Dolly Parton: How the Country Icon Nearly Became the Subject of Her Own Murder Ballad

They tried to take her songs. They tried to take her fame. They even threatened to take her life – not once, but multiple times. Listen to find out how Dolly Parton avoided becoming just another tragic heroine in a murder ballad – and instead became one of the most commercial and critically acclaimed artists in music history. This episode contains themes that may be disturbing to some listeners, including suicide. If you’re thinking about suicide, or are worried about a friend or loved one, call the Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255. This episode was originally published on July 21, 2026. To listen to Disgraceland ad free and get access to a monthly exclusive episode, weekly bonus content and more, become a Disgraceland All Access member at disgracelandpod.com/membership https://disgracelandpod.com/membership. Visit www.disgracelandpod.com/merch https://cms.megaphone.fm/organizations/c83125d2-8508-11ed-bd28-ff0aff7ee233/podcasts/efca2ef8-85f9-11ed-8fe3-bb208936046f/episodes/d117e93e-5e36-11ef-8745-5373bae4c0ff/www.disgracelandpod.com/merch to see the latest Disgraceland merch! Sign up for our newsletter and get the inside dirt on events, merch and other awesomeness - GET THE NEWSLETTER https://mailchi.mp/doubleelvis/disgraceland-email-newsletter Follow Jake and DISGRACELAND: Instagram https://www.instagram.com/disgracelandpod/ YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@disgracelandpod X https://twitter.com/disgracelandpod (formerly Twitter) Facebook Fan Group https://www.facebook.com/groups/491024204626127/ See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  This is exactly right.

• 0:13Speaker 01

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• 0:44Speaker 02

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• 1:14Jake Brennan?

  I like a story with a twist as much as anyone, but some of the best traditions don't have one. They just started and kept going. That's something that's great about Chateau St. Michelle. They've been leading Washington wine since 1967 with wines that are balanced, expressive, and easy to enjoy. Choosing the right bottle shouldn't feel complicated. It should be something you open with confidence every time. So for once, here's a story with no twist, just a good bottle. Redefine your rituals with Chateau St. Michelle. All right, guys, here we are. We've got another rewind for you this week. We are rewinding our Dolly Parton episode. Dolly Parton just passed away. And back on July 21st, 2026, we just released an episode on Dolly Parton.

• 1:59Jake Brennan?

  It tackles her fame, it tackles the death threats against her life, tackles the way in which she navigated her career through a male-dominated music industry. It looks at how murder ballads informed not only her songwriting, but her life. And there's so much to say about Dolly Parton, not only as an artist, as one of the greatest American songwriters of all time, but also as a human being. It's too much to get into right here in the pre. You can hear our thoughts on her and sort of her career, more on her career in this episode, obviously. But if you want more on just her as a person and how she has impacted me in the way that I live my life, you can listen to the last

• 2:43Jake Brennan?

  after-party bonus episode where we pay tribute to Dolly as well. Anyways, here's the Dolly Parton episode. Rest in peace, Dolly. You will never, ever be forgotten and you will never be replaced.

• 2:54Speaker 04

  This episode contains content that may be disturbing to some listeners. Please check the show notes for more information.

• 3:01Jake Brennan?

  Disgrace Land is a production of Double Elvis.

• 3:17Jake Brennan?

  This is the story of a murder ballad, a song about a girl from Knoxville. A girl led down to the river by a man who claimed to love her. A man who could not possess her, so he bludgeoned her. It's also the story of Dolly Parton, a songwriter raised on songs like the one about the Knoxville girl. Murder ballads, songs of jealousy, heartbreak. These are the songs that Dolly Parton was raised on. A country star whose music was darker, stranger, and more dangerous than her pop culture image would lead us to believe. Dolly

• 3:57Jake Brennan?

  Parton was coveted by powerful men, and she was threatened by violent men. But Dolly Parton refused to become the possession of any man.

• 4:10Jake Brennan?

  And she did so, all while making truly great music. Some of the greatest country music to ever cross over onto the pop charts. It was unlike that clip that I played for you at the top of the show. That wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from my Mellotron called "Dollywoodland MK2." I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to "Down Under" by Men at Work. And why would I play you that specific slice of Vegemite sandwich cheese? Could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America on January 15, 1983.

• 4:52Jake Brennan?

  And that was the day that Dolly Parton received the second in a string of death threats that forced her to cancel shows and hire a private detective. It nearly derailed what was to become an unprecedented career. On this episode, death threats, murder ballots, powerful and violent men, the Knoxville girl, and Dolly Parton.

• 5:18Jake Brennan?

  I'm Jake Brennan, and this is DisgraceLand.

• 5:40Jake Brennan?

