Listener supported WNYC Studios.

Shima Oliaee:

Hi, this is Shima Oliaee, the producer of Dolly Parton's America.

Speaker 3:

No!

Speaker 4:

Shut up!

Speaker 3:

No! Are you going to take us?

Shima Oliaee:

Before we start, one question.

Jad Abumrad:

Do you remember the first time you left home?

Shima Oliaee:

Do you remember one of the Dolly songs that you heard Nelson Mandela play?

Jad Abumrad:

I'd love to ask you about Porter Wagner.

Dolly Parton:

Now, that's when I needed a weapon.

Jad Abumrad:

Yeah?

Shima Oliaee:

In this series, we had asked Dolly a lot of questions. Here's a question for you. How much is Dolly Parton's America worth to you?

Shima Oliaee:

This series was listener supported. It took Jad and I two years to make. It involved dozens of plane rides, hotel rooms. We commissioned original music. We had tape syncers, other reporters across the world. In short, it was a really expensive series to make, paid for by you.

Shima Oliaee:

Thank you! When things are listener supported, they're just different. We can chase leads in a different way. We are not beholden to advertisers. The only people we are beholden to is you. But there is a problem, unfortunately. Of the millions and millions of people who downloaded these episodes, who listened, who enjoyed laughter, who heard the Porter story, heard the Jolene story, only a tiny, tiny handful have stepped forward and made a financial contribution. We would like to make more of this kind of thing, but in order for us to do that, we need to hear from a whole lot more of you. So please, if you like what you heard, if you want to hear more of this kind of thing, please text the word Dolly to 70101. You'll get a text back giving instructions on how you can donate or you can go to dollypartonsamerica.org/donate. Again, text the word Dolly to 70101. It just takes a few seconds. We'd love to hear from you. Actually, we need to hear from you and thanks.

Dolly Parton:

(singing)

Jad Abumrad:

I'm Jad Abumrad this is Dolly Parton's America final episode.

Dolly Parton:

(singing).

Speaker 7:

He's alive.

Jad Abumrad:

No, she's alive.

Jad Abumrad:

I want to close the series with my favorite Dolly story, hands-down. It's the story of the moment that Dolly became Dolly. It happened in a church. Now I'm not someone who's ever really gone to church. My family came from a place torn apart by religion. We avoided churches and over the past two years of interviewing Dolly, I was hesitant to sort of get into her faith because I just kind of figured it would be something I wouldn't really be able to understand. Because religion, like politics, it's just one of these things that divides us. Right? But then she told me this story about this thing that happened to her in a church and it's just kind of spooked me a little bit.

Jad Abumrad:

No, I have to admit, one of the only reasons we ended up talking about it was because of that UT class, the Dolly's America class.

Speaker 8:

We'll never know who Dolly Parton is. We'll know who Dolly is, but who Dolly Parton is, probably never.

Jad Abumrad:

At the end of that interview, as Shima Oliaee, and I, and the students were all sitting around, we kind of got onto a thing.

Speaker 9:

I would love to like sit down and ask her questions.

Jad Abumrad:

Okay. Let's let me follow that inspiration. So what's the question? What question would you want? What question would you want to ask her?

Speaker 9:

Oh, man. I feel like there's this hidden side of her and I just like hope that she's doing well. I hope she's okay. I think when I put myself in her shoes, I imagine her life to be exhausting.

Laney Goodwill:

I don't even know. I would ask her-

Jad Abumrad:

This is Laney, by the way. Laney Goodwill.

Laney Goodwill:

I think I would ask her if she has any regrets about the way that it all played out.

Jad Abumrad:

Do you have any regrets about the way it all played out?

Dolly Parton:

No. Well, I guess, it's almost like everything I've ever done, good or bad, seemed to be the thing to do at the time, and to change one thing could change the whole thing. So I don't think you can live your life like that to regret. I regret it if I've hurt anybody else on my journey. I regret maybe getting caught a time or two. Some things I might not should've been doing, but I'm not saying I wouldn't do it again. But anyway, so to be honest, I guess the real answer to that is no.

