No Dolly Parton thread? Well then -- classic or hyperclassic?

dolly parton though
is one of our very best
songwriters ever

talk about someone
who's still trying new stuff now
forty years later!

Hey now, that tribute album Kozelek coordinated gives me a new respect for the man.

I am listening to "The Bargain Store" right now and damn that's a good song.

..And she was great on Saturday Night Live - when she told folktales her mamma used to tell her and her siblings, about Hoss and Little Joe ..

There's a good ep in last year's album.

Knew about her back? I wanna know about her front! HI-YO!

Oh, does anybody know the best comp to get??????

Well, this one I just got is called Ultimate Dolly Parton, release date this year, hour long. But those who know her work better might suggest something else.

Remind me to have you killed.

Sally Timms does a nice version of "Down From Dover." When I saw her a few years ago, she prefaced it by recounting a fantasy of running off to be lovers with Dolly and resting her head on Dolly's breasts.

One of my friends has interviewed her several times for assorted publications. One time, while they were walking and chatting, she turned a corner ahead of him and rammed his elbow with her breasts. "Oops," she said, "I didn't leak on you, did I?"

And the log-cabin reproduction at Dollywood of her childhood home is affecting despite the cheesiness, because you stick your head in there and try to imagine a couple of grown-ups and 10 kids all running around and it really is kind of amazing and it does tell you something about her resilience and also her affection for the place.

"Coat of Many Colors" made me all misty-eyed when I was a kid. (er, still does, actually.)

Amazing film, stellar soundtrack!

hmmm. interesting. what would she leak I wonder?

And the album's such a piece that I always forget about the involvement of Kunkel, Sklar, etc.

I know this is common of many Nashville artists, especially a tier down, but as I clicked through the procession of 49 Dolly solo albums on Wikipedia, it's really remarkable how tossed off every bit of cover art is. Like 2005's Those Were the Days still looks like an artifact you could have picked up in 1975 at the A&P.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/81/Dollythosewerethedays.jpg

For all the late career esteem she accumulated, she never got the moody Americana makeover that Cash, Nelson, Lynn and others got. Probably because she didn't cede her approach to outside influences, right?

Nope. Backwoods Barbie and Blue Smoke are pretty good though.

from that Mark O'Connor FB post - now that would've been a studio session to have seen:

I played really well on the first run through. We waited to hear the feedback from the control room. George Massenburg pressed the talkback and said everybody was sounding great, and that "we like the fiddle solo." He clicked off, and then back on to add that "George here is thumbs up on the fiddle. Let's double the fiddle solo." (the other George was, George Lucas who was dating Linda at the time, and obviously a bigger fan of the fiddle than Linda seemed to be! OMG. George Lucas is crushing on the fiddle solo!

The Grass Is Blue (released on Sugar Hill, no less) was definitely her nod to the rising roots-Americana scene. Good album, too.

does George Lucas know what music is

TIL that George Lucas directed the Trio video for "To Know Him Is To Love Him"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRBZN8V2Fa4

He's re-releasing it with updated CGI.

I don’t think “moody” suits Dolly? I guess here and there, but not in the way of Cash’s late albums. Which I’m thankful for. Some of the Cash moodiness felt forced. I think I’m the only person that finds his “Hurt” heavy-handed and blergh.

> rising roots-Americana scene

Twenty-five years ago, it was really confusing to me when a roots dejay would come on and say, "...their latest release on Sugar Hill"

"Hurt" = blergh for me too.

rockabilly Cash > old sad man Cash

NIN Hurt > Cash Hurt

Well, the album artwork for Little Sparrow is kinda moody...

fwiw this is what I wrote on Tuesday, from an East Tennessee perspective

https://compassknox.com/2026/08/26/goodbye-please-dont-cry/

IWALY gets all the Whorehouse love, but “Hard Candy
Christmas” is pretty dang good.

b-but she didn't say she voted for the Democrats or whatever

― xyzzzz__, Thursday, August 27, 2026 8:04 AM (eleven hours ago)

When she was on Graham Norton (twentysomething years ago?) she said Bill Clinton was her ideal man, would she have said this in america or would it not have particularly bothered so many people back then?

Nice article, tipsy. Thanks for sharing.

Indeed so. Sharing it out.

everyone seems to have a Dolly story or encounter of some kind

https://www.instagram.com/p/Dcgn7cWkdio/?img_index=1

Thx y'all!

Nathan Rabin on the Dolly Parton/Michael O’Donoghue connection:

https://www.nathanrabin.com/happy-place/2026/8/27/revisiting-single-women-an-unlikely-but-powerful-collaboration-between-michael-odonoghue-saturday-night-lives-prince-of-darkness-and-dolly-parton-countrys-queen-of-lightness-and-joy

Driving through Connecticut and there are already massive billboards paying tribute to her

The "RIP Charlie Kirk" billboard in my town is now an "RIP Dolly Parton" billboard, huge improvement.

everyone seems to have a Dolly story or encounter of some kind

which ppl have Dolly stories and encounters in this link?

Went to a Dolly memorial / drag night. They showed a bunch of her music videos before the show. Now before walking in I maybe could have named three of her songs, four if pressed. So hearing banger after banger I was unacquainted with under the hot lights was pretty overwhelming. "More Where That Came From" is ludicrously good.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgAnValgSh4

some vintage dolly ephemera: a dollywood postcard, probably from the early 90s
https://i.postimg.cc/Gh7q1Jf3/20260829-035844.jpg
https://i.postimg.cc/sgMKfGFB/20260829-035856.jpg

i was too scared to ride, but was happy to be there.

Carl Wilson’s tribute (with a bonus playlist):

https://archive.ph/Nf1ly

which ppl have Dolly stories and encounters in this link?

