
You know, all of her shoes are custom made, all
of her dresses there. Her best friend Judy Ogel started
saving all of her clothes very early on because Dolly
didn't think twice about it, because Dolly's just doing Dolly,
right yeah, And I'm so glad that Judy locked in
because now we have this huge amass of all of
these clothes that we wouldn't have, you know that people
made that are dead, people have passed away, that people

(01:27:28):
have you know, not known. And she didn't always go
with a super famous designer. She's always worked with like independent,
really strong seamstresses. So I think it's also important that
like Dolly created herself not off of the back of
designer clothing, right right, right right?

Speaker 1 (01:27:41):
Yeah? Would Cardi B be Cardi B without designers? You
know what I mean?

Speaker 3 (01:27:45):
Like everything now is like, oh it's Balenciaga, it's custom
miss like Dolly. Shit, you don't know who Stephen Summers
is unless you are a Dolly Parton fan, and then
you're like, oh, that's a Steve Summers dress.

Speaker 1 (01:27:54):
He designed that.

Speaker 3 (01:27:55):
You know, you don't know the people her beer, you know,
all these like I know people who make her clothes,
because I'm the s's with this ship and now her
her great niece, like her niece is running this and
putting this all up and this. You know, woman is
grown up and you know this is her aunt. Can
you even imagine like your aunt being Dolly Parton? Get
out of here? You know, but she is the same
reverence that we do because she understands how difficult it

(01:28:17):
is as a woman to like hold on to like
an artistic vibe for the entirety of your career. Show
Oh that was Madonna's leather era. Oh that was Madonna's
Like Dolly Parton has been consistent since the beginning, which
is like is it fucking sparkly?

Speaker 1 (01:28:31):
Does it have a fringe?

Speaker 3 (01:28:32):
Like? Is my hair biggest buck? All my shoes high
as fuck? Like is it fucking ryan stoned?

Speaker 8 (01:28:38):
No?

Speaker 3 (01:28:38):
Send it back, you know what I'm saying, Like, and
everything is custom made. I even love the fact that
when she did fucking God damn, what was the movie
with Queen Latifa.

Speaker 1 (01:28:49):
Where they were she was in She was in the
no no no, no, no, no no higher something.

Speaker 3 (01:28:55):
That it's gonna it's that's gonna drive me crazy. Uh
but even her your gown joyful noise.

Speaker 1 (01:29:02):
Yeah, joyful noise.

Speaker 5 (01:29:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:29:03):
Yeah, she has a fitted choir gown. Is not that
big gas dumping. You know.

Speaker 3 (01:29:09):
After that movie came out, there was church ladies that
were like, taking my ship in, you know what I mean,
you know, I'm gonna look good.

Speaker 2 (01:29:16):
Like when Mariah wore the Michael Jordan jersey dress to
sing the national anthem at the All Star Game, people
were like, oh no.

Speaker 1 (01:29:21):
You can do that with the basketball jersey.

Speaker 3 (01:29:23):
Yeah, Like I know, there was church ladies running into
tailor's that Monday morning, like right.

Speaker 2 (01:29:29):
Yeah, She's like, I gotta let them know, okay from
the pulpit, can'ts They're gonna realize.

Speaker 1 (01:29:38):
She has consistently employed her family, which can be like
such a respue for disaster, but like she and like
there has been like difficulties where like her aunt was
feeding rumors and like her sister just got messy with
it and was like pray for my sister. She's just like, oh,
I didn't mean anything by it. She's fine. I was
just well, that's also like I mean that lady's old,
you know what I mean.

Speaker 3 (01:29:57):
Imagine I don't know about you guys, but Mike my
whiles on on Facebook and doesn't realize it.

Speaker 1 (01:30:02):
Like that's just like that's all thing was doing. Was
just like you can't talk about Dolly like that without
the world freaking out. But just the fact that like
she has created this like massive family empire and is
like doing succession, but like with kindness, this is like
fucking crazy, you know, and all her family is like
beautiful and lovely.

Speaker 3 (01:30:23):
Like since I've lived out in here Nashville, I've really
gotten lucky and like have met like quite a few
of her, like younger relatives that are around my age,
just from like being in places that I'm at and
like people just talking to me and being like, oh,
I see you all the time.

Speaker 1 (01:30:34):
You seem normal?

Speaker 3 (01:30:35):
Are you?

Speaker 1 (01:30:36):
Are you normal?

Speaker 3 (01:30:36):
And I'm like, yes, I am very normal, also very obsessed,
and They're like, yeah, me too. I can't believe I'm
related to this lady, you know, And they're all are
supported like everyone has great stories, like everyone is employed
or not employed, or has gotten some help or something
in some way, but it's never expected. Like it is
beautiful to see that that she's not only pouring into
her immediate family, but like in her community and younger generations,

(01:30:57):
and she's teaching her family members how to continue that
same vibe. Right, yeah, And it's just and now her
big thing that she's coming out with is like, all
I want to do for the rest of my life
is literally bring joy and happiness to people.

