Remembering Dolly Parton's Musical and Philanthropic Legacy

Across the country, people continue to grieve Dolly Parton, the late country music icon who spent more than 60 years making us cry, laugh and fall in love. But in a country as fragmented and divided as the U. S., how did Dolly Parton become our "unproblematic fave”? In this bonus episode of On With Kara Swisher, Kara breaks down the legendary artist many call Saint Dolly with three Dolly experts. Tressie McMillan Cottom⁠ is a professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill, a culture critic and an award-winning author. Her latest New York Times column is titled, “Loving Dolly Was Easy. Understanding Her Was Hard.” Chely Wright is a country music artist and author of the book “Like Me: Confessions of a Heartland Country Singer." And Marissa Moss is a writer for Rolling Stone and author of the book “Her Country: How the Women of Country Music Became the Success They Were Never Supposed to Be.” Questions? Comments? Email us at [email protected] or find us on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Threads, and Bluesky @onwithkaraswisher. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:11Kara Swisher?

  Dolly Parton died last week after more than 60 years delighting us with her music performances, quick-witted interview appearances, big blonde wigs, boob jokes, her books, movies, theme parks, and probably most importantly, the legacy of philanthropy that will continue long into the future. She was a planner and a hard worker, so she made sure of that. There are only three contemporary heroes I revere, and Dolly was at the top. So I wanted to talk about her life and legacy with some of the smartest women I could think of. Later on, we'll have country artist Shelley Wright and Rolling Stone culture writer Marissa Moss to talk about Dolly's musical impact. But up first is a professor of sociology and certified Dollyologist, Tressie McMillan

• 0:54Kara Swisher?

  Cotum, who's a wonderful writer about Dolly, and we share a great love of country music. And I'm excited to talk to her. I think it's important to talk about our heroes. We talk so much about what we don't like in the world, and everybody likes Dolly. But it's more than that. It's more than something we can agree on. The way she lived her life was a map for the rest of us, even if we can't reach it. And it's really important to talk about what she means and what she's going to mean to the future, because I have a feeling she'll continue to have an enormous impact. So stick around.

• 1:33Speaker 01

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• 2:04Speaker 02

  I'm Ina Garten, and each week on Happy Hour, I invite new and old friends for a drink and a fun conversation at my kitchen table in New York City. On this week's episode, I'm joined by Julia Louis-Dreyfus. We talk all about attending a fashion show in Paris together, throwing dinner parties, and making her Broadway debut in other desert cities. New episodes of Happy Hour are available every Wednesday. You can watch on YouTube or listen wherever you get your podcasts. Cheers.

• 2:40Speaker 03

  What if Bruce Springsteen had never become the superstar he is today? I'm Will Anderson, and this week on my music history podcast, The Monday Music Club, we're talking about the making of his breakthrough album, Born to Run, with the guy who wrote the literal book on it, Peter Ames Carlin.

• 2:54Speaker 04

  He had put so much of himself into his music, like all of himself. I mean, it was hard for him to have romantic relationships that could last. You know, he didn't really do anything but put all the energy into his guitar.

• 3:07Speaker 03

  It's a fun ride, so listen to the episode right now by searching for Monday Music Club anywhere you get your podcasts.

• 3:16Kara Swisher?

  Thank you for coming on, On.

• 3:18Speaker 05

  It's a real pleasure to be here.

• 3:20Kara Swisher?

  So Dolly Parton was 80 years old, and she herself had talked about her health issues for months, so it's not a shock. But it still felt like a shock, because she was quite vibrant in those communications and had that aura of being sort of eternal in a lot of ways. The outpouring online has been extensive, and it's all new kind of stuff. I just, first, what was your experience on hearing that she had died?

• 3:47Speaker 05

  I'm a university professor by day, it's my day job. And I was in a research meeting, and we just opened the meeting. And you know, you open the laptop, and I hadn't turned off, turned on the Do Not Disturb just yet, which meant I saw the text message from my editor, and it was just two words, "Dolly died." Immediately ended the meeting. Everyone understood, by the way. I went back to apologize to everyone later, and they were like, "Oh, no, no, no, no. Like, this is important." Everyone understood that something really significant had happened. And I also really appreciate how many people thought it would be significant to me. But I think a lot of people felt that way, that this is something that had happened to them, which I just think speaks to Dolly's ability to make us feel like we are in a relationship with her.

• 4:31Speaker 05

  You know, parasociality is weird. It's weird, you know, for everyone. But I think Dolly Parton did one of the best jobs of making it feel less weird for people. This was the parasocial relationship, I used to say, that I really want this one to go to distance. You know, if she can just survive, Black Lives Matter, Me Too, like, just everything, every one that would come up. And she just kept nailing it, you know? And right to the end, right to the end. It was the relationship that was, had been worth it.

• 5:03Kara Swisher?

  I've been listening to Dolly since a very young age. I was a big, I'm not a likely country music fan, but I am. I've been listening to all country music, Reba and, you know, all of them, every one of them, of course. Like, you have to keep going down that path.

• 5:16Speaker 05

  Unlikely, but also the same.

• 5:18Kara Swisher?

  Yes, exactly. And my son actually called me and said, "Are you okay?" Like, because I had made him listen to so much Dolly Parton over the course of his life. And she was sort of the central figure. And then there's all kinds of bluegrass around her and everything else.

• 5:32Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 5:33Kara Swisher?

  In the wake of her passing, you wrote a wonderful piece in The Times, and there were so many pieces. Look, everyone sort of had their reflections on Dolly Parton, whether they're stories. It was interesting, online, there were regular people who just, like, someone who she gave her coat to gave a wonderful story.

• 5:47Speaker 05

  I know, I saw that one, too.

• 5:48Kara Swisher?

  Did you see that one?

• 5:49Speaker 05

  I did.

• 5:50Kara Swisher?

  That was like, oddly enough, everyone had like an interesting story, and they all had the similar kind of thing. But I really appreciated your piece, because you were talking about her as a writer. So talk, talk a little bit more about the dedication to her craft and how it inspired your own writing.