  What did I know about Dolly Parton as a little hardcore kid growing up in the 1980s and the 1990s? Well, here are a few things. One, I knew she sang that duet with Kenny Rogers, "Islands in the Stream." You could not escape that song. It was everywhere, and it was also very cheesy. Two, I knew that Dolly Parton was in that movie Nine to Five. Secretaries retaliating against their sexist boss, all that stuff. And from what I could tell, that movie was set in an office with adults making copies and answering telephones, and to me, at that age, was pretty boring and also pretty cheesy. Three, I knew that Dolly Parton, well...

• 6:23Jake Brennan?

  She was kind of a goofball. She may have been a goodwill ambassador for country music, but I had no idea about any of that. She just looked manufactured, put together, big star, big hair, gravity-defying figure. You know what I'm talking about. The aw shucks southern drawl. She was a caricature. And she always seemed happy, like too happy. To me, at that age, Dolly Parton did not seem authentic at all. Which, that time of my life was something that I was very concerned about. That's what I wanted from my music. That's what I wanted from the movies that I watched. That's what I wanted from my icons. I didn't have the cultural perspective that I have now. What I'm trying to say is I wasn't

• 7:03Jake Brennan?

  sophisticated enough to appreciate Dolly Parton then, as a young 14-year-old or whatever. I wanted authenticity. I wanted danger. I wanted punk rock. I wanted loud guitars. So I ignored Dolly Parton. I had no idea that she was an accomplished songwriter, prolific even. Now, I don't know what the count was back then, but recently, Dolly has estimated that the total number of songs that she's written is in the range of 3,000 songs. That's incredible. And one of those songs just so happens to be "I Will Always Love You", which Whitney Houston turned into one of the biggest hits of all time, quite literally,

• 7:44Jake Brennan?

  when she covered that Dolly Parton song for the soundtrack to the 1993 film The Bodyguard. And just like Islands in the Stream, this song was everywhere. But this song was the first single to ever stay at the number one spot for 14 straight weeks. Now, I had no idea at the time that Dolly Parton wrote that song. I had no idea that she wrote it way back in 1973, when she was just 27 years old. Or that she wrote it on the same day that she wrote her other greatest song, "Jolene". And yeah, I too have heard this supposed fact has been debunked, but Dolly Parton herself told a friend of mine, Bobby

• 8:26Jake Brennan?

  Bones, back in 2019 that yes, she did write both of those songs at the same time. "That was a good writing day," she said. Are you kidding me? A good writing day. That's like if Paul McCartney wrote "Yesterday" and Eleanor Rigby on the same day. That day, the day that Dolly Parton wrote "I Will Always Love You" and Jolene. Well, it's gotta be in the running for the greatest day in the history of songwriting.

• 8:57Jake Brennan?

  It was 1974 when Dolly Parton's original version of "I Will Always Love You" first hit number one on the country chart. The song made her a lot of new fans. Fans like Elvis Presley. The king himself decided that he wanted to cover that song. His manager, the notorious Colonel Tom Parker, gave Dolly Parton the good news. And Dolly was beside herself. She was just a kid when Elvis thrust himself onto the scene. And like millions of other Americans, she idolized Elvis Presley. But there was a caveat. As Colonel Parker explained, for Elvis to cover the tune, Dolly Parton would have to sign over all publishing rights. Which may not have been the norm,

• 9:42Jake Brennan?

  but it was the Colonel's norm. And which would mean that Elvis and the Colonel, not Dolly Parton, would make money off of future royalties of the song that she wrote. Now again, Dolly Parton was just 27 years old at the time. And Elvis Presley was 39. Colonel Parker was a 300-year-old vampire with a nose for fresh blood. Right, not exactly, but you get my point. The guy was manipulative. And although Dolly Parton was the youngest participant in this particular scenario, Dolly nonetheless had the wisdom to know that no one, not even Elvis Presley, should possess her music. So with a heavy heart,

• 10:25Jake Brennan?

  she told the Colonel Tom Parker that she was out. Elvis could not have her song. She turned down the king. That difficult decision, though, it paid dividends. Two decades later, Whitney Houston sings "I Will Always Love You", and Dolly Parton makes $10 million in royalties. That figure, $10 million, that's just what she made in the 1990s alone from that song. Her refusal to give in to Elvis Presley and Colonel Tom Parker, it continues to put millions of dollars into Dolly Parton's bank account to this day.

• 11:01Jake Brennan?

  But "I Will Always Love You" wasn't just a moneymaker for Dolly Parton, nor was it simply one of the most bittersweet breakup ballads of all time. It was a song Dolly Parton wrote to save herself from becoming the possession of a powerful man. And to understand all that, first you have to understand what I didn't understand about Dolly Parton when I was younger. You must understand that authenticity and danger were there all along. Authenticity and danger are where Dolly Parton comes from.

• 11:34Jake Brennan?

