SYSK Tribute: Why does everyone love Dolly Parton?

Today we dive in to celebrate the international treasure that is Dolly Parton. Why is she nearly universally loved? Listen in to find out.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hey everybody, Chuck here on a Wednesday for an intro
for a very special release because yesterday we learned that
music icon and country music legend and philanthropist and just
all-around amazing person Dolly Parton passed away after a short
battle with cancer. And a few years ago in April

(00:26):
of 2023 we recorded this episode, Why Does Everyone Love
Dolly Parton? And, you know, I think that title, Josh
came up with that title, and it really hits it
on the head. She was a beloved person that seems
to have crossed different musical genres, of course, and, you know,
political boundaries. And she was just one of those people

(00:47):
that kind of everyone seemed to be united in agreement
that Dolly Parton is and was an amazing human being.
That's the kind of thing we detail in this episode.
And We try to get to the heart of why
she's so beloved. And I think for me, Dolly was

(01:08):
just someone who seemed like her guiding principles were kindness
and love and joy. And that seems to be what
led her to do just about everything in her career
and every decision she made and people who she worked
with and, you know, nonprofits she decided to get involved

(01:29):
with and certainly her philanthropic efforts and everything that she
gave to the world, it seems like she led with
her heart first. And that's just kind of a rare
trait these days. So Dolly is certainly a rare breed
and just an amazing woman. Somebody who I think we

(01:51):
can all agree should be revered and looked up to.
And the world is a little dimmer today without her
light shining. So Here we are today, the day after
she passed, releasing this special episode, hoping everyone can give
it a listen as we pay tribute to the great
Dolly Parton with our episode from 2023, Why Does Everyone

(02:14):
Love Dolly Parton? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a
production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (02:30):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's
Chuck and Jerry's here too. And today we're going to
make some joyful noise together here on Stuff You Should Know.
That's right.

Speaker 1 (02:40):
I just poured myself a cup of ambition. Uh-huh.

Speaker 2 (02:44):
I had a few of those this morning.

Speaker 1 (02:46):
Uh, Livia helped us with this one. And, you know,
we've remarked about how Livia is getting great at titling
the articles, even though she doesn't even have to.

Speaker 2 (02:55):
Right.

Speaker 1 (02:56):
She does it because she's creative and talented. And her
title for this is Why Does Everyone Love Dolly Parton?
And we're going to explain that. But I think the
easiest thing to say is since the 1970s, this is
a woman who has basically just put goodness into the

(03:16):
world at every turn.

Speaker 2 (03:18):
Yeah, for sure. I was reading an interview with her
in Rolling Stone from 1980, like 9 to 5 had
just come out. And you might as well have told
me it was from 2023. Yeah. She's been the same
way this whole time. That's great. She doesn't get into
any political stuff. She said, I'm not political. I won't
talk about politics. She leaves hot button issues alone. But

(03:41):
if it means something to her, it's really meaningful, she'll
come out in favor of it, endorsing it. But she
doesn't put anything down. She might support something, but she's
not going to put anything down publicly.

Speaker 1 (03:53):
Yeah. So the other kind of funny thing about this
one from Livia is she always includes her sources, and
she may have broken her own source record. Yeah, there's
a lot.

Speaker 2 (04:04):
Oh, boy.

Speaker 1 (04:05):
There were probably 100 sources, but we did want to
mention one in particular because I listened to this from
Jad Abumrad, the great Jad Abumrad of Radiolab fame, like
four years ago put out the wonderful series Dolly Parton's America. Yeah.
And Livia binged it, and I listened to it back then,
and Back then I was like, oh, man, I want

(04:25):
to do an episode on Dolly Parton. But it's like
Jad did it, like he covered it so well, like
what's the point kind of thing.

Speaker 2 (04:31):
Right.

Speaker 1 (04:32):
But now four years on, I was like, well, we
can give it the stuff you should know treatment, which
is to say not as deep a dive. But it's
a great series. If you want to learn more about
Dolly Parton, then check out Dolly Parton's America.

Speaker 2 (04:47):
Very nice. And then just to button up, Chuck, we
were trying to answer that question, why does everybody love Dolly? Mm-hmm.
I came up with another hypothesis too. Okay. And it's that,
you know, when, when somebody is like, they can be
anything anybody wants them to be like, they're interpretable from
all different angles. So everybody just assumes they're like them.

(05:10):
Dolly is not like that. She is her own person
who can't be pigeonholed into one box or another. Right.
But she's, Likeable from all sides.

Speaker 1 (05:25):
Yeah. Like find someone that's going to talk smack about
Dolly Parton. And then you and I are going to
have a discussion in the parking lot with that guy.

Speaker 2 (05:35):
It's a sad state of affairs, though, dude, because there's
think pieces all over the Internet about how it's just
amazing that everybody doesn't hate Dolly Parton. And it's like,
good God, like this is what we've come to. Like,
everybody hates everybody casually. So, I mean, how has she
escaped it so long? And it's just like such a
sad state of affairs that that's normalized by even writing
pieces like that. But they're out there for sure. But

(05:58):
the upshot of it is people are amazed that people
don't hate Dolly Parton. And it's true. People don't hate
Dolly Parton.

Speaker 1 (06:04):
Yeah. And she's someone that is so, I think, kind
of universally beloved and internationally beloved that, as you'll see
later in this episode, she's been studied. by anthropologists and sociologists,
which is pretty amazing. And so let's start at the beginning,
shall we?

Speaker 2 (06:23):
Wait, hold on, one more thing.

Speaker 1 (06:24):
Yeah, more praise.

Speaker 2 (06:26):
The other thing about her I think that's so amazing
and so remarkable is that she, this is the reason
why everybody's just so fascinated with her right now. She's
maybe the one person who is straddling both sides of
the political and social divide as wide as it is
in the United States today, and is not like hanging

(06:48):
on by her fingernails. She's like, I got a foot
here and I'm not lying about it. Got a foot here,
I'm not lying about that either. I'm not trying to
fool either side. This is what I'm into. And I
like both of you, basically.

Speaker 1 (07:02):
It's almost like being a genuine human who 100% stays
true to who they are is something we should all
aspire to.

Speaker 2 (07:09):
Sure. But it also shows, she shows that That's such
a rarity in this world that you can be globally
beloved by just doing that and also making like a
ton of really great music, too.

Speaker 1 (07:20):
Well, yeah. I mean, come on. We're going to talk
about all this stuff. But can we go back to
the beginning now?

Speaker 2 (07:26):
Yeah. Yeah. Sorry.

Speaker 1 (07:27):
OK. Hey, never apologize about singing the praises of Dolly Parton.

Speaker 2 (07:31):
That's a great rule of stuff.

Speaker 1 (07:33):
You should know motto. And I just can't wait till
we get to the Dollywood stuff because you you've been
and I have not. All right, so she was born,
Dolly Rebecca Parton, in 1946, in January 19th of 1946,
in rural Tennessee. How do you pronounce that? Is it
Sevier County?

