We begin 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? Dolly explains.
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What is Dolly Parton's America?
Well, Dolly Parton's America would be the same as Dolly Parton's world.
Hey, I'm Chad Abumrad.
Let me explain how I got here to a podcast about Dolly Parton.
I grew up in Tennessee, which means I grew up in Dolly Parton's world.
Dolly's world.
She was everywhere.
She was looking down at you from billboards, coming out of car radio.
She was on commercials.
She just listen for me, infused the air.
So as a consequence, I didn't really think about her a lot.
It's a little bit like that joke.
One fish says to another fish, how's the water today?
And the other fish says, what's water?
I was that second fish.
She'd created this world, and I was just swimming through it.
But then a few things happened.
2016, I'm living in New York.
Dolly is on tour, and she comes and does a stadium show here in Flushing, Queens.