• 6:06Speaker 05

  I really took issue with the way a person had been as famous for as long as Dolly Parton had been famous, but yet hadn't been treated seriously. Or like, how does someone do that? How do they accomplish that? So, you know, the entrepreneurship, taking her seriously as a business strategist, which by all accounts, she was a killer businessperson. And in fact, has said many times herself that she was proud of her business acumen and her success. And on the flip side, for me as a writer, I thought, we haven't taken her craft seriously. And it was clear that she was deeply proud of her writing ability and would say over and over again, "The way that I want to be known is as a writer."

• 6:47Speaker 05

  And she was also deeply confident about it, which was very inspiring to see a woman, I think especially of her generation, for all the humility that, you know, I think she performed while being ridiculously famous and ridiculously wealthy. The one place where she allowed herself to own what she was was when it came to her writing. How does someone who does not come from a place where we think of our great writers emerging, right, from, from the Appalachian Mountains, from generational poverty, just be so committed to the fact that she's a creative person with craft? And I've seen her hold her own against men, you know, major musicians, and say, "No, I'm

• 7:32Speaker 05

  a writer. I'm a very good writer, in fact.

• 7:34Kara Swisher?

  Right, right, absolutely.

• 7:35Speaker 05

  And if you're lucky, I'll let you write with me." And I thought, I wanted to give her the opportunity, and frankly, for myself, very selfish. I used to say the same thing. The one interview I wish I could do was with Dolly Parton, but I would only talk about her writing, how she thinks about it, how she approaches it, how it has developed over her career and over her lifetime. And I thought that we'd gotten to the end of her life and that she did not get a chance to see us really appreciate her craft the way I think she thought we should.

• 8:07Kara Swisher?

  Well, she also put that in your way. There's so much noise, she was so much noise, and she knew it, right? There was so much hiding in plain sight, a kind of, kind of situation, because the words were out there. So you saw the craft, right? But what was interesting is everybody was looking at all this, which I think was part of it. You know, when she joked about being in drag, in drag, I was like, "You are. You actually are. But it's part of the messaging that you're trying to do." And I was always like, and I think she enjoyed it. I don't think it was to hide in a painful way, oddly enough.

• 8:38Speaker 05

  No. That is the thing, I always think of our great comedians are that way. You know, I think of Robin Williams, for example, who, you know, there's always this vulnerability and pain beneath their genius. The thing about Dolly's is that there wasn't. There was just this really core sense of, if not happiness and joy, but she was of comfort. She was very comfortable. And to see that kind of creative genius without the pathos, I also thought was really interesting.

• 9:08Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 9:09Speaker 05

  And I always wondered how she achieved that.

• 9:11Kara Swisher?

  Right, right. It's interesting, because you sort of compared to Loretta Lynn or, you know, Patsy Cline, which is just aching with pain, right?

• 9:18Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 9:19Kara Swisher?

  Or almost any of them, even Reba, with my favorite song of all time, which is Fancy.

• 9:23Speaker 05

  Oh, same.

• 9:24Kara Swisher?

  One of the things in your essay, I want to stick with it, was The Bridge. First, talk a little bit about that song and how you talked about it within the essay you wrote about The Bridge, which is an incredible song, especially at the time when she sang it.

• 9:39Speaker 05

  That's right.

• 9:40Kara Swisher?

  I think she, in the 60s, right? In the early 60s, when she sang it for the first time.

• 9:43Speaker 05

  So, the idea, like, you know, now it kind of sounds, you know, glib to say, but to realize that she writes this song about a young pregnant girl, whose boyfriend, the father, has abandoned her, and she's standing at a bridge, you know, kind of like the ode to...

• 10:00Kara Swisher?

  Billy Joel.

• 10:01Speaker 05

  To Billy Joel, right? Well, she's standing at the bridge, but Dolly finishes, or she's contemplating suicide. The, the pain and the reality of living as a young woman, you know, before Roe versus Wade is what she's capturing. But she's also capturing, I think, there, the pain of that when you are poor, where marriage, when you are a young girl from a poor place, it is not just about love and visibility and safety in your community, it's about like economic security. And I always thought that was the thread beneath Dolly's vulnerability in her writing, which is that, you know, the decisions about who we love when you come from a place where she comes from is really about more than just love and romance. It's about having a home. It's about having land. It's about having some economic security.

• 10:45Speaker 05

  I'm listening to this song, and I knew the song. Yes, it's not one of her best-known, it's earlier in her career. It didn't get played on radio, because this is far too progressive, even for rock and roll.

• 10:57Kara Swisher?

  But she did it on television, she did it on the Porter Wagner show.

• 10:58Speaker 05

  That's right. Which speaks to how much power she had gotten from Porter Wagner, right? That she was able to do that, and that she wanted to do it.

• 11:20Speaker 05

  And so I knew the song, kind of knew it intellectually, knew it was important. You know, that Southern Gothic storytelling, which is actually one I think Dolly was her best. She was so good at that stuff. But then I'm listening to it in my 30s, right? And I just had a really devastating pregnancy loss. It's just, you know, everybody has their traumas. This one's just mine. It's not special, but it's the one that happened to me. And I know when I lose that baby, that I'm just not going to have children in it. And choosing not to have children is very different than the choice being made for you. And I was in my car and the silence was just too loud. So I just flipped on the radio. Didn't want to hear commercials, so I turned on college radio.

• 12:01Speaker 05

  And for whatever reason, they were doing some retrospective and they were playing this song. And I just started weeping, had to pull the car over, in fact. And I remember thinking, I've listened to this song so many times, but I'd never understood it. Until I needed to understand what it would mean to be that desperate and that scared and alone. Which is very much how I was feeling.

• 12:41Speaker 05

  And, you know, at the end of that song, I really was a different person. I mean, I kind of got on with the business of life after that. And it was just spoke to the way that I think a piece of art can find you when you need it. But somebody has to be brave enough to do it first. And I think Dolly just did that over and over again.

• 12:58Kara Swisher?