Speaker 2 (07:51):
I think it's Sevier.

Speaker 1 (07:52):
Oh, it's just Sevier.

Speaker 2 (07:55):
I'm almost positive it's Sevier.

Speaker 1 (07:57):
Okay, S-E-V-I-E-R. And see, immediately, this is, I'm sure, Jad's
episode pronounced it perfectly right off the bat. I don't remember.

Speaker 2 (08:06):
He just threw his face into his palm like, these guys....

Speaker 1 (08:10):
Uh, but she was born to a big family of
12 kids and it's kind of fun to look up
photos of, uh, Dolly and all her siblings because, you know,
a few of her sisters look a lot like her. Um,
all her brothers look like, you know, they should be
like shooting pool down at the pool hall, you know,
all very just sort of genuine article, smoky mountain, Tennessee

(08:32):
foothills people.

Speaker 2 (08:33):
Yeah, for sure. And there were 12 of them, did
you say?

Speaker 1 (08:35):
12 sibs, including her. She was the fourth.

Speaker 2 (08:39):
Yeah, the fourth of 12. And all 14 people in
her family lived in a two-room cabin. And I've seen
a replica of this cabin. And it is no joke,
a two-room cabin and 14 people lived in it in
the Smoky Mountains.

Speaker 1 (08:56):
You mean two bedrooms with an office, right? Right.

Speaker 2 (08:59):
I mean two rooms, my friend, with the outhouse, no
running water, no electricity. Like she grew up as Smokey Mountain,
as a Smokey Mountain person can grow up. Like even
people in other parts of Tennessee are like, wow.

Speaker 1 (09:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (09:15):
But she said she had a great childhood running around,
just being outside. And because she was the fourth of 12,
she wasn't particularly like, paid attention to, so she could
just kind of go off and do her own thing.

Speaker 1 (09:26):
Yeah, I get the idea that they were semi-feral sort
of mountain kids. Her granddad was a Pentecostal minister, very
fiery and brimstone-y, and she still mentions God a lot.
I get the sense that she's a little less overtly religious,
but spirituality is still very much a mainstay in her life.

Speaker 2 (09:47):
Yeah, I think it's more of a personal relationship between
her and God.

Speaker 1 (09:50):
Yeah, which is how it's supposed to be.

Speaker 2 (09:52):
So she really lucked out because she had an uncle
named Bill Owens, who was a musician, a songwriter who noticed.
that she wanted to get into music from a very
young age and was maybe the only person in her
entire life or her early life that noticed and then
nurtured it. And she later said when he died a

(10:13):
few years back at his funeral, like she wouldn't be
here today if it wasn't him. Like she owed him everything.
Because he nurtured it in her. He encouraged her. He
supported her when she got rejected. And he helped her
break into the business. So Bill Owens was a huge
influence in her life. But he noticed, like I said,
from a very early age, I think she wrote her
first song when she was five.

Speaker 1 (10:34):
Yeah, Little Tiny Tassel Top about her homemade corn husk doll.
And she would pretend... You know, she would get a
tobacco stick and a tin can and act like it
was her microphone and mic stand. And she would sing
for the chickens in her yard and had obviously a
real talent from the beginning. If you listen to her
very first recording, Puppy Love from 1959, it sounds like,

(10:59):
you know, 13 year old Dolly Parton. You know, you
can hear Dolly in that young voice. And like I said,
she was 13. And that was the same year that
she made her very first appearance in At the Grand
Ole Opry, introduced by none other than Johnny Cash.

Speaker 2 (11:14):
Yeah, who was her first big crush. So it was
even more amazing for her.

Speaker 1 (11:19):
Unbelievable.

Speaker 2 (11:20):
Her family didn't get to see it, though, because Dolly
Parton was on TV before her family had a TV
at home. Yeah. Which is pretty cool.

Speaker 1 (11:28):
Was it on TV back then?

Speaker 2 (11:30):
I believe there was a TV appearance, yes.

Speaker 1 (11:32):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (11:34):
And if that one wasn't, whenever it was, she was
on TV first. Her family still didn't have a TV
back then.

Speaker 1 (11:40):
Gotcha.

Speaker 2 (11:41):
So thanks to Uncle Billy taking her around and banging
on doors, she ended up making her debut on Mercury
Records in 1962, which is nothing to sneeze at. But
I get the impression that it wasn't like her– it
wasn't like, okay, this is a serious recording contract. It's like, okay,

(12:01):
let's test this girl out. Back then they called any
woman in country music a girl singer. Right. Right. So
she was a bit of a novelty, not just because
of her age, but because she was a woman as well.
But she had her sights set on becoming a country
music star. And so the day after she graduated high school,
the day after she graduated high school, she got on

(12:22):
a bus for Nashville and moved there.

Speaker 1 (12:24):
Yeah. Amazing. 1964. And very soon after she moved there,
she met a man that would become her husband and
a mainstay in her life to this day, who is
remarkably hard to find stuff about. His name is Carl Dean.
They met very famously at a laundromat when she was

(12:44):
18 and he was 21. Married a couple of years later.
And I think a lot of people that don't know
a lot about Dolly Parton think she might be single
or something because she never had kids. But she's been
married to Carl Dean since 1966. And he just, he
doesn't want to be in the limelight. He never did.
He's her biggest fan. fan and supporter, she's always said,

(13:06):
you know, off the stage, but he just doesn't want
any part of the limelight. And it's hard to even
find a lot of pictures of this guy. There's a
handful out there, but he started an asphalt laying business
in the late seventies, still runs that business today, which
is just amazing. And yeah, I read an article from
a couple of years ago. She was like, you know,

(13:26):
Carl and I, we like to run errands. She said,
we go to the 24 hour stores, you know, in
the middle of the night, like Walmart and places. And
she said, and there are fewer people there to come
up to me. And she said, I don't mind it.
I love people. She said, I just don't want it
to get in the way of our shopping.

Speaker 2 (13:41):
Right.

Speaker 1 (13:41):
And, you know, Carl's not wild about it. So they
just live a very simple kind of pure life together,
I think, outside the limelight.

Speaker 2 (13:48):
Yeah, I've read an interview with her somewhere, and she
said that in her opinion, if she's out in public,
that time belongs to her fans. So she doesn't have
a problem with people coming up to her, asking for autographs.
She knows that she's out in public, and that's a
risk that she runs, right? Sure. But her leisure time,
her time away is like secluded off with Carl, just

(14:09):
the two of them usually. Maybe she has a very
close best friend. I can't remember her name. They go
everywhere together. So she's almost like a stand in for
Carl when Dolly's traveling around. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (14:19):
And she's always been very her persona is very flirty
and she's always sort of flirted around with. In fact,
no friends that have worked on like commercial shoots with her.
And they were like, man, she's the biggest flirt you
would ever know. And that's just her personality. And she
said that Carl understands that. And that's just how she
sort of has fun and relates to people. And it's

(14:40):
always very innocent. And I just think it's kind of
kind of cute and fun.