Sorry I guess the link was broken

Matt Baume's tribute to Dolly's queer allyship made me cry

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpURPplcFhs

Carl Wilson piece is great

Yeah Wilson’s might be my favorite tribute so far.

And I like the honesty. admittedly I was already weary of the heightened “Saint Dolly” rhetoric of the last 5 years. Even long before her death it was incredibly weird to have all of my friends tell me about Dolly and barely a one had ever listened to anything aside from Whitney’s COVER of her. Like, it’s nice and all and I admire & love chairs & good works as much as anyone but the weirdness of my friends all seemingly *willfully* ignoring 50+ years of her music, even her hits, her actual ~essence~ because you “don’t like country music” was fucking baffling.

*chairs? CHARITY

Goddamn autocorrect

New borad title: I Love Chairs

I can't throw too many stones because I haven't listened to all the deep cuts myself but it certainly does seem like some of the St. Dolly rhetoric has been both excessive and shallow. Carl Wilson article was a much more enjoyable deeper dive.

Letterboxd just informed me that Straight Talk (1992) is now available to stream on Prime

xxp I Will Always Seat You

jolene jolene jolene jolene
i'm begging of you please take my seat

My wife wears the Dolly scent nearly every day, but apparently not the day she died...

Saw Kacey Musgraves in Boston last night. She dedicated "Rainbow" to Dolly then covered "Here You Come Again."

We drove out to Jones Beach to see Willie Nelson last night - surprisingly, no tribute to Dolly from Willie, but on the way there,

I WILL ALWAYS LOVE YOU

and

JOLENE
JOLENE
JOLENE

flashed on the variable-message signs on the freeway.

Letterboxd just informed me that Straight Talk (1992) is now available to stream on Prime

Griffin Dunne posted a tribute that naturally mentioned this movie. Apparently he auditioned to be Dolly's love interest and she wanted him for the part, but the studio refused. She still had clout though so the compromise was to cast him, but in a different part (the manager).

xpost I saw a few of those flashing Jolene road signs when we were driving through upstate New York!

My favorite Horny Dolly song is “God Won’t Get You” aka I love God but I’m so horny HALP

“Torn between two lovers” on the jukebox/
I'm thinking how I could have wrote that song/
Wondering if God loves us when we're cheating/
Oh, but why he lets us feel things if it's wrong/
And I guess I should be singing "Rock of Ages"
"Amazing Grace" and some of those good songs/
But my cheating heart will tell on me tomorrow/
If you think that God won't get you, well you're wrong”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwOJMij0nf8

I think in a way it is easier to write about Dolly's good works and all the lives she changed through philanthropy or advocacy - all these objective proofs of how good she was - than to try to convey what her music meant to you or even what she meant to you as a person.

When I think of the power of Dolly Parton's singing, I think of a song that she didn't write: her cover of Woody Guthrie's "Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)".

This is a song written by a white American man, sung by a white American woman, from the point of view of a Mexican migrant worker and the descendent of migrant workers. You can tell that Dolly Parton does not speak Spanish; she says "mes amigos" rather than "mis amigos," "Las Gatos" rather than "Los Gatos," "Jezus" rather than "Jesus." And yet it doesn't matter, because there is so much empathy and clarity of understanding in her voice that when she sings, "My father's own father, he waded that river" and "my brothers and sisters come working the fruit trees," you understand that this is true, it is true for her as she is singing and for us as we are listening, and that this is a song of real and heartfelt and angry grief that has found its purest possible form here.

Once, when I was fifteen, I wanted to play "Deportee" for a class presentation but I could only find a copy where it was sung by Judy Collins, and I realized as it was playing that the essence of the song had gone missing somehow. It didn't feel real anymore. It was earnest and well-meant, but it was no longer a song that would change hearts.

To me, that was the essence of Dolly Parton - that ability to make everything she touched real. She sang in a beautiful, golden voice, with a depth of expression and nuance unmatched by anyone but Bob Dylan, without any apparent effort or strain. I don't know where Dylan gets his knack for emotional shading, but I always had the sense that for Dolly, it came from the simplest and most obvious place: caring about people, wanting to understand them because she wanted to help. She wasn't sentimental, she didn't tug our heartstrings. She didn't have to. She just meant what she said, and we knew that she meant it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEPUxpR64YE

It’s funny you mention Bob - for me the comparison point was always Elvis. She just seemed to instinctively know when to quietly, almost shyly deliver a line or a verse to draw you in, confessionally sometimes, and when to take it up to the heavens & soar - and so many modular modes between, like a hundred micro adjustments- she could switch between them all in this way that just felt effortless, but also, very similar to Elvis for me because more often than not it really seemed less like being such a music ball-knower (which they both were) and more like they were receiving the transmission directly via whatever woo-woo spiritual channel you believe in.

But that’s also maybe a bit cornier sounding so idk

I think the other dimension to her recording of "Deportees" is her Appalachian roots. Different cultures and contexts, but I don't think it was hard for her to connect to a story of exploitation and being treated as less than human. I don't know Judy Collins' version, but as much as I love Judy I can imagine she'd be singing it from more of a distance.

Which is to say, I think the intuitive empathy she brought to her singing a.) is a huge part of what has drawn people to her for going on 60 years, b.) is the same empathy she brought to her philanthropy, and c.) all of it connects to where and when she came from, the people and place that formed her.

I love that she used the occasion of 9 to 5 to put out an album of (often) leftist songs about work, and went to #1 on the Country charts with it.

She just meant what she said, and we knew that she meant it.

So OTM.

But that’s also maybe a bit cornier sounding so idk

Like Elvis, Dolly didn't mind corn and sometimes was all the better for it.