  And many songs, many of her songs, and many. I was thinking of traveling through about trans people way before anybody, you know, was being supportive of the trans culture. So talk a little bit about that, her place in American culture and history. You know, I think a lot of people, of course, are pointing to the fact that everybody liked her. And, you know, I am a longtime attendee of Dollywood. And one of the things that I loved about it was that when you went there, like literally rednecks, gays, lesbians, everybody was there in a really jolly way. And the minute you walked outside, it was like war was on.

• 13:35Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 13:35Kara Swisher?

  Like, you know, you get to Pigeon Forge and you see the world's biggest gun store and you're like, what?

• 13:40Speaker 05

  I think it is so fascinating that it exists right there. And I have felt this, yeah. Right outside the gates of Dollywood, it is like, you know, yeah, you're back in the real world. In fact, you know, I've walked down that main street where they've got all the, you know, the shops and everything, you know? And they've got, you know, lawn jockeys and Aunt Jemima dolls on the thing. And then, you know, here I am, this black woman walking through. And then you enter into Dollywood and it is her vision of what she thinks her culture really should be and could be. I really think of Dollywood as being her trying to say, the country people, the Southern people, the Appalachian people I know are capable of this. And if I create the right world and the right boundaries for it, people will see my people

• 14:25Speaker 05

  the way that I've seen them, which is that they are not inherently racist or classist or whatever.

• 14:31Kara Swisher?

  Dumb or racist, right?

• 14:32Speaker 05

  That this can happen. And it is one of the few places in country music, you know, popular country music, live shows and theme parks, that kind of thing, where I have felt comfortable. And that's, you know, that's a story so many people have. I've gone to a Dolly Parton concert and at the height, by the way, of like Trump 1.0, right? Where, you know, you've got people who have clearly pulled up, you know, in the pickup trucks, flags waving and are standing in line to get inside with like, you know, a gaggle of drag queens. There's almost no place else in this country that I can think of that happening.

• 15:12Kara Swisher?

  You know, you called her in an essay, this was our unproblematic fave. Like, what, why? Why this person?

• 15:22Speaker 05

  I think we could spend a lifetime trying to unpack that, which is, you know, part of what I've done really is that this is not even my core work. I'm just fascinated by her. And I think some of it is she diffused the big, strong emotions that have come to define our political and civic life. You know, nobody now can just roll their eyes. Everything now has to be, you know, a knock down, drag out, nuclear war between people. We've lost all of the affect in the middle. And something about the way Dolly treated these things that were being ginned up as these major conflicts, right? She'd come in and she'd go, well, no, you think we're the only people, you know, think our lily white asses are the only people who matter?

• 16:01Speaker 06

  Of course, black lives matter. Do we think our little white asses are the only ones that matter? No.

• 16:07Speaker 05

  She just almost would right-size the cultural conflict to the size it should be, which is just, this is not even a big deal. And something about her ability to do that, I think, would reset people's emotions. You see it online, you know? Everything is set to 10, right? You can't just say, hey, I'm not into this, right? Exactly, 12, 20 is where we're headed. You can't just say, you know, not my thing, right? But Dolly had a way of reminding you that you had another option. And she said, if you want to enjoy me, and we really wanted to enjoy her, you will do it this way. Right? She's reminding me sometimes like a kindergarten school teacher who just sets the rules and holds the boundaries while loving you kindly, right?

• 16:52Speaker 05

  But she did that for adults.

• 16:54Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, yeah, that's interesting. What, from your perspective, as a sociological phenomenon, is there, are there versions of her over time? Or how do you look at that? I can't think of it, Ben Franklin.

• 17:08Speaker 05

  No, I can't either. And part of it is, you know, she is a singular person, but she's also, you know, becoming Dolly Parton in a moment where like, all of these things make that even possible, right? So some of what I've thought about is the grief of losing her, but it's also the grief of losing, like, I just don't think we produce that type of popular artist anymore. We're just way too fragmented now, I think, for a Dolly Parton to really emerge. But also one that existed before the sort of performative politics that every celebrity now must have. Like, she didn't get sullied, I think, by all of that, the way a young artist would now. And so it's not just that Dolly Parton was singular.

• 17:50Speaker 05

  She happened in a moment where only Dolly Parton, I think, could have happened. But no, maybe, you know, there are some in like various communities. And here's, I think, like a Paul Robeson at one time, but who was deeply hated, however, by the majority, but he was wildly popular in that sort of way that confounded expectations. But no, I find it, it's very hard to think of another artist.

• 18:10Kara Swisher?

  Not a Taylor Swift, for example, who would be her similar, right? I mean, gifted songwriter, gifted business person, hugely popular. Whether, but, but she has quite an angry, an angry group at her.

• 18:26Speaker 05

  And cannot, this is what I mean about Dolly's ability to sort of shape her fandom. No popular celebrity anymore can shape their fandom the way that she did. You know, you think about the Beehive of Beyonce, who are known as being particularly vicious to people online, same thing.

• 18:42Kara Swisher?

  And deservedly so.

• 18:44Speaker 05

  And, you know, you gotta retake the queen.

• 18:46Kara Swisher?

  I don't mind where they go.

• 18:49Speaker 05

  And the same with like a Taylor Swift, right? But they can't, they cannot sort of shape their fandom, I think, in the way that Dolly could. Or neutralize the opposition, the way that Dolly could. They just don't have that skill.

• 19:02Kara Swisher?

  Her politics were obviously liberal, like so obviously deeply. Even further to, I was like, she's far left than I am, like, you know what I mean, on something? Talk about that. Why did it work for her? Because she was, by all, so like feminism, the Black Lives Matter thing you mentioned. That was a big deal, the vaccines, vaccine song. It wasn't a little statement, it wasn't, it was a big statement. All those things were big statements.

• 19:31Speaker 05

  I think she really leaning, I mentioned this in my column, you know, we have this, which I think you probably are familiar with now that I know how, how much we have in common here. You would call it country dumb, which is leaning into people's low expectations of you while navigating and getting done what you want to get done. And Dolly Parton is one of the best at this that I have ever seen. So I think part of it, I think the vaccine case is a really good example of this. She knows it's deeply unpopular, right? So one thing is that Dolly was very smart, very well-read, understood, I think, a political moment at that sort of like visceral level that really brilliant people do and could quickly prescribe, right, what needed to happen.