Speaker 2 (14:45):
Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 1 (14:46):
I want her to flirt with me, you know, I
think is what I'm saying.

Speaker 2 (14:49):
This, this episode might be your big break, Chuck.

Speaker 1 (14:52):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (14:53):
So, um, would you just like turn bright red and
like dig your, the toe of your foot.

Speaker 1 (14:58):
Into the, I kind of am a little bright red.
I thought it was the stuff you should know sign
in here, casting a red beam on my face.

Speaker 2 (15:04):
No, it's you thinking about being flirted with by Dolly Parton.

Speaker 1 (15:07):
I know. Well, dude, I grew up as you did,
but I'm, you know, a little bit older. Like The
heyday of early Dolly was when I was a kid. And,
of course, my dad was in love with her. And,
you know, it was just she was one of the
biggest stars in the world. And my parents were kind
of into country music. So she was just sort of
prevalent in our household somehow.

Speaker 2 (15:26):
Yeah, my introduction to her was through 9 to 5.
And my mom, that whole message and the idea behind
it was right up my mom's alley. So she would
watch it. With her hands clasped together at the side
of her face.

Speaker 1 (15:38):
Oh, I love that.

Speaker 2 (15:38):
Just an adoration of everybody, including Dolly Parton, too. I
think my family was never really into country music, so
I think that that was like a big introduction and
probably a win over for my family was 9 to 5.

Speaker 1 (15:52):
All right. Well, we'll talk about 9 to 5 and
crossover success more. It's a good setup. But how about
we take a break?

Speaker 2 (15:57):
Yes.

Speaker 1 (15:58):
And we'll be right back with more Dolly Parton.

Speaker 2 (16:00):
Music Music OK, so we're talking about Dolly becoming a star.

(16:29):
Like she's had a couple of record contracts, nothing serious, though.
But then in 1965, she signed with Monument Records. That
was her big her first big record contract I read.
But they wanted her to be a pop singer, which
is kind of ironic because she actually would kind of
become a pop singer later on in her career. But
at first she was like, no way. Like, have you

(16:51):
seen my house? And do you know how many people
are in my family? I'm not a pop singer. I'm
a country singer. Right. So she persisted and hung in
there and they ended up like folding and giving in.
And she went on to become a full fledged country singer.

Speaker 1 (17:06):
Yeah, in 1967, her first record, Hello, I'm Dolly, which
is just great how they used to do records like
that and title them like that when you introduce her
to the world. But as would become a thing in
her career, most of the songs that she's well known for,
most of the songs she's recorded, she's done plenty of

(17:28):
covers because everyone does that, especially in country music. But
she is... most well known as a songwriter. And we'll
get into that more in a little bit. But she
wrote two. Now, Libby has a number 24, but I
saw that they were both top 20 on the country charts.
Dumb Blonde, which is written by a guy named Curly Putman.

(17:50):
Great name. And Something Fishy written by Dolly. And I
think the album itself was a top 20 hit. Her
debut right off, you know, on the country charts, right
off out of the gate.

Speaker 2 (18:02):
Yes. I was looking up something fishy, and it's about
a woman who's become convinced that her husband's fishing trips
aren't actually fishing trips and that he's running around on her.
So one of the lines is, I guess some largemouth
bass left that lipstick on your shirt. I don't think
you're a fisherman, honey. I think you're a flirt. That's
like perfect debut dolly. Age 19, I think, is how

(18:27):
old she is. Yeah, that's pretty great.

Speaker 1 (18:30):
And Porter Wagoner is someone that we talked about on
our Grand Ole Opry show. And he had the Porter
Wagoner show. He hires Young Dolly to replace his other
young woman sidekick singer. And basically, she elevated the show
to the point where it was the number one syndicated
show in the country, radio show.

Speaker 2 (18:51):
Right.

Speaker 1 (18:52):
And they started doing duets together and albums together, including
their first one, Just Between You and Me, in 1968. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (18:59):
And they started touring a lot, too. And she learned
a tremendous amount about touring, performing live, the music business.
Everything she needed to learn early on came from touring
with Porter Wagner. But he was also really well aware
that he had like a real cash register on his hands.

Speaker 1 (19:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (19:20):
And he kept her under his thumb as much as
he could, both emotionally blackmailing her, I get the impression,
but also locking her into just really exploitive contracts because
she might not have known what she was signing. She
probably did and just figured like, OK, at least it's
going to help me get to where I'm going. That's
the likelier explanation, if you ask me. But he was

(19:40):
definitely in charge for the first many years of her
serious career.

Speaker 1 (19:46):
Yeah. But because she's Dolly Parton and so beloved, when
they eventually broke up their relationship, I think it was
kind of rough. And she ended up writing a song,
I Will Always Love You, about that relationship. And ultimately
they worked it out and she reconciled and was at
his deathbed with his family. And it was kind of

(20:07):
one of those no hard feelings kind of situations.

Speaker 2 (20:10):
Oh, really? I read that his last dying words were,
I'll never forgive you. That's what I'm going to say
on my deathbed.

Speaker 1 (20:17):
No.

Speaker 2 (20:18):
I'm just going to wave my finger around the room
to everybody standing there.

Speaker 1 (20:22):
And we're all going to be like, is he talking
about me?

Speaker 2 (20:24):
Exactly. You guys can spend the rest of your lives
figuring it out.

Speaker 1 (20:28):
And Yumi will just look at me and say, he's
talking about you.

Speaker 2 (20:32):
Totally.

Speaker 1 (20:33):
Uh, so they, uh, while they were a duet, wait, wait,
hold on.

Speaker 2 (20:38):
One more thing you brought up. I will always love you,
which everybody knows. One of probably your most, one of
our most famous songs, arguably her other most famous song, Jolene. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (20:48):
Great song.

Speaker 2 (20:49):
She apparently wrote those songs on the same day, start
to finish. Isn't that amazing? Yeah.

Speaker 1 (20:56):
I mean, she, she now says like, you know, if
it wasn't the same day, it was in the, Within
a couple of days of each other. But like either way,
it's remarkable.

Speaker 2 (21:05):
Yeah. And it's possible it was the same day. She
just doesn't remember. Yeah. That really like kind of goes
to show what kind of she she was drinking cups
of ambition left and right, apparently. Because not only is
that story potentially true, she also put out 25 albums. Yeah.
both duets with Porter Wagner and then some solo albums

(21:27):
in the five year period between 1968 and 1973. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (21:32):
I mean, that's remarkable. She started, um, and that's kind
of where I was headed anyway. She kind of started
recording her own solo stuff as she was, you know,
it was kind of obvious. She just had, she was
too prolific of a songwriter. I mean, she supposedly, her
quote is that she's written more than 3000 songs and
three of them are good. Uh, She's also humble, another

(21:53):
reason people love Dolly Parton. But she had too much
to say early on, and so started making solo records
while she was still with Wagner. And it was in
that time period, I think in the early 70s, is
when those iconic songs, Jolene and I Will Always Love You,
came out.