  It was 1964 when Dolly Parton arrived in Nashville, Tennessee. She was 18 years old. Back home in Sevier County and in nearby Knoxville, she was already making waves. She wrote songs with her Uncle Bill, and she performed on radio and TV shows. But Nashville was no Knoxville, and it certainly wasn't Sevier County. She was turned down by just about every record label in town. Every label except for one. Monument Records, which had some recent success with Roy Orbison and Willie Nelson, signed Dolly Parton to a record deal. But the label's owner, Fred Foster, seemed to fundamentally miscalculate Dolly Parton from the jump,

• 12:16Jake Brennan?

  as many others, myself included, would continue to do for years. Fred Foster had her perform material written by other songwriters, marketing her not as a country singer, but as a young pop ingenue. It would be three years until Dolly would finally get the chance to prove herself as a country singer on her 1967 debut album, Hello, I'm Dolly. Now, this all strikes me as very strange because Fred Foster had also signed Dolly to a publishing deal. Publishing is a business instrument designed to make songwriters money. And Dolly Parton clearly wrote songs.

• 12:55Jake Brennan?

  She clearly wrote very dark songs that were in conversation with the dark Appalachian folk songs that she'd heard as a child. It was almost like there was a refusal on the record executive's part to confront the darkness that was at Dolly's core, likely because it did not compute that this happy, energetic, well-adjusted, driven young woman was capable of such darkness.

• 13:18Jake Brennan?

  But Dolly Parton was raised on this darkness. She was raised on dark songs. Songs from England and Wales, brought over to America, to where Dolly spent her childhood in eastern Tennessee. These songs were intimate with the more evil aspects of human nature. And perhaps paradoxically, these songs made the hard times easier to endure. Hard times which befell a family of 14, living in a two-room cabin with no electricity or running water. Dolly has spoken about something that she calls "the sorrow chord" being in her blood. A chord upon which these songs of jealousy, heartbreak, pain, and death are built.

• 14:02Jake Brennan?

  These are more than songs. These are murder ballads. Ballads in which a woman is lured by a man, lured into the woods, lured down by the water, lured upon false pretenses, only to be brutally killed in cold blood. And why does the man do this? Why does this always happen in these songs? Well, sometimes the killer is looking to escape responsibility. Say, marriage or fatherhood. So he kills his would-be wife, or his would-be mother of his child. Other times, as the astute professor of murder ballads Nick Cave once put it, "The killing is a desire born out of nothing else but, quote, 'murderous male attention

• 14:47Jake Brennan?

  and nefarious transferred erotic desire,' unquote." That's a fancy way of saying that the only way that this man feels he can truly possess the woman is to take her life. These were the songs of Dolly Parton's childhood. There was "Pretty Polly," "Barbara Allen," "Down in the Willow Garden." And there was that one song, a song Dolly first heard when she was sitting on the front steps of her modest family home there at the foot of the Great Smoky Mountains. Everyone within 100-mile radius of Knoxville had heard that song. The song about the Knoxville girl.

• 15:28Jake Brennan?

  Willie Miller was wearing his Sunday best on a Saturday night. Nice shirt, nice slacks, his one decent pair of shoes. He knew he looked good, and so he walked like it. Back straight, head held high, one foot confidently striding after the other. A warm breeze blew in from the east, and with it, Willie could hear the call of the bobwhites from out in the fields. Three short cries in quick succession. Lonesome, yet hopeful, just like Willie here. These days, however, the scales favored hope. Because tonight, Willie was on his way to the house of one Louisa May Brown, the prettiest girl in all of Knoxville.

• 16:12Jake Brennan?

  Or so Willie liked to think. Each week, Willie would walk over to her place, and each week, they would talk. And sometimes, they would sit in awkward silence. But tonight, upon Willie's arrival, Louisa May announced that she would like to go on a walk. So Willie took the prettiest girl in all of Knoxville by the hand, and they walked through town and into the tall grass, down by the Tennessee River. The sound of the bobwhites had been overtaken now by the sound of rushing water, by the belching of frogs, or maybe it was toads along the riverbed. Willie didn't know which it was, a frog or a toad, and they were all the same to him, slimy amphibious blobs with bulging little eyes.

• 16:55Jake Brennan?

  But Willie wasn't thinking about frogs or toads at the moment. He was thinking about Louisa May. He stared into her eyes, deep, blue. He stared so hard, he thought he'd get lost. He wanted her, and the desire was unlike anything he'd ever felt before. It was more than lust, and much more than love. Love was a puppy dog's game. This was a feeling rumbling there in his gut, eating at him from the inside out. He couldn't handle it much longer. He needed her, so he took her. It all happened so fast that Louisa May could hardly process it. First, Willie was bending down to the ground.

• 17:38Jake Brennan?

  Next, he was standing up straight with a large stick gripped tightly in his hand. And then, he swung the stick like that stiff Knoxville breeze and hit Louisa May in the side of the head, dropping the prettiest girl in town down to her knees, where she begged Willie Miller to spare her life.

• 18:53Jake Brennan?