• 20:12Speaker 06

  Well, hey, it's me. I'm finally going to get my vaccine. I'm so excited. I've been waiting a while. I'm old enough to get it and I'm smart enough to get it. So I'm very happy that I'm going to get my Moderna shot today. And I wanted to tell everybody, I think you should get out there and do it too. I even changed one of my songs to fit the occasion. It goes, vaccine, vaccine, vaccine, vaccine. I'm begging of you, please don't hesitate.

• 20:41Speaker 05

  But when she would weigh in on the issue, people were so conditioned to underestimate her that I just think she'd already accomplished what she wanted, but by the time they figured out what she was doing, right? And I think that is the case with her over and over again, that she was able to take these political stances and positions on things that people didn't expect her to have a good, right position on. And by the time they got it together to be angry, she had already won. She'd already captured the headline, she'd already made the donation, she'd already done the thing. So I think there was a lot of that. And I also think there was something to, we really didn't, I think a lot of people would say they don't know her politics, didn't want to know them. And she gave them that gift. She said, okay, I'll give you some plausible deniability.

• 21:23Speaker 05

  If you want to say, you just like me because I'm, you know, blonde or because I'm funny, I'll let you have that, right? But she, I think, always knew that who she was really talking to were the people who understood what she was doing and why.

• 21:38Kara Swisher?

  We'll be back in a minute.

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• 23:36Kara Swisher?

  So you tell a story when you were a little kid, your mom caught you standing too close to the TV. I remember that time, staring at Dolly Parton, like many Black Americans, Dolly Parton drew you in. She also collaborated with Black artists Beyonce, Patti LaBelle, Queen Latifah, among others. Talk about that, because it's also, that was another thing at Hollywood. It was so racially mixed. I've never seen a more racially mixed group of people in one place, in a place I did not expect it to happen, right? Like, that's the thing.

• 24:04Speaker 05

  Well, country music and Black popular music have something in common. And I've written about this before. In some ways, country music and hip-hop music are the two genres most obsessed with authenticity, right? They police who is legitimately authentically country, authentically hip-hop, you know, as their primary obligation to the culture. And of a genre where authenticity means everything, Dolly Parton was the most authentic. I think what I was really responding to her as a child was, this is a person who, yes, there's a lot of artifice, right? There's a lot of smoke and mirrors.

• 24:43Speaker 05

  But there was something undeniably authentic about her presentation of herself that did not have to be like my presentation of herself. She didn't have to be Black. She never tried to sing R&B. I always loved this about her. Like, she would partner with these audiences, but never tried to sound like them, which can be, yeah, which can be a little condescending, right? The idea that you could come into somebody's genre and own it, right? She never did that. No matter what she did, she did her. She never tried to blow out her voice. She never did big runs. She never tried to be--

• 25:16Kara Swisher?

  I just saw her come to my window, and I'd never heard it that way. And it was not the way-- she was doing it with Melissa Esseridge, but she was the lead singer, which was, I was like, oh, look at that.

• 25:26Speaker 05

  I saw her singing with a South African band.

• 25:32Speaker 05

  Yeah, she's in the pocket. But again, not trying at all to sort of do a mimicry of the culture. And I'm telling you something, Black audiences love, love when artists respect us enough to come into our culture and not try to mimic us. You know, one of the, you know, you talk to Black artists, you know, from the 50s and the 60s, where it's this really big push for them to quote-unquote "cross over" to the mainstream. And those artists would say, you know, "Well, why do white audiences never cross over to us?" And in Dolly's respectful engagement with them, she did. She would go, "No, I'm crossing over to you, and I'm gonna act like a guest in your home, but I'm also gonna do my thing." And I think that really resonated with us and why we gave her so much credit.

• 26:16Speaker 05

  You know, when people tried to make Black audiences doubt whether she was really, whether she was really about it, you know, all of that, we all just said, "No, we're gonna let Dolly cook. We trust what she's doing." And I think that's why.

• 26:28Kara Swisher?

  What do you think her legacy will be? A lot of people have had different reactions. I just had Caitlin Collins on my pivot show, and she was like, "I just feel like I got to live at the same time that she got to live. I feel very good about that." Another person was like, "I think it's gonna have an impact on politics." Because people, they're like, "I feel woken up, like, suddenly. Like, I've had it with this." Because the contrast of Trump is so incredible. Just, does she have an effect, and what do you think it will be?

• 26:57Speaker 05

  We've just been in this, you know, this Trump moment, this moment for so long, it starts to feel like normal. And it does sometime, it does take an external shock to just go, "Wait a minute. No, the water's gotten really effin' hot, right? We're boiling here." And I can see this being one of those moments. I also think that comparison really draws for people a clear, you know, black or white, that this was a choice, right? Like, when Donald Trump embodies something, you can't say, "Oh, he's a product of his time." You can't say, "Oh, extreme wealth does this." When Dolly Parton is his peer and chose a very different type of way to exist in the world. And so I also think about that. I mean, I think the cultural impact goes without saying, but I think there is like

• 27:41Speaker 05

  a sort of collective grief we have right now, that we lost Dolly Parton in a political moment with this administration, who in no way deserves the right to memorialize her, right? And I do think people feel that as a call to arms. Do we wish it were the fact that babies are being arrested? Sure. Do we wish it was about all of these other horrible things? But you know what? You take the moment you've got. And if it's that, we looked up and realized, wait a minute, President Trump gets to preside over our national mourning of somebody who represented the best of who we hope we can be? Again, don't know if that'll translate into, like, big P politics, electoral politics, but I do think it has the ability to bring back a little shame.

• 28:26Speaker 05

  And frankly, we need that.

• 28:29Kara Swisher?

  If you had to talk to her, I know it sounds crazy. I always think, what would you ask, what would you ask her if you had one question?

• 28:40Speaker 05

  I think I would have asked her what she wanted to write that she never got the chance to write. I wanna know the story of all the great stories she may exist.

