“She [Dolly Parton] can see into people. She’s deep. It’s like through her songs, she opens her arms wide and embraces such a broad swath of people that don’t always feel seen. – Jane Fonda
Jane Fonda and Dolly Parton worked together, alongside Lily Tomlin in the 1980 comedy, 9 to 5. A tart and satirical work about secretaries, the film’s championing of the underdog dovetailed nicely with Parton’s ethos as a performer. Her art came from empathising with those who felt marginalised: women, poor people, gay people, orphaned children, single moms. In songs like “Travelin’ Thru”, “To Daddy”, and “9 to 5”, Parton used her special gifts to tell heartbreaking tales of endurance. The heroes in her songs didn’t always win, but they always maintained their dignity.
Parton’s death was met with the expected swell of grief, with commenters, colleagues, and friends rushing to canonise the late star. It makes sense: aside from her pioneering work as an artist, she has dedicated her adult life to philanthropy and good deeds, advocating for literacy, investment in blighted communities in her native Tennessee, being an ally for the LGBTQIA community, and most recently, donating millions for the research into a COVID vaccine. Her place in pop history as a secular saint seems secure, but even more important than her good works was her art.
She was an artist in the truest, broadest, and canniest sense. She wasn’t just a brilliant singer or wonderful songwriter. She was a witty pop artist, drawing on bits of Americana, kitsch, camp, and her own culture to create something wholly new. Susan Sontag wrote that for camp to work, it needed to be sincere and guileless; well, she never met Dolly Parton when she wrote that quote because though Parton was extremely sincere and open, she was also knowing and calculating.
She was in on the joke before everyone else, and in fact, she crafted most of the jokes herself. Madonna and David Bowie were revered for their ability to anticipate trends, but Parton was just as wily an image maker. An integral part of Dolly’s artistic legacy is that all of it is important. The music. The hair. The jokes. The camp. All of it made her greatest creation: Dolly Parton.
In her song, “Backwoods Barbie”, she warns her naysayers not to “judge me by the cover ’cause I’m a real good book”, and to not be fooled by “thinkin’ that the goods are not all there / Don’t let these false eyelashes lead you to believe that / I’m as shallow as I look ’cause I run true and deep.” Her critics—including Barbara Walters in a particularly condescending interview in the 1970s in which she called Parton a “hillbilly”—were quick to dismiss her as a joke or a flash, relying on aesthetics to promote herself and her music.
The genius is that Parton was the first to agree. She used theatrics to sell her work because she understood her work wasn’t just music, but the whole package. She was putting on a show. In her self-assessment of her approach to her career, Dolly Parton said, “I just decided that I would do something that would at least get the attention. Once they got past the shock of the ridiculous way I look, then they would see there were parts to be appreciated… Show business is a money-making joke, and I always like telling jokes.”
The jokes she told catapulted her to great superstardom. Despite being a successful performer on the country charts in the 1970s, she had her sights set on bigger horizons: Hollywood. Parton has crafted one of the greatest self-mythologies in show business, spinning tales of Dickensian poverty in rural Tennessee which she overcame only to become one of the biggest stars out there. She looked to various cultural tropes to craft her image, including the women in her small town whom “proper” folks called trash. Dolly also borrowed heavily from Mae West and drag.
Her appearances on Porter Wagoner’s variety show proved she wasn’t just an accomplished musician, but a natural comedienne, and she parlayed that sharp sense of humour into an expanded career of TV variety shows, specials, talk show appearances, and, of course, Hollywood.
Hollywood embraced Parton, and she made film acting a part of her expanding brand. She was always the first to point out that she wasn’t a great actress, but great acting was beside the point. In her films, from 9 to 5, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (1982), and Steel Magnolias (1989), she essentially played various iterations of her persona: big-hearted, witty, and kind. Like the great stars of the Golden Age of Hollywood, Parton wasn’t merely an actress, but a presence, imbuing her roles and her films with her particular brand of glittery movie magic.
However, that superstardom also came at a cost, and some grumbled that Parton was selling out. In a New York Times interview, she insisted her crossover ambitions weren’t about abandoning her roots. “I don’t want to leave the country,” she said, “but to take the country with me wherever I go”. Yet, by the mid-1990s, that rhinestone-encrusted persona threatened to overwhelm her music.
In response, Parton didn’t apologise or reinvent herself. She simply went back to her roots and released 1998’s Hungry Again, which sparked her late-career renaissance. The songs took a rootsier approach to her specific brand of country music. By 1998, she was a veteran artist and a global superstar but also saw that country radio was becoming increasingly hostile to artists of her generation. She understood that some of it was because her generation “got so scattered doing crossover stuff”. So, she pivoted, going back to basics, and writing songs “like I did when I started.”
Hungry Again led to what is arguably Parton’s greatest work on vinyl, her trio of bluegrass albums, The Grass Is Blue (1999), Little Sparrow (2001), and Halos & Horns (2002). The music of her mountain past revitalised the veteran singer-songwriter, and she was recording some of the most urgent, exciting music of her career.
No longer looking for a big crossover hit, Parton had the freedom to explore her artistic muse. In an interview on NPR, she astutely commented on that freedom, “You can’t make much money [making bluegrass music], so I had to get out in the world and kinda make a living so I could afford. I had to get rich so I could afford to sing like I’m poor again.”
In her late career, she was writing some of the best songs of her prolific oeuvre. She revealed a startling creativity in poetry. In a song like “Little Sparrow”, she evoked tales of chivalry and painted images of the mountains of her youth, whilst singing about the piercing pain of heartbreak: All ye maidens, heed my warning / Never trust the hearts of men / They will crush you like a sparrow / Leaving you to never mend.”
This was a Dolly Parton far darker and more stinging than the smiling, ebullient angel-diva. She mined her life, excavated the pain, and set it to beautiful music. Darkness and pain have always surrounded Parton’s work, like the scalloped edge of lace.
An early song like “Down from Dover” (resurrected for her bluegrass music) tells the tragic tale of a pregnant teen, abandoned, only to have the baby be stillborn; and on a regretful song like “Hello God”, Parton questions her relationship with faith in the aftermath of 9/11.
These songs speak to a creative mind concerned and troubled by calamities befalling vulnerable people. In “Travelin’ Thru”, she writes in the voice of a transgender woman trying to figure out “where all my pieces fit”. Deep empathy has always defined her music.
Many artists in Dolly Parton’s wake have adopted her approach to pop iconography. Artists like Katy Perry and Lady Gaga both understand the value in showmanship. Country artists, especially female country artists, have continued to build on Parton’s thesis that steely strength and aching vulnerability aren’t mutually exclusive. Parton’s musical fingerprints are all over pop music, as artists including P!nk, Kasey Musgraves, Cyndi Lauper, and Reba McEntire all profess to pray at the altar of Dolly Parton.
Andy Warhol said, “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.” Dolly Parton adopted many of the famed pop artist’s techniques when building her own cartoon-colored empire, but she challenged the idiom by always being in command of her fame. She built it herself, as its main architect.