  I like a story with a twist as much as anyone, but some of the best traditions don't have one. They just started and kept going. That's something that's great about Chateau St. Michelle. They've been leading Washington wine since 1967 with wines that are balanced, expressive, and easy to enjoy. Choosing the right bottle shouldn't feel complicated. It should be something you open with confidence every time. So for once, here's a story with no twist, just a good bottle. Redefine your rituals with Chateau St. Michelle.

• 19:24Speaker 05

  I'm Malcolm Gladwell, host of Smart Talks with IBM. I spoke with Dr. Laura Jayhai of Cleveland Clinic about how advanced computing is helping shorten the path from medical discovery to treatment.

• 19:36Speaker 06

  The moment that there is a compound that someone in a lab thinks it would be effective to treat a certain disease, it takes about 10 to 13 years from that moment to when that drug is on a shelf for a patient. A big part of that gap could be computationally solved. Better simulation of compounds, designing drug trails that are more efficient, that would finish faster. That was the motivation to bring computational tools and technology closer to biomedical researchers.

• 20:11Speaker 05

  Learn more about how Cleveland Clinic and IBM are using AI and quantum computing to revolutionize biomedical research at ibm.com/smarttalks.

• 20:27Jake Brennan?

  Porter Wagoner wasn't the most powerful man in Nashville. But if we're talking about country music on TV in the late 1960s, in that case, he was practically untouchable. The lanky frame and the blonde pompadour, the eye-catching nudie suits, Porter Wagoner was country music's on-screen gatekeeper. His syndicated TV program, which ran on close to 100 stations in the United States and Canada, could make a singer. It could sell a record, and it did so with Porter's tastemaking stamp of approval. But one thing was clear, and that was Porter Wagoner's name up there on the title card.

• 21:08Jake Brennan?

  Porter Wagoner was the main attraction, not his band, not the guests who appeared each week, and not the so-called girl singer who shared the spotlight as his duet partner in a Beauty and the Beast kind of way. Norma Jean was that girl singer. But Norma Jean wanted to take her secret affair with Porter Wagoner to the next level. Porter Wagoner did not, so Norma Jean was out.

• 21:35Jake Brennan?

  You could call it a lucky break for Dolly Parton to step into Norma Jean's shoes in 1967, the same year Monument released her debut album. If so, you'd be half-right. Dolly Parton wasn't the type to wait around for luck to give her a boost. She did the boosting. She'd been sending Porter demos for months. And like Fred Foster at Monument before him, Porter was impressed. Not only with Dolly's voice, but with her original songs. Dolly was hired to appear on the show and on tour, and in return, she was compensated $60,000 a year. Sixty grand in 1967. That's equivalent to well over half a million dollars today. It was the kind of money that no one in Dolly's family had ever seen before.

• 22:20Jake Brennan?

  And perhaps the only thing more shocking than her salary was the backlash she got from Porter's audience. They wanted Norma Jean. They wanted Norma Jean the way the kids at the Cavern Club wanted Pete Best when he first got the sack from The Beatles. But just like it didn't take long for the Beatlemaniacs to warm up to Ringo Starr, it didn't take long for anyone watching Porter's show to realize that Dolly Parton was the real deal. Real or even than Norma Jean ever was. Darker, too. Her own songs, sung with Porter, plucked the sorrow chord that was part of her DNA. Songs like "Jeannie's Afraid of the Dark," written after the daughter of Dolly's cousin

• 23:03Jake Brennan?

  was killed in a hit-and-run. Jeannie, the only child, up late at night, her heart pounding. Something is lurking there in the shadows. And she runs to her parents' room and crawls into their bed. She feels safe at last, and her heart slows. Then, sleep. At daybreak, the three of them take flowers to the family graveyard. Jeannie's gaze falls to the headstones and to the grass growing over the dearly departed. She imagines what it's like to be buried underground, six feet down, stuck in perpetual night, nothing but pitch black and fear. She can never do that. Not even in death.

• 23:46Jake Brennan?

  She tells her parents this because somewhere deep inside, Jeannie knows that death will come for her soon. She doesn't know how she knows this, but she knows it'll happen while she is still far too young. It'll leave her parents shattered and directionless. And when Jeannie's premonition does come true, when death's black cloak snuffs out the sun, Jeannie's fear of the dark weighs heavy on the minds of those who loved her. So on top of Jeannie's grave, they place an eternal flame, and it burns hot and bright. So bright, it's said, that even on the darkest night, there's always light. Even on the darkest night, there's always a light.

• 24:31Jake Brennan?

  That line from Dolly Parton's song "Jeannie's Afraid of the Dark" was relevant now more than ever. It was 1973, and the light was moving Dolly forward. The light was the muse. The light was the songs that came to her so often that she had to write them down on napkins, envelopes, matchbooks, whatever she could get her hands on. She wrote one of her signature songs, "Coat of Many Colors," in ten minutes flat while riding the tour bus. She wrote "Jolene" after a fan with that name asked her for an autograph. And as she ran to find something to write with, Dolly kept repeating the name over and over and over in her head so that she wouldn't forget it. Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene.