• 28:53Kara Swisher?

  You know it exists. Apparently, she has--

• 28:54Speaker 05

  That's what I'm hoping. I'm hoping they actually throw open her archives, by the way, and we do find that it's in there. But I always felt like she wanted so much to control her story, which goes, you know, totally reasonable. But I thought there was a story of herself she wanted to tell when it was safe for it to be told. And I have had a dream, a fantasy, that there's a secret autobiography in the archives that has been held, you know, upon my death. Now you can do it? That'll just go-- because you know she's got the stories about the worst actors in the industry and the business, and the bad behavior, and what she survived. And I always wanted that stuff from her. And I'm hoping there's a secret biography out there.

• 29:39Kara Swisher?

  Oh, that's great. And I have one last question. One, you talked about her as a writer, and that's what your essay was about. Is there one line that just amazes you?

• 29:48Speaker 05

  "It's getting to the point where it don't add up. I can't keep saying I've come this far with my guitar on pure dumb luck."

• 29:57Kara Swisher?

  Oh, great one. Great line. Yeah. I think, I have to say, it's gotta be "light of a clear, good morning." Everything, not everything's gonna be all right. That was all wrong. That, to me, was the greatest line, you know?

• 30:10Speaker 05

  Because that's it. That's everything. That's all we can do.

• 30:12Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, absolutely. Anyway, Tressie, you're a wonder. I really, I really love your work, and I really appreciate your thoughts here. Thank you very much. Joining me now to talk about Dolly's legacy as a musician is country artist Shelley Wright and author of "Like Me: Confessions of a Heartland Country Singer," and Rolling Stone culture writer Marissa Moss. Moss wrote the book, "Her Country: How Women of Country Music Became a Success They Were Never Supposed to Be." Marissa, Shelley, thanks for coming on. Glad to be here. Glad to be here. And it's such a good topic to talk about, by the way. I'll start with you, Shelley, and then Marissa, and you can answer after that.

• 30:54Kara Swisher?

  What was your immediate emotion when you heard she had passed, Dolly had passed away?

• 31:00Speaker 06

  Shock, even though we, I think we all knew she was not well.

• 31:06Speaker 06

  It's, I was shocked and sad and

• 31:12Speaker 06

  it was, I think it took me a couple of days to really kind of wrap my head around that Dolly Parton is not somewhere doing something great.

• 31:20Kara Swisher?

  And Marissa?

• 31:22Speaker 01

  I think she's kind of, was kind of the definition of someone that we all needed and wanted to believe could live forever. It's kind of hard to imagine a world without Dolly in it and think living in a bit of denial, like, well, maybe if someone's gonna make it to like 150, that'll be Dolly, right? Because we need her to do that. But sort of the same, as Shelley said, it's been taking a minute to sink in. Just, I feel like finally this morning, I was driving my daughter to school and I put on Light of a Clear Blue Morning and it just finally hit me. I was just like,

• 32:00Speaker 01

  had to take a minute and sit with it.

• 32:02Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, I'm so glad that song is getting a lot of attention now. It's one of my favorites. Now, Marissa, you wrote a piece in Rolling Stone on why Dolly was such a beloved figure around the world. Why did her music make it easier for people to connect with her and with maybe each other in a lot of ways?

• 32:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, Dolly is the thing that we can all agree on, right? Everyone from any kind of political party, any background can unite on loving Dolly. And she came from poverty in East Tennessee and she wrote stories from the heartland, from that experience, from Appalachia, about what it was like to, you know, be a human in this world, dealing with human things. So she could write everything from stories of love to stories of loss to just so many different stories about the human experience and all of us can see ourselves in Dolly's songs.

• 33:01Kara Swisher?

  Shelley, at the start of your career, you kind of followed in Dolly's footsteps, becoming one of Porter Wagner's so-called girl singers on his TV show. When you were starting out, were you looking to her as a model of what you should do? Talk a little bit about that experience.

• 33:14Speaker 06

  Yeah, 100%. So Norma Jean was Porter's first girl singer that you may have seen on the Porter Wagner Show. And then Dolly stepped into that role and then in the early 90s, that was the job that I had. And I had been following Dolly and her example since I was a young kid back, you know, on a farm in Kansas. The kind of, my musical landscape was really

• 33:42Speaker 06

  born of Loretta Lynn and Dolly Parton. Those were my two biggest influences. And so, and then when I got to Nashville and got to know Dolly and was lucky to call her a mentor and a friend, I followed her, not only her music, but the way she conducted herself through the business lens. She was peerless in this space. And so I did try to emulate her in every way and fell short at every turn. But those of us who made our way to Nashville with a guitar on our back, everybody was paying attention to how Dolly conducted business and how she made her art. And that included me for sure.

• 34:24Kara Swisher?

  What's it like to be a girl singer on a TV show? I mean, the Porter Wagner Show was just a classic. And of course, he had less and less influence over time, but initially it was critical.

• 34:35Speaker 06

  Well, yeah, and that kind of was the role. Before I got to Nashville, I worked in Branson, Missouri, on a show called The Ozark Jubilee, a pretty storied, historic show there. And the role I played there was girl singer as well. And so, you know, even into the 90s, when I started making records, that's how we were kind of talked about is, you know, you can't have more than one girl singer on an outdoor festival that has eight or nine different acts. I can see Marissa smiling because she's been deep in this conversation for the past 20 years. But it was, there was definitely kind of a role for girls and women.

• 35:14Speaker 06

  And it was, it was, as we look back now, pretty dismissive and belittling of women. But as Loretta told me early in the career, she said, you're not gonna change the industry. Bend, but don't break. And you can't change the game if you're not on the field. So that was the role that most of us were happy to play because that's how we got on the field.

• 35:37Kara Swisher?

  Right. When you think about that, I mean, because she was a girl singer, but transcended that with enormous power.

• 35:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I just, listening to you tell those stories and thinking about that idea of girl singer, we may not call women performers girl singer anymore, but we still treat them in that role in country music, just thinking of how many, you know, how many women in Nashville have to get on the country radio charts by singing with a man.