Speaker 2 (22:10):
Right, but still under the tutelage of Porter Wagner, right?

Speaker 1 (22:14):
Yeah, I mean, those are solo albums. And I think
I Will Always Love You was about them splitting apart,
so it was... Sort of right there at the end,
I think.

Speaker 2 (22:22):
It definitely was. And I heard a story years back
that he said, OK, I'll let you out of your
contract if you let me produce this amazing song. Oh,
that song?

Speaker 1 (22:31):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (22:32):
I will always love you. Right. And then apparently he
turned around and sued her anyway for breach of contract.
But she she got out of it. She got out
of this this this terrible contract, this exploitive contract. She
got out from under a very domineering mentor. And this
is a really big time of transition for her because
not only did she get away from Porter Wagner, which

(22:54):
was enormous because in a sense, she was like a
pinball that had just been plunged when she was released
from Porter Wagner, just looking for like the next bumper
to just shoot her off in another direction. That's my analogy, buddy. Yeah.
And that's exactly what happened. But she also had to

(23:14):
break up with her family band. Like they were her
original backing band. She had to be like, I got
to get better musicians, you guys. And she made some
really hard decisions, but they ended up paying off. And
from what I understand, there were no lasting hard feelings
from it.

Speaker 1 (23:30):
Yeah, that's pretty great. She hosted a TV show for
one season, just like us. It was called Dolly. You know,
back then they had all this great variety shows. This
was 76 into 77. And then a very important man
comes into her life by the name of Sandy Gallen,
who was a Uber manager, got the Beatles on Ed Sullivan,

(23:55):
would later manage Michael Jackson and Barbra Streisand and Cher.
And Sandy Gallen was a pretty instrumental person for a
couple of reasons. One is kind of. encouraging the crossover success.

Speaker 2 (24:09):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (24:09):
Like he booked her at the bottom line in the
Greenwich village who, you know, everyone from Springsteen to Lou
Reed were playing there.

Speaker 2 (24:15):
Like Andy Warhol came and watched her show. There's an
awesome picture of them sitting together.

Speaker 1 (24:20):
Yeah. Talk about crossover.

Speaker 2 (24:22):
Yeah, exactly. And she was nervous. I saw that she
was nervous on the, on the way to being scared.

Speaker 1 (24:28):
I'm sure. Yeah. Uh, he had her tour Europe, exposed
her internationally. Um, uh, he, uh, took her to Studio 54,
which is probably where she also hung out with Andy Warhol.
But the other big reason is that Sandy Gallen was gay.
He died like five years ago. And this was a
very instrumental relationship. And I get the impression, you know,

(24:52):
Dolly is very famous for being sort of an icon
in the LGTBQ community.

Speaker 2 (24:57):
Yeah, from very early on.

Speaker 1 (24:59):
Yeah. And it seems like this is kind of where
it all started was having this relationship with Sandy and
you know, just the gay community wrapping their arms around
her early on, not necessarily because, you know, she had
a gay manager, but, you know, I don't think it hurt.

Speaker 2 (25:17):
Right. And the New York Times wrote that she got
a warm welcome in San Francisco from transgender fans and, quote,
other exotic urban cult audiences.

Speaker 1 (25:29):
Well, Dolly's always said, you know, she's one of those
love is love types. And, you know, It's just like,
it's the way to live life. Like she doesn't judge
people and she never has. And she's always just embraced
like whatever community wants to love her music. Like, why
would she, I never get it when people like intentionally

(25:50):
sort of turn audiences off.

Speaker 2 (25:52):
Right.

Speaker 1 (25:53):
You know?

Speaker 2 (25:53):
Yeah, no, for sure. For sure. But also like it's,
that's so true. And it's so prevalent when, when you
read about her, watch interviews with her. just listen to
her talk, you're almost like, what's your angle, Dolly? Right.
What are you really up to here?

Speaker 1 (26:13):
Her big crossover hit was Here You Come Again, which
was considered a pop song. I mean, I've always kind
of thought it was a country song, I guess, because
her voice is in it, and she insisted on steel guitar,
so it still had a little country tinge to it.

Speaker 2 (26:29):
But it's like a perfect.

Speaker 1 (26:30):
It was a huge song.

Speaker 2 (26:31):
It's a perfect crossover.

Speaker 1 (26:32):
Like, it's exactly.

Speaker 2 (26:34):
perfectly balanced. Like there couldn't have been a better song
to transition from full on country singer to country pop singer.

Speaker 1 (26:42):
Yeah. And it went number one on the country chart,
number three on the pop charts. Album went platinum. And
this is, you know, the late 70s when she really, really,
really blew up.

Speaker 2 (26:53):
Yeah, that was that. She just took off like a
rocket from there. One of the things that she did
very wisely in the late 70s, early 80s, right around
this time, was just hop on the TV circuit. She's
been on at least a few hundred TV appearances, but
a lot of them took place in the 70s and

(27:13):
80s when she was just making herself known, making herself
a household name. And none of this was by accident.
She's wanted to be a megastar since she was a kid,
and this was part of... She apparently makes a lot
of lists, and they turn out to kind of be
five-year plans, and I'm sure... Getting on the talk show
circuit was part of one of those lists.

Speaker 1 (27:37):
And that explains why, as a kid growing up in
the 70s, I saw a lot of Dolly Parton.

Speaker 2 (27:41):
Exactly.

Speaker 1 (27:42):
She was everywhere.

Speaker 2 (27:43):
Dolly wanted you to see a lot of Dolly Parton.

Speaker 1 (27:46):
In the 80s is when she continued some of her
collaborations with other artists, very famously with Kenny Rogers with
Islands in the Stream. Huge, massive hit.

Speaker 2 (27:56):
Haven't heard it.

Speaker 1 (27:57):
And then 1987, my favorite... Collaboration at least came out
and maybe my favorite dolly stuff period. Oh, yeah was
the album trio Yeah that she recorded with Linda Ronstadt
and Emily Harris. Mm-hmm Just three of the best voices
in the history of music coming together to sing together
They ended up making three albums over the years together

(28:20):
So if you haven't listened to any of this stuff
highly recommend trio from 1987 She.

Speaker 2 (28:25):
Also released some bluegrass albums in the late 90s the
grass is blue little sparrow halos and horns and And
then she released her first Christmas album in 30 years
back in 2020, A Holly Dolly Christmas, which is pretty good.
It's cute. But I think the best Christmas album she
released was Once Upon a Christmas in 1984. There's a

(28:47):
lot of Kenny Rogers on it.

Speaker 1 (28:49):
I made a joke this last Christmas on Instagram. I
think that like probably 50% of Dolly Parton's Christmas songs
are about sex.

Speaker 2 (28:59):
It's true.

Speaker 1 (29:00):
Or there's like sexual overtones.