• 25:13Jake Brennan?

  And in doing so, unexpectedly wrote that iconic refrain. But though her light was burning bright, the proverbial dark nights were growing darker. Yes, Dolly and Porter were wildly successful together. Success, however, was not enough for Dolly. She didn't want to be the girl singer forever, nor did she want Porter romantically like Norma Jean had before her. She had a husband at home, Carl Dean, a man she'd married when she was 21 and Carl was 23, a man who gladly stepped aside and let Dolly and her career take precedence over everything else. Carl Dean set a high bar. Dolly expected Porter to meet her at that high bar.

• 25:58Jake Brennan?

  What Dolly wanted from Porter was to be involved in the creative direction of both the television show and the tour. What Dolly wanted was a seat at the table. But Dolly refused to let Porter possess her, and it drove Porter crazy. It drove him to violence. He tore framed photos from the wall. He kicked over tables and chairs. He reminded her, with all the subtlety of a firearm brimstone Pentecostal preacher, that she belonged to him, not the other way around. But Dolly Parton belonged to no one, not even to the man waiting for her at home. Which brings us back to "I Will Always Love You," which Dolly wrote at this exact moment of crisis. It was always more than just another Dolly Parton song.

• 26:42Jake Brennan?

  It was a breakup song, yes, but just not the kind of breakup song you're thinking of. It was Dolly breaking up with her mentor, a musical partner, Porter Wagoner. Because Dolly had ambitions that went far beyond the roost that Porter ruled and far beyond capital C country. These ambitions were nearly thwarted as she became coveted by increasingly controlling and deluded men. And I'm not talking about Porter Wagoner or Colonel Tom Parker. I'm talking about the murderous and nefarious desire which our murder ballad-loving guy Nick Cave once spoke of. The very same one which overtook Willie Miller when he killed that Knoxville girl.

• 27:26Jake Brennan?

  Louisa May felt a trickle of blood run down the side of her face as her knees sank into the mud. The earth was soft and pungent here next to the Tennessee River. Her body was shaking. She tilted her head skyward. She wanted to look directly into the eyes of the man who just struck her. She wanted to know why. Why did he pick up that stick? Why did he bludgeon her with it? And she blinked and tried to focus. "Please, Willie," she sobbed, her tears tasting bitter and salty on her trembling lips. "Please, Willie, please don't hit me again." Willie Miller seemed taller to her now, more imposing. He was a shadow, a blackened silhouette upon which the sun refused to cast even a sliver

• 28:10Jake Brennan?

  of light. Louisa May began to plead again, Willie, I beg you. When, at that moment, Willie brought the stick down on Louisa May's head once more. And the stick cracked this time, breaking in two. And the blood gushed, a thick stream of it rushing like the Tennessee River. Louisa May's body went face down into the mud, dead. Willie watched the blood ooze from the girl's body. It painted the earth a deep, thick crimson red. He grabbed Louisa May by her hair. He dragged her to the edge of the river, pushing her body into the water. There was a small splash, and then her body began to slowly drift away. It was a while until she receded from the view.

• 28:55Jake Brennan?

  And it would be a while longer still before Willie Miller began to truly understand what he had just done.

• 29:06Speaker 07

  We'll be right back after this.

• 29:11Speaker 07

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• 29:41Jake Brennan?

  I like a story with a twist as much as anyone, but some of the best traditions don't have one. They just started and kept going. That's something that's great about Chateau St. Michelle. They've been leading Washington wine since 1967 with wines that are balanced, expressive, and easy to enjoy. Choosing the right bottle shouldn't feel complicated. It should be something you open with confidence every time. So for once, here's a story with no twist, just a good bottle. Redefine your rituals with Chateau St. Michelle.

• 30:12Speaker 05

  Hello, hello. I'm Malcolm Gladwell, host of Smart Talks with IBM. I spoke with IBM's Ana Paula Acees about what digital sovereignty actually means in the age of AI. AI now moves from somebody operating a system to the technology actually making decisions. So. You have to have a much better visibility of what they are touching, data it is accessing, and where. Hear the full conversation wherever you get your podcasts.

• 30:46Jake Brennan?

  Saturday night on the Jamboree, I'm gonna kill Dolly Parton.

• 30:51Jake Brennan?

  This is what a caller who identified himself only as "The Man in Black" told Buddy Ray, the DJ at WWVA in Wheeling, West Virginia. It was on or around March 25th, 1976. The call came in late during Buddy's overnight shift, just days before Dolly Parton's two sold-out shows at WWVA's Jamboree, Wheeling's version of the Grand Old Opry. No sooner had the caller hung up than the station's phone rang a second time. Buddy picked up the receiver. The Man in Black spoke once more. To show you that I'm not kidding, it'll be at the second show from the left side.