• 36:07Speaker 01

  But, I mean, Dolly didn't call herself a feminist. I always talk about how she was such a master of words. And so she knew that using a word would be divisive, but her actions were uncategorically feminist. You know, I just think of, one of my favorite Dolly's songs is Just Because I'm a Woman. And she wrote that song after having a conversation with her husband. They had been newlyweds and he asked her if she had ever slept with anyone before they were married. And she said, yes. And he got really upset. And she was thinking to herself, well, that's not fair. We don't care if men are sleeping around before they get married. And so she wrote that. That's what that song is about.

• 37:20Speaker 01

  I mean, and talk about revolutionary for that time and even for now. If there was a song on country radio right now that was about that, I think it would still be kind of revolutionary.

• 37:31Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, so was The Bridge, so was Dumb Blonde. So there were a lot of them.

• 37:34Speaker 01

  Absolutely. That was Barbie.

• 37:36Kara Swisher?

  She was good at a lot of things. Obviously, one of the things that was really special about her is her excellence throughout, right? That it was just whatever she did, singing and songwriting, chief among them, but also business, creativity, branding. What do you think about first when it comes to Dolly? Shelley, go first.

• 37:53Speaker 06

  When I think about Dolly, I think about, I know this sounds a little too woo-woo, but I think about angel wings. I'm not kidding you. This woman, and Cara, I don't know if you ever had a chance to meet her in person.

• 38:08Kara Swisher?

  I didn't.

• 38:08Speaker 06

  But when she walked in a room, whether it be an industry event, a fan event, whether it was, we called it Fan Fair back in the day, which is now the CMA Music Fest, or a restaurant in Nashville, people had a spiritual kind of visceral reaction. And she had, she really did emit a light. And she really was an angel walking the earth. And to the kind of political piece, that she really was careful to not align herself with the political party. And the point being made that, you know, you could see through the lens of now that she was quite progressive and some might even say very liberal.

• 38:49Speaker 06

  The things that she talked about weren't the things that identified her politically, which she didn't want to be. It was the things that she did, i.e. providing uniforms and funding for black marching bands, giving the monies, her performance royalties for I Will Always Love You, Whitney's version, to the black community. So she didn't have to express a political belief. She just did things and that we were supposed to know her by her fruit. She would love that I have used a biblical reference here. We were to know her by her fruit. And her fruit was angelic.

• 39:29Kara Swisher?

  One of the things that I come to mind, and the only interview I wish I'd done was with her, talking just about business, only about business. That's all, because I really think she sort of, she didn't hide it completely, but she didn't like express it as much. She'd say, I always get one over on them because they think I'm dumb. That was pretty much the extent of it. But she famously turned down, and she talked about it, Elvis Presley's request to record I Always Love You, because he wanted the publishing rights, or at least half of them. She wanted to own all the rights to her own music, which was very unusual at the time. Obviously, it paid off big time when Whitney Houston sang it and became a bestselling record. Both Marissa and Shelley talk about this, this pressures and what it meant to be so protective of her intellectual property, even as a young up-and-comer.

• 40:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, it is something, I think of when we were talking about when Taylor Swift is, you know, has been kind of battling to own her publishing rights as part of like one of sort of the foundational lessons of her career. When women come to Nashville, and I'm sure Shelley can talk even, you know, even better about this than I can, having lived it, the degree to which you're expected to sign away and give away just in order to have a career, I mean, it's huge. Like, you will do anything. You are not being advised by people that are always looking out for your best interest, that probably aren't. And you're trying to fight to be that one woman in the room, one woman on the radio.

• 40:57Speaker 01

  And so it's kind of expected that you'll do whatever you have to do. And a lot of times that means giving up your publishing rights and signing these ridiculous deals, you know, multi-album deals and all of these things.

• 41:09Speaker 01

  But Dolly was really a model for advocating for yourself as a woman in the business. And I think she didn't shy away from showing that she was a businessperson.

• 41:19Speaker 06

  So at that time especially, and that particular artist was the most popular artist in the world, one of the most popular artists.

• 41:27Speaker 01

  Imagine telling him no.

• 41:28Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, yeah, as a young woman. Shelley, talk about this, owning your own stuff.

• 41:33Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah. Plus one to everything Marissa just said. The things that we will do when we get to Nashville, when we've got a major label or anyone saying, hey, we believe in you, we want to help you, you just, you don't come to town to be a businessperson. You come to town to make records. And so, you know, when I think about what Dolly did when she did it in terms of her publishing, you know, it's why she was a problematic girl singer. It's one of the reason, I mean, she, before she was seen as an advocate and a pioneer, she was just like a girl singer who was breaking the rules and causing some trouble. But when Colonel Tom Parker, Elvis's manager, called her and said, yeah, but we're gonna need

• 42:17Speaker 06

  half that publishing, she had already had a hit record with I Will Always Love You. She knew the value of that copyright. But I think even if that were a newly licensed song and no one had ever cut it, I still think she would have said, you can't have my publishing. So the name of Dolly's publishing company was Opar, I believe, Own Part. And that was after her Uncle Bill Owens and Parton. And which is why I named my publishing company in the early 90s, Henwright. My mom's maiden name was Henry, my dad, of course, I'm a Wright. One of the things about Dolly is she saw the whole field. She saw the long game. And she knew she was not going to have a three-year career.

• 43:02Speaker 06

  It was her plan to have a 65-year career. And when you think about the value of your IP and Kara, you know, you know, I'm a superfan. I've heard you talk a lot about doing all you can do to hold on to your IP. How much has that meant to you? Everything. You own yourself.

• 43:20Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, it's interesting. A lot of people have been tried, different times have tried to get it and they're like, and they always go, why do you have to have it? I go, I just want it. I don't have to tell you why.

• 43:29Speaker 06

  Because it's mine.

• 43:30Kara Swisher?

  It's mine. I said it's mine because it's mine. That's why. And they're always like, well, for what? Well, you may not make money for it. I don't care. It's mine.