Speaker 2 (29:02):
Right, exactly. Yeah, it's good stuff. But that 1984 album
has Hard Candy Christmas on it, which is, I mean,
maybe her best one, if you ask me.

Speaker 1 (29:15):
Great song. All right, so now let's talk a little
bit more about her songwriting. I think that's the thing
that she's sort of most proud of. She said in
a 2020 book, if I had to choose just one
thing to be, I would choose to be a songwriter.
She's always said that she loves writing from the male
point of view. She loves writing songs for men because

(29:36):
a lot of her songs are sort of narrative stories.
type songs. And she's written a lot of big, huge
hits for people like Merle Haggard and Kenny Rogers and
Hank Williams Jr. and all kinds of dudes. Right.

Speaker 2 (29:50):
She also plays a bunch of instruments. The guitar, she says,
is her strongest. And there's a lot of other string
instruments that she can play. I saw a video recently.
One of her concerts, she's got a banjo slung around her.

Speaker 1 (30:02):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (30:03):
She's got a strap hanging from a strap while she's
playing a fiddle really fast. It's pretty amazing. But if
you really want to be amazed by Dolly, you should
watch her play the saxophone. And in particular, at the
Glastonbury Music Festival in 2014 in the UK, in front
of a crowd of 100,000, she busted out Yakety Sax.

Speaker 1 (30:24):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (30:24):
The Benny Hill theme song. And it just killed. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (30:29):
It did. That whole show is a fun watch because it's,
you know, it's in, it's at the Glastonbury Festival and
it's like, I don't know. I think her legendary status
just like grew with that appearance.

Speaker 2 (30:40):
Oh yeah. Like she was, you know, kind of a
cult favorite in the UK and then she became like a,
like a pop culture favorite after that show.

Speaker 1 (30:47):
Yeah. Nine to five, the movie that you mentioned before
in 1980 is when she got into movie making and
it is a movie, boy, not only does it hold
up today, but, It was ahead of its time and
even more relevant today than it probably was then.

Speaker 2 (31:03):
Which is sad, if you stop and think about it.

Speaker 1 (31:06):
No, no, totally sad.

Speaker 2 (31:07):
But it was based on an actual movement called 9
to 5, the 9 to 5 movement from the early
70s that I guess Jane Fonda was aware of, because
she was one of the creators behind the movie 9
to 5. And that was an actual movement led by
secretaries starting in Boston, and it spread around the country.
And they were... protesting sexual harassment, low pay, getting passed

(31:29):
over for promotions. And they had a great slogan that
I saw. Raises not roses.

Speaker 1 (31:36):
Raises not roses. Yeah. I love that.

Speaker 2 (31:38):
I love it too.

Speaker 1 (31:39):
Like, I don't need your flowers.

Speaker 2 (31:41):
Exactly.

Speaker 1 (31:41):
About some money.

Speaker 2 (31:42):
Exactly.

Speaker 1 (31:43):
I'll buy my own flowers.

Speaker 2 (31:45):
Right. I can buy my own flowers. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (31:48):
That's what the back of the t-shirt said. And then
parentheses quit pinching my butt.

Speaker 2 (31:52):
Plus also that's a Miley Cyrus song. Who is Dolly
Parton's goddaughter?

Speaker 1 (31:58):
That's right.

Speaker 2 (31:59):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (32:00):
And Dolly credits that relationship with the fact that millennials
love Dolly.

Speaker 2 (32:04):
Yeah. I wasn't aware of this. So everybody knows, even
I know, that Miley Cyrus was Hannah Montana on Nickelodeon from,
I think, 2006 to 2011, right? And she would have
Dolly on forever. Here there is Aunt Dolly, like her aunt,
Hannah Montana's aunt. And I guess like millennials just grew
up watching that. And that she just exposed herself, not literally,

(32:28):
but figuratively to an entirely new generation. And it stuck
like that's that's how they that's how they met Dolly.
And they just kept following her and loving her from
that point on.

Speaker 1 (32:38):
I love it. She was in a bunch of movies
over the years. Best Little Whorehouse in Texas with Burt Reynolds,
of course, part of the ensemble and Steel Magnolias. Very disappointingly,
Livia doesn't mention my second favorite Dolly Parton movie, which
was Rhinestone with Sylvester Stallone. One of my big HBO

(32:59):
movies early on. I watched that thing over and over again.
Stallone sings. Have you ever seen it? No, I never have.

Speaker 2 (33:06):
I turned the TV off after Life Force.

Speaker 1 (33:10):
You should check out Rhinestone because the premise is she's
to make a country star out of Sylvester Stallone. And
he has a song in there called Drinkenstein instead of Frankenstein.
And the chorus is, Budweiser, you've created a monster, and
they call him Drinkenstein.

Speaker 2 (33:30):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (33:31):
But Stallone really sings, and it's just, I think it's
known probably as a bad movie, but it has a
very special place in my heart.

Speaker 2 (33:37):
It sounds like the prequel to Tulsa King.

Speaker 1 (33:39):
Right.

Speaker 2 (33:42):
So she also, did you mention Sand Dollar yet? No.
She founded a production company with Sandy Gallen, her longtime
manager and friend. And they went on to produce movies
like Father of the Bride.

Speaker 1 (33:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (33:56):
Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the movie.

Speaker 1 (33:59):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (34:00):
She also did Straight Talk, which she was in, where
she plays a woman who accidentally becomes a radio host and,
of course, just shoots into the stratosphere and popularity.

Speaker 1 (34:10):
I never saw that.

Speaker 2 (34:12):
Oh, yeah, it was okay.

Speaker 1 (34:15):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (34:17):
Not her best work, but still. She was amazing in
Steel Magnolias. I mean, like, if you go back and, yeah,
if you go back and watch some of those scenes
between her and her husband in particular, she's a really
good actress. No, she's good.

Speaker 1 (34:32):
In fact, but the Shelby I just did was more
Sally Field. Now that I think about it.

Speaker 2 (34:37):
I detected a hint of Sally Field in there. All right.

Speaker 1 (34:40):
I think let's take another break and then we'll this
is going to go a little long, but that's OK,
because we're about to dive into Dollywood right after this. Shelby.

Speaker 2 (34:48):
Shelby.

Speaker 1 (35:13):
All right, my friend, here we are. I'll set it
up with how it starts and then you can just
take over because you've actually been there. But in an
interview in 1982 with Barbara Walters, Dolly Parton said something
about being interested in opening up a theme park back home.

Speaker 2 (35:31):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (35:32):
And there was a theme park, Silver Dollar City in
Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. And the owners, Jack and Pete Herschend,
heard this interview and gave her a call and was like,
let's get together on this. And they did to great success. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (35:46):
Four years later, Dollywood opened. It reopened as Dollywood, I
should say. Just that first year, they doubled their entries
to 1.3 million people coming. And that's not just a
full year. It snows and everything kind of shuts down
in the wintertime in Pigeon Forge or in the Smokies.
So I'm guessing they crammed a lot of those people

(36:09):
in in a very short amount of time, probably summer.
I don't know why I'm going off on this tangent,
but it just seemed important when I started.