• 31:29Jake Brennan?

  Wheeling PD was out in full force on the evening of Saturday, March 27th, 1976, the date of Dolly's Jamboree performance. Uniformed and plainclothes cops surveyed the scene in and around the theater, where thousands awaited the 1975 Country Music Association's Female Vocalist of the Year. But there would be no show that night. Dolly's management didn't want to risk that the self-professed "Man in Black" would publicly murder her as promised. And it was more than just the two Jamboree shows that were canceled. Sixty-five additional shows were canceled throughout the summer of 1976. Dolly lost hundreds of thousands of dollars. She was even forced to lay off the musicians in her band. Here's the thing, though.

• 32:14Jake Brennan?

  I don't think that Dolly shut down her summer that year because of a death threat. Dolly did not scare easily. Her skin was made thick by the kerosene, cornmeal, and quilting needles used to patch up major injuries she sustained as a child. By this point, she was carrying a .38 caliber pistol in her purse at all times. And just a few days later, when police arrested the "Man in Black", aka 30-year-old Robert Elliott of Wheeling, and charged him with making threatening phone calls, Dolly told a local paper, quote, "I wasn't all that shook up about it," unquote. "I wasn't all that shook up about it" is not the statement of a woman petrified by a phone call to a radio station, right? Okay, so this is what I think happened.

• 32:58Jake Brennan?

  I think that Dolly was preparing to implement a hard reset in her career so that she could cross over from country to pop. But a hard reset requires a disruption. And I think that the incident in Wheeling gave her something to blame said disruption on. Because this is the moment when Dolly sought out new representation, not in Nashville, but in LA. This is the moment that she hired a new group of musicians, the Gypsy Band, who were more West Coast rock and roll than country. This is the moment when she started partying at Studio 54 with John Belushi, Jack Nicholson, Calvin Klein, Mick Jagger, and Andy Warhol.

• 33:39Jake Brennan?

  This is when she appeared in Playboy magazine, though no, she didn't pose nude, you perverts, so quit thinking that. And this is when, one year later in 1977, she released the country-pop crossover album, Here You Come Again. Its title track hit number one on the country chart and number three on the Billboard Hot 100. And although she did it as, to paraphrase the LA Times's Robert Hilburn, "the most important ambassador for country music since Johnny Cash," Dolly Parton's ambition and solo success continued to piss off the old guard back in Tennessee. Her one-time duet partner and mentor, Porter Wagoner, degraded her in the press. He shamed her for her Playboy photo shoot.

• 34:20Jake Brennan?

  He used a racist analogy to condemn her combination of country and pop music. And then he sued her for breach of contract. He wanted a portion of the money she'd made since she left him all those years ago, over $3 million in total. And when the case settled out of court right before it was set to go to trial, Dolly was on the hook for not three, but still she was on the hook for $1 million, which she then began to pay off using money she earned for her part in a project that you could say was the greatest fuck you since Marvin Gaye released his divorce album, Here My Dear, to pay his alimony debts. Nine to five. Nine to Five was a smash hit.

• 35:02Jake Brennan?

  Released in 1980, the movie starred Dolly Parton, Jane Fonda, and Lily Tomlin as disgruntled office workers who get revenge on their chauvinistic boss, played by Dabney Coleman, who, if you squint hard enough, kind of sort of reminds one of Porter Wagoner. And you can easily make the connection between Dolly and Dabney Coleman, secretary on screen, and Dolly as Porter Wagoner's girl singer in real life. The revenge was sweet, both on and off screen for Dolly Parton. Nine to Five was the second highest grossing movie of the year, right behind The Empire Strikes Back. Even better, its theme song, written and performed by Dolly Parton, became Dolly Parton's first number-one hit on the pop chart.

• 35:47Jake Brennan?

  Take that, Porter Wagoner. But despite crossing over, despite all of her successes, Dolly Parton continued to fight off the so-called nefarious, transferred erotic desire of men. She was forced to endure boob jokes from George Hamilton at the Golden Globes, and she waited until a commercial break while taping an episode of The Merv Griffin Show to tell the host to go fuck off with all of his childish innuendos. And the stress of it all, the number-one movie, the number-one song, the gigs, the interviews, the tight schedules, more albums to make, and more movies to star in, it led to a gradual, physical breakdown of her 36-year-old body.

• 36:31Jake Brennan?

  Bleeding internally, she nearly collapsed on the stage at the Indiana State Fair, and she was flown to New York City to St. Luke's Hospital, where she underwent emergency surgery. What exactly was done in that operating room has been speculated on at length, and I don't need to further speculate here. But what matters is that when Dolly returned to her home in Nashville with her husband Carl at her side, she was, perhaps for the first time in her life, creatively paralyzed. All she could think about were the inevitable lawsuits, this time, not from Porter Wagoner, but from venues and from the promoters of the shows that she'd been forced to cancel. Unlike the last time she canceled a slate of performances, this wasn't part of a master plan.

