I was inspired by a podcast called The 500 hosted by Los Angeles-based comedian Josh Adam Meyers. His goal, and mine, is to explore Rolling Stone Magazine's 2012 edition of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.
Album: # 301
Album Title: Coat Of Many Colors
Artist: Dolly Parton
Genre: Country
Recorded: RCA Studio (Nashville, Tennessee)
Released: October, 1971
My age at release: 6
How familiar was I with it before this week: One Song
Is it on the 2020 list? Yes, 257 (Moving up 44 spots)
Song I am putting on my Spotify Playlist: Coat Of Many Colors
It's not hard to make a convincing case that Dolly Parton is the greatest artist on The 500 list. She is a beautiful, kind, generous, multi-talented musician, songwriter, actress, philanthropist and entrepreneur who has managed to navigate the world of celebrity without controversy and with a rare depth of humility. Members of the jury, buckle in as I take time to showcase an artist rightfully regarded as a U.S. national treasure and beloved by fans around the world.
Background
Born in 1946, she was the fourth of twelve children who lived in a one-room cabin on the shores of Little Pigeon River in the heart of the Smoky Mountains of rural Tennessee. Her father, Lee, was a sharecropper and eventually secured his own small tobacco farm. He also worked construction jobs to supplement his income. Despite being illiterate, Dolly remembers him as "one of the smartest people she ever knew and raised her to understand business, finance and "how to make a profit".
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| Postcard of Little Pigeon River in autumn |
Her mother (unsurprisingly with 11 pregnancies before the age of 35) was a homemaker who cared for the children. She entertained them with Smoky Mountain Folklore and Ancient Ballads about their relatives – Welsh immigrants who had moved to the Appalachian region a century earlier.
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| Dolly (centre) with her first seven siblings and their mother |
Music Career
Her music career began in childhood, singing in churches and eventually on local radio and television stations. Immediately after graduating high school, she moved to Nashville and first found success as a songwriter. When she turned 21, she was invited by Porter Wagoner to join his weekly syndicated television program.
Through Wagoner's mentorship and support, Parton began to find an audience and launched a successful solo career. At Wagoner's prompting, she re-recorded hits by other artists. Eventually she found success with her own writing, gaining significant airplay with the release of this week's album, Coat Of Many Colors, and the single of the same name.
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| Wagoner with Parton (1967) |
Hastily written on the back of a dry cleaning receipt during a tour in 1969, it told the story of a coat her mother had stitched for her that was made of ragged, coloured fabric, donated to the family by neighbours.
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| Dolly's coat of many colors on display at the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville |
As she stitched, Dolly's mother shared the biblical story of Joseph and his coat of many colours. The next day, Parton rushed to school beaming with pride about her new jacket, only to be teased by the other children who laughed at the patchwork scraps of fabric, and her obvious poverty. The final lyric (below), gives us a glimpse of the outlook she would embrace in the next, wildly successful chapter of her life.
"But they didn't understand it, and I tried to make them see
One is only poor, only if they choose to be
Now I know we had no money, but I was rich as I could be
In my coat of many colors my momma made for me."
Over the ensuing decade, Parton's rise to stardom was meteoric, with no sign of a slowdown 50 years later. She established herself as one of country and pop's greatest songwriters, singers and performers. She penned more than 25 number one hits, including the song I Will Always Love You which, when re-recorded by Whitney Houston on the soundtrack to My Bodyguard, became the fifth biggest selling single of all time, receiving Diamond status in the United States for more than 10,000,000 copies sold.
She was also a prolific and award-winning movie star. As a burgeoning, young-teen movie buff in the early-eighties, I was smitten by the spunky, sexy, star in her many lead roles, including 9 to 5 (1980), The Best Little Whorehouse In Texas (1982) and even the terribly cheesy Rhinestone (1984).
In 1986, she co-founded the Dollywood company and purchased the Silver Dollar City theme park and theatre in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, her birthplace. It was revamped and renamed Dollywood where it has operated successfully for over 35 years. The 150-acre property plays host to three million guests per year and is the biggest employer in Tennessee, with more than 4,000 employees.
Dolly Dominates Hollywood
Entrepreneurial Endeavours
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| The entrance to Dollywood |
Not only does it house the usual roller-coasters, rides and a waterpark, it also provides a venue for Tennessee musicians and craftspeople to perform and sell their wares. In 2008, the park earned The Liseberg Applause Award, an international accolade presented every two years to the amusement park whose "management, operations and creative accomplishments have inspired the industry with their foresight, originality and sound business development."
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| Dolly Parton accepting the Applause Award (2010) |
Philanthropy
Finally, and arguably most importantly, is Dolly's history of philanthropy. Since the mid-eighties, the Dollywood Foundation has given millions of dollars to support multiple charities including the Red Cross, HIV/AIDS causes and environmental organizations dedicated to the protection of endangered animals, particularly the American bald eagle. I can only offer a truncated glimpse here, but Dolly’s generosity is legendary.
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For example, her literacy program, The Imagination Library, warms the hearts of educators like me. Every parent who enrolls in the free program receives a no-charge book every month for their child until they reach kindergarten. In 2018, Parton was recognized by the Library of Congress after mailing out her hundredth-million free book.
She also established The Buddy Program in her home county of Sevier, Tennessee. In 1989, she learned that more than 30% of students in the region failed to graduate high school. Since 1991, Grade 8 students have been invited to a day at Dollywood that includes a special assembly where Dolly personally issues a challenge. They are asked to choose a buddy and, if both are successfully graduated from high school, she will give them each $500. Within the decade, dropout rates plummeted to 6%.
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Long Live Dolly
Dolly also contributed a million dollars to the Vanderbilt Research project, a group that was instrumental in the release of the first Moderna Vaccine. This prompted the hashtag #DollyCuresCovid in early 2020. To help combat vaccine skepticism, the normally apolitical Dolly also shared a video of her inoculation with the humorous tagline; Dolly Gets A Dose Of Her Own Medicine.
If that isn't enough, Dolly even saved a nine-year-old's life. In 2021, a young dancer on the set of her film Christmas On The Square failed to see an approaching vehicle. Dolly did, quickly pulling her to safety. You can read the full story here.
“And so," dear readers, “is Dolly Parton the greatest artist I will write about on The 500 list? Has she not risen from humble beginnings to emerge as a beautiful, kind, generous, multi-talented musician, songwriter, actress philanthropist and entrepreneur, navigating the world of celebrity without controversy and with exemplary humility?"
I believe I can safely rest my case.
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| Parton and Talia Hill, whom Parton saved from injury in 2021 |
I believe I can safely rest my case.
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