Jad Abumrad:

What did you get? What'd you call it? You're not going to tell me.

Dolly Parton:

I knew you'd go back to this.

Jad Abumrad:

What did you get caught at that you weren't supposed to be getting caught at?

Dolly Parton:

You can't know everything, can you?

Jad Abumrad:

All right, fair enough. Fair enough.

Jad Abumrad:

One of the other questions that came up-

Speaker 11:

Is it true about the tattoos? That her body is like covered in tattoos?

Students:

What?

Speaker 11:

No?

Jad Abumrad:

To be fair, Shima was the one who threw that one out. Is it true about the tattoos?

Dolly Parton:

I have a few tattoos on my body. They are not meant to be tattoos for the sake of tattoos. I'm very fair skinned. And when I have any kind of surgery or any kind of scarring, well it turns... It's kind of discolors and I can't get the color. So I, when I first started getting a few little things done, I had a few little tattoos to cover up some scarring, but I'm not tattooed all over like a bike woman or anything. But I do have a few, but they're very delicate. I don't have the dark ones. They're all pastels.

Jad Abumrad:

Can I ask of what? Or is that too personal?

Dolly Parton:

Well, I have some butterflies. (singing).

Dolly Parton:

I have some lace and some-

Dolly Parton:

(singing).

Dolly Parton:

Little bows, couple of things like that.

Jad Abumrad:

Okay. All that was really just prelude. The question that drove us to the story I mentioned came from a student named Will Oaks.

Will Oaks:

And this isn't really much as a question, I just want to have a discussion with her like what is the theology of Dolly Parton behind closed doors? What exactly... Are you like the church ladies, as we've been talking about? Is that you? Is there something deeper there? I just want to get to the core of her belief system. Not in the way of, again, judging. I just want to know, like honest to goodness.

Jad Abumrad:

What is the theology of Dolly Parton behind closed doors?

Dolly Parton:

Well now I am not... I'm a very spiritual person. I do not believe... I don't like talking politics and I don't like talking religion and I certainly don't like trying to cram my religion down anybody's throat because I'm not that religious, but I am very spiritual.

Jad Abumrad:

How do you practice your faith?

Dolly Parton:

I don't practice it. I live it. I think people try too hard. I talk to God like he is my best friend. I just go around talking to him. Sometimes I think if somebody saw me in my house, they'd think I was an absolute lunatic. I just talk to God and sometimes if something great has happened, I just raise my hand, give God a high five or a thumbs up. It's like I just, I don't feel like I have to go to church to do it. I think church is in our hearts. It's wonderful for those that want to go to church, that's a wonderful thing.

Dolly Parton:

But I don't think I have to, and it's like I go when I want to, or when I can, or special occasions, but I live my faith. If you try to shove that down people's throats or you come on goody goody, that ain't going to work. You live by example. You teach by example, you learn by example, don't you think? And even the old cynics will say, "Oh, there's no such thing as God." I said, "Well, that's your problem. I know there is, for me." And that's what works for me. It would scare me to death to think that there was nothing bigger and better than me, that there wasn't something out there that we could depend on. Of course you look at it, "Well, if there is a God, why would he let this happen or that happen?" Well, he's not letting things. Things happen. He gave us free will. We've the ones that screw up all the time.

Jad Abumrad:

We started talking about this and initially I thought that Dolly was sort of addressing that big question that people have about God and a belief in God. Like how can you believe in God? How can God exist and so many bad things happen in the world? How would he allow that to happen? And I initially, I thought she was nodding at that idea, that sort of deist idea that God created the world but then voluntarily gave up some control to us mere mortals. And so when bad things happen, it's not necessarily his plan. It's sort of his permissive will as it's sometimes called. I don't know.

Dolly Parton:

I don't even try to analyze it to that degree. I just accept it from me.

Jad Abumrad:

But as we kept talking, it became clear her faith is way more particular and idiosyncratic than I would've ever expected.

