AI Summary
5 min readDolly Parton's America: Sad Ass Songs
The first episode of Radiolab's nine-part series Dolly Parton's America opens with a story about a twelve-year-old girl who recorded a cover of "Jolene," and whose mother secretly sent the recording to Dolly Parton's foundation. Months later, a large orange envelope arrived containing an autographed photo and a handwritten letter. Dolly wrote: "You are awfully young to be singing a song like that. But your rendition is beautiful and original. ... Keep chasing those dreams. One day our paths will cross." The producer who told this story, now an adult, said the letter "was too big to process" at the time, but it made sense—"she was the type of person that really felt she wasn't above anyone, even though she had this gift."
The Unifier in a Divided Moment
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What you'll learn
- 1 (00:00) **Introduction: Why Dolly Parton, Right Now** - Host Soren Wheeler explains the episode's context: Radiolab revisiting Dolly Parton's legacy after her passing, leading into the first episode of the series *Dolly Parton's America*.
- 2 (07:10) **Entering the Dollyverse: The Unifier** - Jad Abumrad introduces the series, recounting his own awakening to Dolly's unifying power during her 2016 tour, which cut across political and social divisions.
- 3 (13:36) **First Interview: The Sad Ass Songs** - Abumrad sits down with Dolly Parton in 2017; she immediately introduces the concept of her early "sad ass songs," revealing a dark, overlooked chapter of her songwriting.
- 4 (16:01) **The Joke vs. The Lyricist** - Abumrad contrasts Dolly's public persona as a self-deprecating joke-teller with the serious, painful content of her early lyrics, a tension the episode aims to resolve.
- 5 (20:16) **An Ocean of Pain: Songs of Witness** - Abumrad and Dolly explore the "sad ass songs" from her first four albums (1967-1970), which function as a raw, unflinching chronicle of women's suffering.
- 6 (23:54) **Darkness and Suicide** - Dolly admits she has contemplated suicide, describing a period in her late 30s when she was overwhelmed by stress, health problems, and depression.
- 7 (26:04) **Down from Dover: Abortion and Stillbirth** - Dolly discusses her song "Down from Dover," written five years before Roe v. Wade, about a teenager who gives birth to a stillborn baby after being abandoned by her lover.
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Show Notes
The world lost a legend recently, and we wanted in some small way to pay tribute to the great Dolly Parton. So we’re playing you an episode from a series we had a small part in back in 2017, Dolly Parton’s America.
The series kicked off with a simple question: How did the queen of the boob joke become a feminist icon? Helen Morales, author of “Pilgrimage to Dollywood,” gave us a stern directive – look at the lyrics! So we dive into Dolly’s discography, starting with the early period of what Dolly calls “sad ass songs” to find remarkably prescient words of female pain, slut-shaming, domestic violence, and women being locked away in asylums by cheating husbands. We explore how Dolly took the centuries-old tradition of the Appalachian “murder ballad”—an oral tradition of men singing songs about brutally killing women—and flipped the script, singing from the woman’s point of view. And as her career progresses, the songs expand beyond the pain to tell tales of leaving abuse behind.
How can such pro-woman lyrics come from someone who despises the word feminism? Best to let Dolly tell you herself.
EPISODE CREDITS:
Reported by - Jad Abumrad and Shima Oliaee
Produced by - Jad Abumrad
with help from - W. Harry Fortuna
Original music from - Alex Overington
Sound design contributed by - Alex Overington
and Edited by - Suzie Lechtenberg
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