Speaker 1 (01:31:11):
That's it. What an altruistic statement thing to say. I
think so too so far. Now, I'd say pretty good
work in progress, but pretty good work so far. I've
got my eye on you, Dolly. Lyady Popovich is such
a pleasure having you on all episodes of ost show,
but especially this one. Where can people find you? Follow
you all that good stuff?

Speaker 3 (01:31:31):
Certainly you can find me on the interwebs. Lydiapopovich dot
com is my website. Hater Tuesday on all of the
socials is where you can find me. I am based
in Nashville, but I tour all over the place. But
if you're in Nashville, you can always catch me at Zany's.
I pop in there pretty frequently, got different shows. One
exciting thing that I have booked that I think you
will be excited about, Miles. I will be opening for

(01:31:54):
our friend Sarper Govin from Beyond Fame.

Speaker 1 (01:31:59):
You know, Sophia went to go see Sarper perform.

Speaker 3 (01:32:01):
It's the gig of the year so far. Like, I
couldn't be more excited to be booked as that man's opener.
It's a two man show, just me and him.

Speaker 1 (01:32:09):
It's a two what the fuck?

Speaker 3 (01:32:12):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:32:12):
And as a dude who he's like a ninety day
fiance Casmo, this Turkish guy who's just like, She's like,
what do you want to do in your America? He's like,
maybe I'll be a stand up and just fucking went
for it. And he's not that funny, but he just
everyone's so interested in him that he's selling out. He's like,
he's doing like a whole stand up tour and I, okay, wow,

(01:32:32):
he's he's just getting up. Yeah, Oh he's got material.
He's got material.

Speaker 3 (01:32:38):
He definitely has material, So yeah, look up for that.
I think that's either in February or March. I can't remember.
I'm gonna be putting on my website. I just confirmed
that earlier this week and couldn't be more thrilled. You
were one of the first people I thought about, Miles.
I was like, Oh my god, can't wait to tell Miles. Yeah,
gonna get it. He's gonna know how exciting. Oh yeah,
oh yeah, but yeah, come see me do some stand up.
I do have jokes about Dolly Parton and all kinds

(01:32:59):
of other stuff. But yeah, and if you see me
in the streets or you see me at Dollywood, I
will be their opening day, probably at the front of
the line. There's video footage of me last year running
through dropping rope dropping. Hell yeah, gotta ropdrop world every year.

Speaker 1 (01:33:12):
All right, Miles, where can people find you?

Speaker 8 (01:33:15):
Uh?

Speaker 2 (01:33:15):
Check you out talking ninety fiance, talking to Sarper whatever,
everything that's happening over there. And also ain't at footy
talking about soccer. All of it comes and you know.

Speaker 1 (01:33:27):
Already, Dailies that guys, you already know, you already know,
all right, that is going to do it for this
part of the conversation. Stick around for after the break
because I never remember to get to everything I wanted
to say in the conversation. For my notebook, dumppe, So
be back in five minutes by bite by. All right,

(01:33:59):
that was our Dolly Parton conversation. Thanks to j I
McNabb for providing the research, and thanks to Lydia of
course for providing a lifelong devotion to Dolly Parton studies.
A few things I didn't get to. That's right, it's
time for the No No, No No Notebook Dump. We're
gonna do a couple unprecedent things in this edition of

(01:34:22):
the No No No Notebook Dump. First, there's something I
forgot from a previous episode. I'm gonna no No No
notebook dump something from Elvis here because I learned about
it after the Elvis episode dropped. I have since learned
listening to actually just randomly a Conan O'Brien needs a
Friend Live episode with John c Riley a few years back.

(01:34:46):
The record was recorded a few years back that Elvis
had a chimp named Scatter. This is a significant omission
that I have to apologize for. Significant for a number
of reasons. One was just a point that I think
I did mention in the episode was how similar Elvis

(01:35:08):
Michael Jackson's some aspects of their lives were in that
they both created these universes Graceland Neverland where they were
surrounded by enablers. They both died from medical enablers, basically
physician malpractice by way of holy shit, it's Elvis. And
when you get to that level of weird fame, like

(01:35:33):
I think those two human beings, Elvis and Michael Jackson
lived arguably two of the strangest lives, had two of
the strangest human experiences in the history of the species,
like being that famous, like they I feel like we
should kind of study them, like psychiatrists or neurologists study

(01:35:55):
Phineas Gage, the guy who survived getting a railroad spike
through his head, and they're like, well, this is a
weird thing, and so now we can learn things that
we wouldn't other wise be able to their lives Michael
Jackson and Elvis was like this vast psychological experiment. And
what we found in both cases is that when when

(01:36:18):
you are in those strange alien worlds where nobody is
being real with you and you're just surrounded in your
own castle of own your own design, at a certain
point you're just like, I gotta get a chimp. I
got I got I need a chimp in here with me.
And you know, Michael Jackson's was much more famous, at

(01:36:40):
least in my lifetime. Elvis's was named Scatter. They named
it that after how people would react when he showed up,
because he was a bit of a live wire, bit
of a wild card. He would reach up people's skirts
and just make people very uncomfortable. One time, Elvis and

(01:37:01):
the Memphis Mafia were in LA and they found a car,
or created a car with a fake steering wheel so
they could drive around Beverly Hills making it look like
Scatter was driving the car and just like freaking out
the people of Beverly Hills. And a very sad story.