Dolly Parton:

The Bible says, let every man seek out his own salvation. And that means to save himself, whatever it takes to save you. And if you can get to that place and you find your own peace, then you can do good for other people, if you're at peace within yourself.

Jad Abumrad:

Because I know you grew up in a very devout family who went to church all the time, was there a moment when you stopped going and it became more internal for you? Was that-

Dolly Parton:

Yeah. Well, we grew up in a fanatical church, Pentecostal, Holy roller, but I still love it. In fact, I'm doing a show. I just sold a show called Sister Shine for Lifetime, where I'm playing a female evangelist. I always wanted to do it. And it's about a woman that kind of gets torn down because of the religion. But I just always... That hellfire damnation that we went through, used to scare me to death. And I was too scared to... I didn't want to go up. I just was scared of all that. And I used to pray. I just would pray for God to show himself to me or to let me see what that was about. Because I would say I would talk to him, even then I would say it. It just scared me to death in the church and it scares me. It's like I don't want to be afraid of God because then they say we're supposed to fear him and then they say he's our father and we're supposed to... And I was confused with all that.

Jad Abumrad:

And she says, when she saw people go up, and get saved, and speak in tongues, and do the whole thing, she would always feel like, "Why is that not happening for me? What am I doing wrong?"

Dolly Parton:

I never, never felt like I was saved. I never felt like I was saved, that I was getting what they were seem to be getting, or supposed to be getting, because I just didn't ever feel like I had reached that place.

Dolly Parton:

But then, there was this old abandoned church down the hill. That was-

Jad Abumrad:

Describe the church if you don't mind.

Dolly Parton:

To this day, that stands out in my mind just like it happened. There was this old church at the foot of the hill where we were living, and it just had an old piano in it. All the windows were all busted. People used to go down there, drink, make out. They were dirty pictures painted on the walls.

Jad Abumrad:

She was 12 years old. She would wander into that abandoned church. And as she writes in her autobiography, she would fixate on those pictures.

Dolly Parton:

I spent a lot of time looking at them, studying the way the sexual organs had been drawn in that time, trying to add to them.

Jad Abumrad:

You would doodle on those drawings?

Dolly Parton:

Oh, yeah. Just I loved that old church. And every time I'd go down there, it was just a peace in that church.

Dolly Parton:

(singing)

Dolly Parton:

I could just feel the echo and the bigness and I loved to sing in it.

Dolly Parton:

(singing).

Dolly Parton:

My voice sounded good in there. But I would take that old piano, I'd bang around. There was a few old keys left on it. I even took a string and rigged it up on a board, where it was kind of like sounded like some Middle Eastern sound. It was just an old droning sound.

Dolly Parton:

(singing).

Dolly Parton:

And I would sing.

Dolly Parton:

(singing).

Jad Abumrad:

So she says there was this one particular day she was in the church, first staring at the dirty pictures, then singing for a couple hours, after that-

Dolly Parton:

And I just was praying, and praying, and praying. The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures. He leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul. Yea, though I walked through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil for thou art with me.

Dolly Parton:

I just was praying because I thought, "I need to know."

Dolly Parton:

They comfort me.

Dolly Parton:

I just need a feeling I don't have. I need a safety. I don't have.

Dolly Parton:

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.

Dolly Parton:

And I just remember being in that church and I felt something. I remember it just came to me. I didn't hear it like a voice. It came to me as a feeling that was a strong as a voice though. And I felt like I found God that day, and I felt like I knew who I was that day.

Jad Abumrad:

She writes that in this place of confusing images...

Dolly Parton:

I found real truth here, in one place, I found God, music, and sex. My fascination was complete.

Dolly Parton:

(singing).

Dolly Parton:

I sang with a strength and conviction that only God could have understood. The joy of the truth I found there is with me to this day. I found God. I had found Dolly Parton and I loved them both.

Dolly Parton:

(singing).

Jad Abumrad:

It's kind of perfect, in a way, that you found that with dirty pictures on the wall and a busted up piano with a... It somehow feels like all the Dolly things.