• 43:37Speaker 06

  Yeah. And Dolly had that, that was her thinking is that this isn't, this isn't a short-term career that I want to have. I'm going all the way. And, and she did, and she owned herself. And what a, what a gift to herself and to the, to her family and her team and her band and to the world and an example for the Taylor Swifts. An example for me. I've owned all of my publishing and my masters, all of my masters since 2004. That's hard to do.

• 44:05Kara Swisher?

  One of the things that was interesting about Dolly, the businesswoman, even as her business flourished, was she was never accused of being greedy. Criticisms of capitalism seemed to whiz right by her. How is that possible? Why don't you search, Shelley and then Marissa?

• 44:20Speaker 06

  Oh, she gave so much away. So, you know, you, one could do a quick Google search and see the things that she gave away, the massive amounts of money, intentional money, not just check writing, but intentional, really focused money. And I can promise you, what you can find on Google is not the half of it, not even the quarter of it. You know, when you grow up poor in the Smoky Mountains and in a two, you know, two-room shack, and I, and I had had conversations with Dolly about this, it's all gravy after that. And so I think no one ever questioned her heart because she showed up with it everywhere, every day, every moment of the day. And she, she gave so much money away.

• 45:02Speaker 06

  But again, she did it with intention and, and that kind of that coupling effect of writing a check, but knowing where you want it to go, how you want it to go and who you want to receive it, that's power. No one would ever suggest that this woman was greedy. She, when she said, I just give it away and I just, just more comes in. I don't know what's happening. The more I give it away, the more comes in.

• 45:26Speaker 06

  We'll be back in a minute.

• 45:34Speaker 01

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• 46:04Kara Swisher?

  So one of the things that she did do a lot was work hard, like an incredible, you see, she seemed to be everywhere, these clips that are showing up are like, she was there? Oh, she was there? I didn't know she was there. And last summer, it was announced she was going to do a six-night Vegas residency. I, I bought a ticket. It was later postponed due to health issues. But, you know, she was even at 79, still grieving her husband, she was gearing up to work. And she'd never really, she didn't retire in any ways. Talk a little bit about where that drive came from, because obviously it wasn't about the money at this point or anything else. First Marissa, then Shelley.

• 46:41Speaker 01

  While we talk about the fact that Dolly didn't have children, I think she still saw her life as almost like a version of intergenerational wealth for people in East Tennessee, as a model for Southerners that are really misunderstood, that are kept away from opportunities by, you know, how they grew up, how our society is structured. So I think she saw that business not just as expanding the Dolly brand and working as a model to fuel her charitable efforts and being a model for women, but also providing for her people. Because the Dolly theme park is going to keep going on, the Dolly brand is going to keep going on.

• 47:22Speaker 01

  All of her works that she has, I mean, she has like a whole plan laid out, are going to keep funding people who need that income and some people that came, you know, grew up just like Dolly did. So I think that was part of what really fueled her.

• 47:39Kara Swisher?

  Fueled her working. What do you think, Shelley?

• 47:41Speaker 06

  I think Marissa is exactly right. Dolly felt, and I don't want to use the word obligation, I think she thought it was a privilege to go, to continue to work really hard because she did have lots of communities that really rely on Dollywood and rely on the big Dolly machine. And it's not to say people were just taking from her, but she had an opportunity to provide access and opportunity to others who, without Dolly's influence and kind of her business ecosystem, they'd lose that. And then I would just add, at the end of the day, you know, Dolly, Dolly's scrappy. She's a hard worker. I don't think she would have known what to do with herself if she weren't working.

• 48:25Speaker 06

  And I'll say, if you were to kind of reverse engineer into all of it, this woman always ended up in a quiet room with a guitar, writing something down. That's where the work came from. And I know, I'm, I'm, I know that, you know, as recently as, you know, within the past year or so, she found herself in a room with a guitar, writing ideas down. And probably if I'm a betting woman, she probably was jotting down song ideas in the hospital. That's at the heart of her economic kind of ecosystem was make up a story, write down a song, reflect the human experience.

• 49:04Kara Swisher?

  If she's funding all that philanthropy at the same time, where does the next thing come from, Marissa? I mean, there's rumors that there's lots more songs. Maybe there's other things there. I had heard, the reason I want to talk to her is I heard she was doing a lot of work around AI and song, song stems and creating stuff. She was endlessly interested in future stuff, which I thought was, I was shocked, sort of shocked by in a lot of ways. And of course, then I was like, why am I shocked? She's an entrepreneur. Yeah.

• 49:36Kara Swisher?

  Where does it go then?

• 49:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I think we got from her PR agency within days, I think it must, maybe it was a day, this has been a blur of a week, but a, a plan of everything went out to journalists that she has in the works. And it detailed all of her different brands, her hotel here in downtown Nashville, her museum, her play opening up on Broadway. There's clothing brands, there's food companies, you can buy Dolly cake mix. There are, yeah, there are so many things that she has that exist that are still in the works.

• 50:17Speaker 01

  But I think she knew that the business ventures, even as music unfortunately becomes more difficult, becomes more difficult to propel yourself economically with just music alone. So there's a whole Dolly business machine that will keep running, you know?

• 50:36Kara Swisher?

  Shelley, you were the first mainstream country artist to be openly gay in 2010. And you've said Dolly was one of the few artists who offered her support to you. What did that look like? And what did it mean that someone of her stature was speaking up for you?

• 50:51Speaker 06

  It meant everything. Again, going back to Dolly having been one of my biggest influences in my lifetime and in my musical kind of journey, to have the defining artist of my genre speak publicly and about, about supporting me and, you know, we all knew that Dolly was a friend to the queer community. And she, she, I just can't tell you what, I don't actually still have words to explain how much that meant to me to have Dolly be in my corner and celebrate me. And, and it wasn't a surprise to me because that's who Dolly had always been.

• 51:32Speaker 06

  You know, one of Dolly's, Dolly used to say, she said a lot of things, but don't try to be anything but who you are. I keep saying, well, if you're the fine Christian that you're, you think you are, why are you judging people? Why are you, that's God's job. If you're gay, you're gay. If you're straight, you're straight. And you should be allowed to be, you know, how, how you are.