• 37:16Jake Brennan?

  This was where the plan unraveled and fell apart for good.

• 37:22Jake Brennan?

  Dolly Parton became depressed and withdrawn. She found herself opening a small case that was stashed in her bedroom. Inside the case was a gun that she kept for security and peace of mind. Perhaps put there in the wake of that man in black business. And she picked up the gun. She turned it over in her hand. She thought about pressing it against her temple and pulling the trigger. This part of Dolly's story reminds me of a song called "The Bridge." Dolly wrote it for her second album, Just Because I'm a Woman, back in 1968. In the song, a woman goes to a bridge where she kissed her lover for the first time. Only now she is pregnant with this man's child, and the man has since abandoned her.

• 38:06Jake Brennan?

  And as the song progresses, the woman, racked with heartache and pain and shame, inches closer to the edge of the bridge. And the song ends with the line, "Here is where it started, and here is where I'll end it." And then, that's it. The song is over. And we don't know for sure if the woman jumped or not, although it's definitely implied. And I wonder if Dolly Parton thought of her own song as she was sitting on her bed with a loaded pistol in her hand. She, like the narrator of "The Bridge," was facing another moment of crisis. A moment in which one sudden, hopeless impulse was the difference between life and death.

• 38:48Jake Brennan?

  Willie Miller didn't notice all the blood on his shirt. When he arrived back at the small house he shared with his family, his mother was the first to say something. And Willie looked down, slightly dazed, only now seeing the deep red stain. It was still wet to the touch. He shook his head and told his mother to calm down. "It was simply a nosebleed," he reassured her. He went to his bedroom and shut the door behind him. He climbed into the bed and pulled the sheets up tight. Sleep came fast. So did the dreams. And Willie tossed and turned as the flames built up all around him. They were lapping at the window and sprinting at the curtains. And they burned all around his bed and licked at his bare feet. He awoke in a cold sweat, sitting up straight,

• 39:33Jake Brennan?

  swatting at the imaginary fire that had just fueled his nightmare.

• 39:38Jake Brennan?

  There was a knock at his door. He opened it, expecting to see his mother. Instead, he was greeted by an officer from the Knoxville Police Department, who placed Willie under arrest and charged him with the murder of Louisa Mae Brown. The trial was swift, as swift as the justice that came crashing down with the judge's gavel. Some said Willie deserved to die. Instead, he was sentenced to live out the rest of his days behind bars. The Tennessee State Prison was bleak, brutal, and overcrowded. Willie kept to himself. He didn't talk to the other inmates and didn't make eye contact. But if you walked by his cell at night, once the lights in the wing were shut off,

• 40:20Jake Brennan?

  and the roaches and rats came scurrying from their holes, you could hear Willie Miller. First, there was the violent awakening. That was Willie regaining consciousness with a shriek, resting himself from the nightmare of hellfire that awaited him every evening. Sweating and panting, he could gradually calm down. And then he would speak. And the sound of his voice was low, hidden deep under his own breath so as not to draw attention. It was always the same thing. He repeated it over and over again, like a mantra or a prayer, or maybe just a compulsion that he could not or would not explain. "Farewell, Knoxville girl," he would say.

• 41:04Jake Brennan?

  "Farewell to the girl I loved so well."

• 41:27Jake Brennan?

  The classic version of Knoxville Girl was recorded by the Luvin Brothers, Charlie and Ira, for their 1959 album Tragic Songs of Life. Their close harmonies are tight, mournful, and, dare I say, beautiful. And therein lies the chilling nature of the song. It's delivered so matter-of-factly, like the narrator is telling you how they made a sandwich for lunch that day or something. But what is being described is a brutal murder. A murder committed without warning. A murder committed in cold blood.

• 42:01Jake Brennan?

  Five years before the Luvin brothers recorded their immortal take on Knoxville Girl, in 1954, four teenagers in Brooklyn, known in the press as the Brooklyn Thrill Killers, drowned one victim and beat another to death. The Kings County DA said of the murderous quartet, "They apparently had no reason except the thrill that they got." Thirty years before that, in 1924, Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb kidnapped a 14-year-old boy in Chicago, hit him in the head repeatedly with the handle of a chisel, gagged him, and watched as the life drained from his body. Their motive? The simple desire to commit what they called "the perfect crime," and thus demonstrate their superiority over the rest of the human race.

• 42:46Jake Brennan?

  In these crimes, as in the later-day crimes of serial killers like Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, and Richard Ramirez, there is an inexplicable compulsion at the root to carry out the act. There is also the need to exert power, the need to control, and the need to possess. Colonel Tom Parker wanted to possess Dolly Parton's song. Porter Wagoner wanted to possess Dolly Parton as his girl singer. Robert Elliott of Wheeling, aka "The Man in Black," wanted to possess Dolly Parton with, to once again quote our guide Nick Cave, "murderous male attention and nefarious transferred erotic desire." But Dolly Parton would not be possessed.