(01:37:21):
He ultimately was left in the backyard in a cage
when it was too cold and he froze to death. Anyways,
it was too good, the omission too unforgivable. Had to
bring it back here. And that's something that I'm comfortable doing.
If I miss something on an episode that needs to
be rectified, let me know I will bring it back
in the notebook dump in subsequent episodes onto Dolly Parton.

(01:37:45):
Just in terms of her being a tabloid queen, there's
been a number of conspiracy theories about her over the year,
one suggesting that she's secretly covered in tattoos. This one
was very fascinating to me in the early days of Cracked.
I was like, this was my white whale. Can we
find we find out if this is true the idea.

(01:38:07):
She's almost never seen wearing short sleeves, and she has
admitted that she has a few little tattoos here and there,
mostly to cover up scars from surgeries, but she says
she's not tattooed up like a motorcycle girl. So that
is the adorable Dolly Partment way of putting it. Other
conspiracy theories in tabloid queendom. She hasn't been able to

(01:38:29):
totally outrun the initial boob joke that made her famous.
There's numerous rumors that she either had her breasts insured
or that they're so heavy that they've caused her to
be bedridden and crippled for life, which she's obviously denied.
And I will just say, during the course of the
research for the Dolly Parton episode, I've never seen anyone

(01:38:50):
who is less bedridden. I think she's actually one of
these people whose success can be partially explained by needing
less sleep, as I mentioned in the episode, but she
wakes up at three am every morning like Donald Trump
is another one of these people who needs less sleep,
But unlike Trump, she appears to be vibrating with energy

(01:39:11):
at all times. She seems to be powered by a
hummingbird heart. She sleeps so little that she sleeps in
her makeup, has a wig rack with as I mentioned,
she owns like a different wig for every day of
the year. And I like to imagine that she just
sprints out of bed through a closet and the wig
and the clothes are just on her when she gets

(01:39:33):
out the other side, like a cartoon character who accidentally
gets dressed up like a lady by running through a
woman's closet. We talked about people trying to cancel her
getting mad at her. Another anecdote about someone who came
at the Queen and missed. Twenty twenty four, the Federalist
attacked Parton for condoning immoral sexual behavior, and it didn't

(01:39:56):
go well. From a Yahoo News article from later that week,
Federalist writer Erica Anderson criticized Parton for her non judgmental
approach to life and her claim that she loves everyone.
Those are controversial opinions. I can see why Erica would
object to those statements. She had a five year old

(01:40:17):
boy in the year nineteen eighty five being like, oh
you love everyone. Yeah. The thing I a Christian object
to is her non judgmental approach to life. But that
was the thesis of her article. And like I said,
within a week she was out here being like, I
regret using Dollie as the example of the point I

(01:40:39):
was making in the article. As I wrote in the piece,
I love her and thinks she does some incredible things
for the world. We all make poor choices and how
to frame things sometimes. Yeah, you made your whole article
about criticizing Dolly Parton, as she closed her statement within
a week that she issued about her article, the world
is lucky to have her. And finally, I said, I

(01:41:02):
do a couple unprecedented things in this No No No
notebook dump. First, we gave you an Elvis previous episode
notebook dump. We're also we've got a notebook dump from
guest Lydia Popovich, who wanted to point out that we
missed out on the importance of Dolly to the fine
art of branding. Lydia take it away.

Speaker 3 (01:41:23):
Hey, guys, I was just making dinner, making chili, and
I'm making cornbread using my Dolly Parton times Loade collaboration
cast iron butterfly molds, and it occurred to me, oh
my god, we did forget something. We totally forgot to
talk about Dolly the brand this woman has branded herself.

(01:41:48):
A lot of people love to give credit to Kiss,
who did a wonderful job of marketing themselves in the
seventies and the eighties, you know, from Kiss lunchboxes to
posters to dolls, everything right, But that's pretty limited in
comparison to what Dolly Parton has done. Dolly Parton has
branded herself.

Speaker 1 (01:42:06):
Since the eighties. All right, good point from Lyddy. I
remember reading a lot of glowing reviews on Kiss's ability
to sell out during I don't know, I think the
Obama administration or something. People are like, man, they were
really good at marketing themselves. You know, generally, I'm not
the biggest fan of selling out, but when you're putting
your name on products that make people happy and using

(01:42:30):
the money that you make from that branding to like
put people through college and give poor children books to read,
I'll allow it, Dolly, I'll allow it. All right. That's
going to do it for this week's Iconograph. We are
back next week with another very fun episode that talks
about the finer points of selling out. We're talking about

(01:42:54):
the Michael Jordan meets Evil Knievel meets Johnny Appleseed skateboarding.
We're talking about the hawk Man Tony Hawk with Mortberg.
That'll be next week's Iconograph and we will talk to
you all then. Have a great week like