Speaker 1 (36:15):
It's called how theme parks work. They close in the winter.

Speaker 2 (36:17):
Be quiet, you. So it was a success right out
of the gate, I should say. And little known fact,
or it's a rumor that a lot of people don't
realize is actual fact. They buried a time capsule there
on opening day. And it contains an unreleased Dolly song.

Speaker 1 (36:34):
No way.

Speaker 2 (36:35):
That is not to be opened until I think she's
99 years old.

Speaker 1 (36:39):
Wow. Mm-hmm. Which is, what is she now, 76?

Speaker 2 (36:43):
78, I think. Okay.

Speaker 1 (36:45):
So it's close.

Speaker 2 (36:47):
Yeah. We can wait.

Speaker 1 (36:48):
She sees it, yeah.

Speaker 2 (36:49):
Oh, we'll wait.

Speaker 1 (36:50):
So tell me about Dollywood. I want to know more.

Speaker 2 (36:53):
So it is a, you can definitely believe that it
used to be a silver dollar city. They preserved a
lot of stuff. There's a coal-fired... train that kind of
takes you around on some neat vistas and everything. We
went around Christmas time, which kind of undermines my argument
about things shutting down in the winter. We went for
Yumi's birthday, actually, like one year. And.

(37:16):
There was like a Christmas show where there's like singing
and dancing, but it was so corny that I was
waiting for everybody to be like, oh, you know, we're
just joking. Here's the real show. It never happened. It
was just that like kitschy and American and earnest. Yeah.
And just corny. But it was very sweet in retrospect,
especially hard to sit through, but very sweet. And then
there's just a lot of like people dipping candles. There's

(37:38):
tons of food to eat. There's a roller coaster that
neither you me nor I went on. But there's a
museum there that's closed temporarily because apparently they're reimagining it.
But it was originally called the Chasing Rainbows Museum. And
Dolly Parton is a just self-professed pack rat. She saved.

(37:59):
everything chuck everything the coat of many colors that she
sings about it's there you can see it in real
life right there and it's the tiniest cutest little thing
you've ever seen in your entire life it's so tiny
and this is a coat.

Speaker 1 (38:13):
Her mom made for her when she was a kid
right out of old rags that.

Speaker 2 (38:16):
She sang about in that coat of many colors yeah
and it's what a great song but then just to
just to love that song and then see the actual
coat and then just see how dinky it is It
was just amazing. Those lists I told you she used
to keep, she kept those. Those are on display. Wigs,
rhinestones everywhere. But it's not just like this ode or
tribute to Dolly. It's a genuine, like, curated look into

(38:40):
her whole career. And it was one of the best
museums I've ever been to in my life of any kind.

Speaker 1 (38:46):
Why didn't you guys ride the roller coaster?

Speaker 2 (38:48):
We're both scared of roller coasters.

Speaker 1 (38:50):
Oh, I don't think I... remember that.

Speaker 2 (38:52):
Yes, I've been scared of roller coasters for decades, but
I feel like I'm starting to come out of it. OK.
And I might go challenge myself and ride a few
roller coasters this summer and see if I'm correct or
if I'm really, really wrong.

Speaker 1 (39:06):
Well, you should go to Six Flags with Ruby and I,
because there's nothing like getting your courage worked up than
a seven year old who will ride anything. Staring you
in the face.

Speaker 2 (39:17):
Okay. All right. I may use that. That's just the
elixir I'm looking for.

Speaker 1 (39:21):
Yeah, yeah. She'll go on whatever. She wouldn't understand. She'd
be like, why don't you want to go on it?
What do you mean you're scared?

Speaker 2 (39:27):
I don't. You're kind of ruining things for me.

Speaker 1 (39:31):
Well, I want to go to Dollywood, so maybe we
can go to Six Flags and then Dollywood and just
do a theme park roundup.

Speaker 2 (39:37):
I strongly recommend it because there's like all sorts of
stuff in nearby Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge. Yeah, of course.

Speaker 1 (39:42):
I've been to Gatlinburg.

Speaker 2 (39:44):
Ripley's Museums and just all sorts of just cool, super
kitschy touristy stuff.

Speaker 1 (39:49):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (39:51):
Oh, what's his name?

Speaker 1 (39:52):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (39:54):
The guy who sings Proud to be an American?

Speaker 1 (39:57):
Lee Greenwood.

Speaker 2 (39:58):
There's the Lee Greenwood Cafe where they no joke play
that song on a loop over and over again the
whole time. You're like, where's the next song? They don't
play the next song.

Speaker 1 (40:09):
I heard that song every night of the summer for
like five summers when I worked at the Stone Mountain
Laser Show.

Speaker 2 (40:13):
Oh, yeah, I'll bet.

Speaker 1 (40:14):
I got my fill of it.

Speaker 2 (40:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (40:17):
So we can talk a little bit more about her politics.
She's and this is where the sociologists and anthropologists come in.
There's a sociologist named Tressie McMillan Cottom that has written
about how black women have always looked up to Dolly
Parton as a role model, even though she is like
it's a very specific sort of white southern thing that

(40:37):
she embodies. Again, just, you know, testifies to her crossover
appeal that she is to be admired by anybody. Her
Q score, if you don't know what a Q score is,
it's a marketing tool that basically there's a bunch of
things that go into your Q score, but it's basically
how How much people like you, how much they recognize
your name. And her Q score is like legendarily one

(40:59):
of the top Q scores of all time, celebrity wise.

Speaker 2 (41:02):
She has a high positive Q score. They also do
a negative Q score. And she has a very low
negative Q score. So she's among the most beloved and
among the least disliked people in the entire world.

Speaker 1 (41:14):
Yeah, I don't want to know my Q score.

Speaker 2 (41:15):
I looked it up. We don't have one yet.

Speaker 1 (41:17):
OK, good.

Speaker 2 (41:18):
But I was reading this article on the conversation and
these two Australian marketing people were trying to figure out
who would have been Australia's Dolly. And they landed on
Hugh Jackman. And I'm like, I can't disagree with that.

Speaker 1 (41:30):
He's pretty likable.

Speaker 2 (41:32):
Sure. Everybody likes Hugh Jackman.

Speaker 1 (41:34):
Yeah, I would agree with that.

Speaker 2 (41:36):
Even though he did The Greatest Showman.

Speaker 1 (41:38):
Right.

Speaker 2 (41:39):
People still like Hugh Jackman.

Speaker 1 (41:42):
The anthropologist comes in, a man named Jonathan Zilberg in 1995.
talked about how she was loved in Zimbabwe of all places.
And again, it's just like, you know, pick a country
and chances are people there love Dolly Parton.

Speaker 2 (41:59):
And in Dolly Parton's America, then they talk about how
Nelson Mandela, while he was in prison in South Africa,
got his jailers to play Jolene for the whole jail.
Basically all Shawshank Redemption. Pretty cool.