Dolly Parton:

Yeah, the sexuality, the spirituality, the sensuality, and the music, all that is me. And I remember when I left that old church, I was still walking around the road back up our house and Vonny Owens, one of my old uncles that owned a sawmill up the road, and he came down. And I was just jumping. I was just flying, just jumping up and down. I was skipping around and he said, "Where are you going on this fine day?" And I said, "I'm on the road to paradise."

Dolly Parton:

(singing).

Dolly Parton:

And so, I remember just saying that.

Jad Abumrad:

She says her uncle was a little confused.

Dolly Parton:

But I still... Like if your mama talks in tongues, and your mama lays hands on people, and you love your mama, and your aunts, and your uncles, and your grandpa, that's real to them, as what I have is real to me.

Jad Abumrad:

I think part of what I love about this story, well, a lot of things, it kind of captures Dolly Parton for me, how she can be all of these things at once. She's able to pull in all of these disparate things from the borderlands and somehow hold them all together to where they don't feel contradictory. There's something welcoming about this kind of faith. It's so singular and permeable. And as for Dolly, she says she can will herself back to that abandoned church anytime she wants.

Dolly Parton:

It's like a little invisible wall. I can just kind of go through there and be in my God place, and I can stay there until I'm restored or healed in my spirit, if something's really troublesome. And nobody can go there but me, I can't take nobody with me.

Jad Abumrad:

How do you go there? What do you do to get there?

Dolly Parton:

I just walk right through it.

Jad Abumrad:

Sometimes she says if things have been really intense, she will fast for three or four days, no food, just water, as a way to get back to that place.

Dolly Parton:

I know when it's time, I just know if I can't deal with it anymore and I just am worrying too much, fretting too much. And I'm not... even if I pray and I'm not... I just think I have to stop this now. I just have to go to my own little space.

Jad Abumrad:

Dolly Parton's America will continue in a moment.

Dolly Parton:

Well, I'm a very spiritual person as you know, not religious, but I'm very... I connect to that and that's where I get my energy and that's where I get my creativity. That's where I get my strength. That's where I get my stamina to go on when things are hard. I just kind of draw from that stuff out there that I feel is there for all of us. It's just that I connected to it early and I just use it.

Jad Abumrad:

This is Dolly Parton's America. I'm Jad Abumrad. In my final interview with Dolly, we met at a small house that she owns in Nashville, not too far from where I grew up actually. Honestly, I thought, "Oh my God, I've passed by this house a million times on the way to school. I had no idea." We sat on a blue couch. She was dressed in all white and I asked her some more questions about her faith and also about the future. So many people we spoke with refer to you as Saint Dolly. But it does make me wonder, what do you think happens when you're not here and it's just Saint Dolly and it's no longer Dolly Dolly?

Dolly Parton:

Well, first of all, I'm no saint. Trust me. I'm no saint. But for me, as far as what I hope my music will be left behind, I hope that it will always live. I think a lot of that other stuff may fall away, but I would like to think that I've left some good pieces of music. I think as long as time lasts, people will be doing music all kinds of different ways.

Jad Abumrad:

As we were talking, it became clear that this question that I had thrown out, what happens next, is something that her and her team are thinking about on all levels. She hinted, without really elaborating, that they are thinking business deals regarding her publishing catalog. They're already going into the vaults.

Dolly Parton:

I am a lucky person because I've got hundreds, hundreds, even thousands of songs and a big part of them have never even been recorded. There's enough stuff to go on forever with my music to do compilation albums, to do actually new and original stuff. And I am purposely trying to put songs down for that very purpose to have a click track and my vocals to where any any arrangement can be done.

Jad Abumrad:

Really?

Dolly Parton:

So I think ahead.

Jad Abumrad:

Will we be hearing Dolly albums of new material for 50 years?

Dolly Parton:

Yes. From now on, where my music is concerned.

Jad Abumrad:

It could be that we'll hear your vocals over someone else's music a hundred years from now.