• 43:29Jake Brennan?

  Dolly Parton was not a tragic female figure from an anonymous murder ballad. She was far too much of a badass, not to mention she wasn't going to be in somebody else's song. Get out of here with that. By 1983, Dolly Parton had rebounded from her emotional rock bottom of the year prior. The gun she kept in her house had gone back into its bedroom case, and she was once again proving herself to be an unstoppable crossover force. Her duet with Kenny Rogers' Islands in the Stream topped the pop, country, and contemporary charts that fall. This was 1983, the year of Michael Jackson's Beat It, Lionel Richie's All Night Long,

• 44:12Jake Brennan?

  Every Breath You Take by The Police. But 1983 was also only a few years removed from the assassination of John Lennon outside the Dakota in New York. Beetle John's murder was no doubt on Dolly Parton's mind when she read the news today. Oh, boy. News about a recent poll of psychologists to determine which celebrities were most likely to be assassinated. And why were psychologists being asked about hypothetical celebrity assassinations? It didn't matter. All that mattered to Dolly Parton was that her name was at the top of their list. Imagine that. Imagine you're Dolly Parton. You've had unprecedented success as a country artist crossing over into the mainstream, but the

• 44:55Jake Brennan?

  journey has not been easy. There have been death threats, and you've suffered internal bleeding, and major surgeries, a period of extreme depression, thoughts of suicide, and then, just as you get it all back together, you read about how you are the most likely target of the next crazed assassin on the mean streets of America. Something that is printed in the mainstream press, so that the next crazed assassin can read it and go from what if to not if, but when.

• 45:24Jake Brennan?

  On January 15, 1983, a death threat was called into Owensboro, Kentucky Police shortly before Dolly's two sold-out shows there at the Executive In Showroom Lounge. The shows were quickly canceled, as were additional dates in Texas and Louisiana. Two months later, in March, a bomb threat cleared out the Old Dominion Theater in London, where Dolly Parton was taping a special for HBO. And as recently as 2022, a Pennsylvania man threatened to detonate bombs he'd allegedly planted in Pittsburgh, Greensburg, and Mount Pleasant unless he was allowed to speak to Dolly Parton. The threats are constant. The

• 46:03Jake Brennan?

  danger is constant. It's passed down from generation to generation like a murder ballad. The sorrow chord echoes in the darkness, and it bids farewell to the girl they loved so well. But Dolly was no Knoxville girl. She was not one to be led down through the tall grass to the riverbed. Instead, she was the one who rang out the sorrow chord. Dolly Parton bid her own farewell to disgrace.

• 46:35Jake Brennan?

  I'm Jake Brennan, and this is Disgrace Land.

• 46:52Jake Brennan?

  Disgrace Land was created by yours truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis, the Exactly Right Network, and iHeart Podcasts. Credits for this episode can be found on the show notes page at disgracelandpod.com. If you're listening as a Disgrace Land All Access member, thank you for supporting the show. We really appreciate it. And if not, you can become a member right now by going to disgracelandpod.com/membership. Members can listen to every episode of Disgrace Land ad-free. Rate and review the show and follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and Facebook @disgracelandpod and on YouTube at youtube.com/atdisgracelandpod. Rockerola.

• 47:37Jake Brennan?

  He's a bad, bad man. All right, guys. Thanks for checking out this episode of Disgrace Land, the special rewind episode on Dolly Parton, 617-906-6638. If you find yourself in our archive and you're looking to find an episode, or if you got a suggestion on a story, hit us up, leave us a voicemail, send us a text. Thanks for listening. Hey, guys. Time to dust off your detective skills while unwinding in the Caribbean on Virgin Voyages' second true crime voyage. It's back by popular demand. This five-night, adults-only escape sets sail March 20, 2027, to Grand Turk in the Beach Club at Bimini. The difference between this year and last will be that I will be on the cruise this

• 48:19Jake Brennan?

  year, along with Zeph, and he and I will be taping a live version of Disgrace Land, along with podcast hosts from Exactly Right's Buried Bones, Podcast of the Year Award winners, Wisecrack, and other fan favorites. Get on this cruise with us, guys, and enjoy live podcast recordings, behind-the-scenes storytelling, exclusive meet-and-greets, and immersive true crime programming throughout this one-of-a-kind voyage. Head over to www.virginvoyages.com/truecrime to secure your spot. I like a story with a twist as much as anyone, but some of the best traditions don't have one. They just started and kept going. That's something that's great about Chateau St. Michelle. They've been leading Washington wine since 1967 with wines that are balanced, expressive,

• 49:04Jake Brennan?

  and easy to enjoy. Choosing the right bottle shouldn't feel complicated. It should be something you open with confidence every time. So for once, here's a story with no twist, just a good bottle. Redefine your rituals with Chateau St. Michelle.

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