Speaker 1 (42:15):
Pretty cool. And like you said earlier, she basically just
avoids politics. She doesn't let any politician on either side
use her music. If a Democrat uses it, she shuts
them down. If a Republican uses it, she shuts them down.
She just sort of sidesteps all that stuff. She's always been,
you know, growing up, of course, in the 70s, there

(42:36):
were a lot of playground jokes about Dolly Parton's breast size.
She was very well known for it. And she's always
been the first one to jump in and joke about
it herself instead of being like the butt of the joke.
She can just go along with it. And that's just
that's another really likable quality is someone who can and
can laugh at themselves and not take things too seriously.

Speaker 2 (42:58):
I also saw it put that she she knows that
these jokes are going to be made anyway, so she
can diffuse them by getting out in front of them
and topping, you know, the lame jokes that like old
talk show hosts would make.

Speaker 1 (43:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (43:12):
I saw once she said that she burned her bra
and it took the fire department three days to put
it out. Like that kind of stuff. That's hilarious. That
was her joke? Yeah.

Speaker 1 (43:22):
Oh, that's good. That's very funny.

Speaker 2 (43:23):
So I think we mentioned this before. Do you know
that Dolly the sheep, the first cloned animal on the planet,
was named Dolly because she was grown from a mammary
gland cell?

Speaker 1 (43:35):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (43:35):
I can't remember where we talked about that. But it
really just goes to show, like, that's how ubiquitous Dolly
Parton's boobs were in the 20th century.

Speaker 1 (43:44):
I know.

Speaker 2 (43:45):
Like, they were as big as she was, basically.

Speaker 1 (43:47):
Yeah. No pun intended.

Speaker 2 (43:50):
They were definitely part of her brand, for sure.

Speaker 1 (43:52):
Yeah. You know, she was smart enough to lean into it.
Another thing that she had done over the years is
there are a lot of really dark songs that she's
written about, even though she's never kind of outright considered
herself a feminist. She very much is. And a lot
of the songs she's written over the years have been
very dark songs about women who are either abandoned or

(44:16):
suffering from sexual double standards. Or there's one brutal song
from 1970 called Daddy Come and Get Me about a
true story of a relative in her family that was
basically institutionalized by her husband. So she's never been afraid
to go down sort of in the tradition of the
old sort of dark country murder ballad thing, go down
these darker roads with some of the songs she's written.

Speaker 2 (44:37):
Yeah, I saw that she considers herself not a feminist,
but in favor of all women. She's for all women.
So it's like she doesn't subscribe to the movement part,
but what the movement's ultimately about, she's totally in favor with.
And that's super her. She made a very rare, overt

(44:58):
statement when she came out in support of Black Lives Matter.
And I really like. At a time where it was
like you're casting your lot one way or another. And
she stood up for it, which is pretty cool.

Speaker 1 (45:11):
She did. She also, in 2018, there was at Dollywood,
the Dixie Stampede. She changed the name to Dolly Parton
Stampede after people complained about the whole Dixie connotation and
Civil War theme. She changed that up and she was
just like, you know, I never really thought about, you know,
the Confederate imagery, meaning what it meant to, And so

(45:34):
she was happily changed it. And that's just the kind
of person she is, I think.

Speaker 2 (45:39):
And she got guff for that. And she got guff
for supporting Black Lives Matter from some of her her
right leaning fans. But she she can always explain herself,
you know, and she does so in such a great
way that you're just kind of like, well, fine. It's
hard to be you can't keep a grudge against her
even if she goes against you politically. But she just
so rarely does it. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (46:00):
Agreed. Uh, she is, uh, we're going to wind it
down with her business and philanthropy. Um, very savvy business
person from the very beginning. Uh, she was smart enough
to hang on to her, um, the rights to her
own music and never give them up. Even when Elvis
Presley came calling and wanted to cover, I will always
love you. He wanted half the publishing rights. And she

(46:21):
was like, no way. He'd take a walk. Elvis Presley.

Speaker 2 (46:24):
He didn't. Apparently Colonel Tom called her up on the
morning of the scheduled recording session. And sprung that on her,
and she turned him down. And she said she was
hoping that Elvis was as disappointed as she was. But
that took a lot of gumption, especially to have it
sprung on you like that. And she said, nope, not
doing it. But that's one of the things that made
her so incredibly wealthy. Like, apparently her music catalog has

(46:47):
a net worth of about $ 150 million and brings in
about $ 6 to $ 8 million a year for her, according to,
I think, Forbes. And then her stake in Dollywood is her...
her most valuable asset. I think it's like $ 165 million.
Pretty neat.

Speaker 1 (47:05):
She has done quite well for herself.

Speaker 2 (47:06):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (47:09):
Uh, she, I mean, these days she's, she's not stopping either. She's, um,
she's on Duncan Hines, buttermilk biscuit mix with her little
cartoon face. They have fragrances branded by Dolly. Uh, they
have pet clothes that she's branded with. Um, Like, just
all kinds of things. She's not afraid to license her image.

Speaker 2 (47:29):
No.

Speaker 1 (47:30):
For sure.

Speaker 2 (47:31):
We've got the Duncan Hines frosting in our pantry.

Speaker 1 (47:34):
Do you?

Speaker 2 (47:35):
The chocolate cream frosting. And then one other thing I saw, Chuck,
she wrote a book, co-wrote a book with James Patterson,
one of the best, most favorite novelists in the entire world.
It's called Run, Rose, Run. And it's a thriller based
kind of loosely on Dolly's story of making it in
the music biz.

Speaker 1 (47:51):
Oh, wow.

Speaker 2 (47:52):
Yeah. I think it just came out. Okay.

Speaker 1 (47:54):
I might have to check that out. Yeah. Uh, she
is very charitable as well. She started the Dollywood foundation
in 1988, uh, just to get literacy going in her
home County. And it grew and grew and grew to
the point where it is now in the U S Canada, Australia,
the UK and Ireland. And to date, uh, the program

(48:15):
has given out more than 204 million books across these countries. And, um,
you know, she'll build a hospital in her County, um,
Anytime there's like wildfires nearby, she's chipping in. She very
famously donated a million dollars to Vanderbilt University Medical Center

(48:35):
for COVID-19 vaccine research. And, you know, people don't credit
her with the Moderna vaccine, but they're like that million
dollars was instrumental in getting that vaccine to trial.

Speaker 2 (48:47):
Well, yeah, she also was like, everybody go get jabbed.
She yeah, there was a video at one around of
her getting her own vaccine, the first one, I think.
And she was singing Vaccine to the tune of Jolene.

Speaker 1 (49:00):
Pretty nice tie-in.

Speaker 2 (49:03):
Yeah, exactly. It was great. So one other thing, though,
about her foundation, one reason she got into literacy programs
was because her father never learned to read. And apparently
he told her just before he died that he was
most proud of her for that work that she'd done.
with promoting literacy around the world. It's pretty cool. It

(49:23):
makes it even neater.