Dolly Parton:

Yeah, anybody could produce that. Anyone, any producer, anywhere in the world, a hot producer, when I'm gone, they could take my songs, just the click track of my vocal and build a complete arrangement around that. Any style, anything that we do. Because as you know, if you got a good click track to where you've... and a vocal, anything can be done with that. So that will go on forever. I'm one of those people that believe in being prepared. I don't want to ever leave my stuff in the same shape like Prince, or Aretha, or anybody that don't plan ahead with that.

Dolly Parton:

And as far as what happens after we go on, like I say, I'm no saint so I'm hoping just as a Christian faith person, that we go on to a greater thing. I believe that we're all part of that great divine plan, and I'm hoping to get on up there, and do some more writing, and singing, and playing with those golden harps, and write some more songs, and have my own mansion, and walk them golden streets of glory, and keep doing it forever and ever and ever. So I'm going to get in the angel band, for sure. I want to play in the angel band and I want to maybe play the harp up there. I don't know.

Dolly Parton:

(singing).

Dolly Parton:

I really don't know where we go. I don't know if we... If there's such a thing as reincarnation, I kind of believe all that kind of stuff. I'm just open to things. And when I was working with Shirley MacLaine, who had that book out about reincarnation, and somebody said, "Oh, how'd you and Shirley MacLaine get along?" And we got along fine. I said, "I don't know that I believe in reincarnation. And I didn't believe in it when I lived before." So it's a joke.

Jad Abumrad:

Yeah, took me a second. Sorry.

Dolly Parton:

But anyway, so I'm just saying you don't really know. You just hope and you have faith. That's what faith is. But I believe that it's going to be better. I think it's not the end of me. I don't think it's the end of any of us. I think we're recycled and if nothing else, we just go back into that great flow of divine energy, and hopefully we can spread ourselves around in other wonderful ways. That's what I hope.

Dolly Parton:

(singing)

Jad Abumrad:

Dolly, again, I just really want to thank you.

Dolly Parton:

Well, let me just say though, that I feel honored and hopefully you'll treat this with respect. I was happy to spend the time because once I got into it, when I saw that you really were sincere about it, and you really wanted to know my true feelings, and maybe something we've done might inspire people to do a little better.

Jad Abumrad:

I hope so. I hope so.

Dolly Parton:

(singing).

Jad Abumrad:

Dolly Parton's America was produced, written and edited by me and the incredible, amazing, invaluable Shima Oliaee. Brought to you by OSM audio, and WNYC Studios. We had help from W Harry Fortuna throughout the series. Huge thanks to him. Thank you to the folks at Sony Music, Carper Collins. Thanks to St Augustine church, Jonathan Fenelon and Vanessa Pena there. And thanks to Nora Brown for singing for us in that church. Thank you to Lynn Sacco of the Dolly Parton's America class at the University of Tennessee, to all of her students who spent so much time with us. To David Dotson of the Dollywood foundation. Danny Nozell, Sam Haskell, Theresa Hughes. Thank you to the editorial brain trust of Susie Lichtenberg, Lulu Miller, Pat Walter, Soren Wheeler, and Sam Shahi. A very special thanks to all of the people on our Tiger team. Theodora Cuslin, Rachel Lieberman, John Passmore, Maya Pasini, Sahar Baharloo, Kim Nowaki, Millie Christie Devoe, Liz Weber, Dan Pichette, and Ashley Lusk. Thank you to Christine de Carvallo for the beautiful series art that you can see at dollypartonsamerica.org, where you can also find a playlist of music from the series. Thank you to Apple Music for partnering with us on that. And I want to thank my dad and of course Dolly.

Jad Abumrad:

If you liked this series, and this is the first time you've ever heard anything I have been involved in, definitely go to radiolab.org and check out that show. 17 years of content waiting for you. Also to keep tabs on myself, Shima, all the new projects that we will be developing, go to osmaudio.com. That's OSMaudio.com. And that is a wrap. I'm Jad Abumrad signing off. Thanks for listening.

 

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