• 51:55Speaker 02

  And I think that's one of the reasons why the queer community found such favor in her and loved her so much because she truly was.

• 52:03Speaker 06

  Authentically herself and she wanted others to be. And that that really interesting intersection of supporting the queer community while also having the the deep faith practice that she did. That was really unique and and she she allowed a lot of grandparents and parents and neighbors and and folks to to listen a little bit longer to their queer nephew when they said, hey, Auntie, hey, Grandpa, I'm I'm gay. It was Dolly Parton who caught gave them pause enough to kind of listen to their kid. So it meant a lot to me.

• 52:37Kara Swisher?

  Yeah. So Marissa, one of the things she also did a lot was was collaborations with other artists and they were they were all over the place, like that letter to Eminem, like I was like, what? Like, like, it was sort of like, like, I suspect she saw a lot in common in terms of way he grew up and everything else. But one of the in eighty seven, for example, nineteen eighty seven, she and Emily Harris and Linda Ronstadt put an album called Trio. Obviously, Ronstadt is more of a rock and roll singer. Harris is more folky. I saw Melissa Etheridge thing the other day and then Lady Smith Black Bombazo. It was all over the place, you know, bluegrass, and then it was pop, and then it was country, and then it was religious, and then it was Christmas. They it went and then she just moved along, essentially.

• 53:22Speaker 07

  She moved all over the map. And like you said, she she said yes so many times, I think, when she could have very easily said no repeatedly. And I I think she understood the importance of, you know, being darling and bringing herself into that conversation. I think of in twenty nineteen, when she joined the High Women, just Brandy Carlisle, Amanda Shires, Natalie Hemby, and Maren Morris onstage at Newport Folk Festival.

• 53:50Kara Swisher?

  Yeah.

• 53:51Speaker 07

  And then a score of other women that joined the stage later. She did not have to show up that day. Apparently, she had to, like, charter a plane just to get in there and they covered her in a cloak so she could come into Newport without anyone recognizing that it was Dolly. So that's a lot of effort to go through just to be this, you know, kind of short surprise performance with women that were out there. The the mission of the High Women was more women need to be in country on country radio. And she said, I want to, you know, cosign this. And and that's pretty wild to me. And you can find, you know, Dolly duets with people that maybe you've never heard of because she just wanted to, you know, wanted to support those projects.

• 54:36Kara Swisher?

  Last question for both of you. I'd love you both to reflect on what you think the legacy and the future impact is going to be. Will it be political? Will people be like reminded of kindness in a way, in a profound way? And what lesson will each of you be taking away from her life? Shelley, why don't you start?

• 54:57Speaker 06

  Yeah. What will the future look like? Well, the world is less than with Dolly gone. That said, her legacy of using her power and knowing her power, whether it be supporting someone's version of one of her songs or using her power to give money to something that she cared about. She used her power well, and I think her legacy will be a reminder to all of us to know your power and use it, use it often. And and then in terms of it just in in terms of what it's like going forward, I think it's all of our jobs to remind ourselves, kind of, what would Dolly do?

• 55:41Speaker 06

  Dolly was genuinely.

• 55:43Kara Swisher?

  Hold on, let me show you. It's my shirt right now.

• 55:45Speaker 06

  What would Dolly do?

• 55:48Kara Swisher?

  Oh, my God. I got it at Dollywood. There it is.

• 55:52Speaker 06

  Okay, I'm gonna need one of those. Well, great shirt, Cara.

• 55:56Kara Swisher?

  Thank you.

• 55:57Speaker 06

  And and I do think she has made the world kinder. And and I do think that Dolly belongs to all of us, right, left, center, north, southeast, and west. I I've heard from people around the globe, colleagues from around the globe in the past few days, we are so sorry about Dolly Parton. We're mourning her here in the office. We're playing her music. Dolly belongs to the world, and I think that's that's the legacy.

• 56:19Kara Swisher?

  Okay. Marissa, you have the last word.

• 56:21Speaker 07

  Something that I that I've been thinking about and wrote about is this idea that we all can agree on Dolly. And what does that mean? And what would she think about that? And I don't think it was an ego project. I don't think she all wanted us to agree on her and love her because it made her feel good and made her feel like she was the most powerful woman on earth. I think there's an important lesson, and I really hope that we all stop and think about this now, in that if we could all agree on Dolly Parton, what more can we do? Can't we all agree with each other more? Can't we find a middle place with each other more? Can't we understand each other's humanity a little bit more?

• 57:02Speaker 07

  So in that process of all loving something together as a people, as humans, what more can we do with that feeling? And I really hope that now that we're talking about her in the past tense, which sucks so much, that we'll continue to think, how else can we harness this feeling? What else can we all come together on? Because I don't think we want to let that go. I hope we don't want to let that go.

• 57:28Kara Swisher?

  No, no. You know, who are alternative? It's so opposite. Trump is so opposite to her. I'm trying not to bring him up because he doesn't belong anywhere in this conversation. But you're right, you're absolutely right. It's like, what can we, what do we have in common? And she was what we had in common. Anyway, I really appreciate it from both of you. I could talk about Dolly endlessly and all kinds of topics, and I hope we'll continue to do so in the years ahead because it's really much needed.

• 57:54Speaker 06

  For sure. Thanks, Cara. Thanks for having us on.

• 57:57Speaker 07

  Thanks for having me.

• 57:58Kara Swisher?

  Today's show was produced by Nishat Kurwatt, Tracy Hunt, Madeline LaPlante-Duby, Michelle Aloy, Catherine Millsop, and Kailin Lynch. Special thanks to Catherine Barner.

• 58:08Speaker 06

  This episode was engineered by Aliyah Jackson Perez, and our theme music is by Trackademics.

• 58:14Kara Swisher?

  If you're already following the show, then you know about the light of a clear blue morning that's coming. If not, Jolene, go away. Go wherever you listen to podcasts, search for On with Kara Swisher, and hit follow. Thanks for listening to On with Kara Swisher from Podium Media, New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network, and us. We'll be back on Monday with more.

• 58:38Speaker 01

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