Speaker 1 (49:25):
And in addition to the vaccine Jolene song, she also
did a version of I Will Always Jab You.

Speaker 2 (49:31):
That was less popular.

Speaker 1 (49:33):
Less popular.

Speaker 2 (49:34):
Sounds a little aggressive.

Speaker 1 (49:35):
She's been nominated for 53 Grammys. 53. Uh, she's won 10,
which I think that number should be higher. Uh, but
you know, they have given her like lifetime achievement awards and, uh,
Jolene and I will always love you were inducted into
the Grammy hall of fame. So they have like heaped
awards on her, even when she has not won the

(49:57):
actual Grammy. Uh, and she's also won an Emmy, right?

Speaker 2 (50:00):
Yeah. She was also up for two Oscars for best
song for, um, Oh, Traveling Through for Transamerica in, I think, 2006.
And then 9 to 5, the song.

Speaker 1 (50:13):
Did 9 to 5 not win?

Speaker 2 (50:15):
No, it was beaten by Fame.

Speaker 1 (50:16):
Oh, boy, that's a tough year.

Speaker 2 (50:19):
Traveling Through was beaten by Hard Out There for a
Pimp from Hustle and Flow.

Speaker 1 (50:25):
That's a good song, too.

Speaker 2 (50:25):
How are you going to top that?

Speaker 1 (50:27):
It's really hard. I was getting ready to trash whatever
beat out 9 to 5, but Fame is a great song.
That's a tough year.

Speaker 2 (50:34):
That was a very tough year. But she also has
two Guinness World Records to her name, one of which
is most decades with a top 20 hit, which really
just goes to show how long she's been around and
how long she's been huge.

Speaker 1 (50:47):
You know what else she has two of?

Speaker 2 (50:49):
What?

Speaker 1 (50:50):
Stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Speaker 2 (50:52):
Two.

Speaker 1 (50:53):
I know.

Speaker 2 (50:53):
Is there anybody else who has that?

Speaker 1 (50:55):
I think so. People in different media, although probably not
a lot of people. I bet it's a pretty short list.
One in 1984. And then one in 2018 when, I guess,
the final trio of trio albums came out.

Speaker 2 (51:11):
So if you think Dolly's slowing down, friend, you are
dead wrong. Yep. She's got a new album coming out.
So she was inducted in the Rock and Roll Hall
of Fame despite her protests. She's like, I'm not a rocker. Apparently,
she's like, all right, well, I better go be a
rocker and earn that honor. So her next studio album,
her 49th, is coming out, I think, this fall. And

(51:33):
it's called Rockstar. And she's going to be singing with
some other rock stars, too.

Speaker 1 (51:37):
Yeah. Stevie Nicks, Paul McCartney, Cher. I love it.

Speaker 2 (51:41):
Yep. Vince Neal?

Speaker 1 (51:44):
No, not Vince Neal.

Speaker 2 (51:45):
That's correct, not Vince Neal. Oh, okay.

Speaker 1 (51:49):
That'd be pretty amazing, actually.

Speaker 2 (51:52):
You got anything else about Dolly Parton? Oh, I've got
one other thing.

Speaker 1 (51:55):
Let's hear it.

Speaker 2 (51:55):
Before you answer. She wakes up at 3 a.m. every day. Oh.

Speaker 1 (52:01):
Daughter of a sharecropper.

Speaker 2 (52:02):
Yeah, I guess so.

Speaker 1 (52:04):
That's amazing.

Speaker 2 (52:04):
Okay, you got anything else?

Speaker 1 (52:07):
I got nothing else.

Speaker 2 (52:08):
Okay, I don't either. I don't think. But I'm going
to think of 10 things after we're done recording.

Speaker 1 (52:13):
I know. I've been listening to Dolly Parton all day,
so it's going to continue on.

Speaker 2 (52:18):
Yeah, it's not hard to do. If you want to
know more about Dolly Parton, friend, go listen to Dolly Parton.
Go watch videos of Dolly Parton. Go read interviews with
Dolly Parton. She was once described as a black belt interviewee.
So you'll never be disappointed with a Dolly Parton interview.
And since I said you'll never be disappointed by a
Dolly Parton interview, that has opened up listener mail.

Speaker 1 (52:41):
I'm going to call this great email. Follow up from arcades. Hey, guys,
want to tell you a story of my very traditional grandmother.
She was very traditional in the Midwestern sense, and she
was a homemaker.

Speaker 2 (52:52):
Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 (52:53):
Books for my grandfather's iron working concern. She didn't tolerate
cussing or fussing and was a conservative dresser.

Speaker 2 (53:00):
She liked the calico.

Speaker 1 (53:03):
She didn't have any obvious vices, save one. Pac-Man.

Speaker 2 (53:07):
Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 (53:08):
To hear her tell it, there was a time where
she would wake up before her husband and five children,
power up the Atari, and start a Pac-Man game. After
30 minutes or so, she would get breakfast on the table,
get her family out the door, and do the books,
clean the house, and then finally get back to her
paused Pac-Man game, which she would play until it was
time to start dinner when her family came back home.

Speaker 2 (53:26):
That's awesome. She had Pac-Man fever.

Speaker 1 (53:28):
That's good. Wouldn't be much of a story, guys, except
here's the thing. She was really, really good at Pac-Man.

Speaker 2 (53:34):
Oh, yeah?

Speaker 1 (53:35):
She once told me she had the first 40-something levels
memorized and could use them to rack up points and
then thus extra lives. She got to a point where
she could play the same game all day long. Eventually,
she would describe getting to a high enough level where
the game would freeze.

Speaker 2 (53:50):
Oh.

Speaker 1 (53:50):
And what she was describing was level 256, the kill screen.
But since she was home alone every time she reached
it and the internet wasn't a household thing, no one
ever knew what she was talking about.

Speaker 2 (54:01):
She just ran out the door and was like, somebody, anybody,
come look.

Speaker 1 (54:05):
It was until many years later that I saw King
of Kong and saw the footage of the kill screen
my grandmother had described. Couldn't believe my eyes or the
fact that my conservative grandmother was such an early skilled gamer.

Speaker 2 (54:16):
That's neat.

Speaker 1 (54:17):
She's since passed away, but every time the subject of
Pac-Man comes up, brings a smile to my face and
I remember her and her high scores. That is from
Aaron Miller of Kansas City, the Kansas side.

Speaker 2 (54:29):
Oh, that's rare. You don't usually hear from those people.

Speaker 1 (54:33):
Kansas side.

Speaker 2 (54:33):
Mm-hmm. Well, thanks a lot, Aaron. That's a fantastic story.
I'm glad you could smuggle that message out of the
Kansas side of Kansas City to us. And if you
want to be like Aaron and get in touch however
way you can, try putting it in an email. Sending
it off to stuffpodcasts at iheartradio.com.

Speaker 1 (54:54):
Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
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or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.