This week: Dolly Parton. On August 25th, Dolly Rebecca Parton passed away at 80, after a short battle with cancer. This is a personal one. I talk about what she meant to me: the country music rabbit hole that started at my public library, the sense of humor and radical acceptance that made her feel like home for a young queer kid, the story of the trans fan whose top surgery she quietly paid for, and the two songs (written, according to legend, in the same day) that prove she was one of the great American songwriters, full stop. I talk about seeing her live at Tanglewood in 2016, “Pure and Simple” and how it got me through coming out to my family, the place I set for her at my own wedding, and what I want my son to understand about her someday, from 9 to 5 to the songbook she bought back for Porter Wagoner decades after he made her career miserable.
Then we zoom out to the “future history” of it all: how Dolly Parton fits into histories of women in country music, the impossible standards she was held to as a woman and an artist, the myth of the apolitical celebrity, what her giving says about wealth and philanthropy in our current Gilded Age, and why she asked Tennessee lawmakers not to build her a statue. Whatever history decides, I know how I’ll remember her: for her talent, and for her kindness.
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Transcript
Full episode transcript here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1E5BygIoCPYH_5CJTYRbyvNZ9yyBynI1Tcq-AKKi1PMM/edit?usp=sharing
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