Dolly Parton, 65 this year and inducted into the Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame this month, could never be accused of taking herself too seriously. If she had failed as a country singer, she would have made a decent comedienne. Say what you like about her — chances are that she has said it already.
About her famous bust she said: “I was the first woman to burn my bra — it took the fire department four days to put it out,”; talking about her image, she likes to joke that “it costs a lot of money to look this cheap”.
The self-deprecating gags have a winning charm, but they can also obscure the fact that there is a serious and credible artist hiding behind the comically large bosom and mountainous blonde wig. I have been a Parton fan for decades – and for me it really is about the music — but looking around at the others in the audience of her most recent tour, there seemed to be a disconcertingly high number of pink Stetson hats and blonde wigs. The gig seemed an excuse for middle-aged moms to channel their inner hillbilly. No doubt the pink Stetsons will be out in force again later this year when Parton returns to Britain to tour her 41st album, Better Day.
Those who think Parton is just hawking country-flavoured cheese do the woman a disservice: her gender and extraordinary beauty may have helped her secure success, but at the price of artistic credibility. As she has said herself: “There’s a heart beneath the boobs and a brain beneath the wig.”
In Dollywood, the theme park she co-owns in eastern Tennessee, which attracts two million people a year, there is a lifesize replica of the two-room wooden cabin where she grew up with her 11 siblings, complete with newspaper-lined walls. When I met her recently for a forthcoming BBC Radio 4 documentary, she told me she still owns the original home because it helps to remind her where she comes from.
Country music is often accused of sugary sentimentalism and on stage Parton enjoys making light of her childhood: “After momma gave birth to 12 of us kids, we put her up on a pedestal,” she says. “It was mostly to keep daddy away from her.” But her best songs can be heartbreakingly bleak portraits of hard lives. On In the Good Old Days (When Times Were Bad) she sings: “I’ve seen Daddy’s hands break open and bleed / And I’ve seen him work till he’s stiff as a board / An’ I’ve seen Momma laying in suffer and sickness / In need of a doctor we couldn’t afford / Anything at all was more than we had / In the good old days when times were bad.”
It is impressive enough that Parton managed to transcend her background and eventually sell 100-million records and accrue a fortune in excess of $500-million. But the main reason she deserves respect is that she has not lost her affinity for her working-class origins. Dollywood is the biggest employer in town and in recent years Parton – whose father was illiterate — has turned her attention to encouraging literacy with the creation of Imagination Library, a scheme that has distributed free books to about 12-million children in the United States and more recently in the United Kingdom.
When Parton went to Rotherham in the UK to publicise the scheme, it prompted predictable mirth. But it is not such a leap from the poor rural folks in Tennessee and the urban poor in Rotherham — they are both working-class areas and ultimately what I love about Parton is that although she looks like a cartoon she is in fact a brilliant chronicler and champion of the working class.
It is a juxtaposition that Parton has alluded to on her previous album, Backwoods Barbie, and in interviews where she has suggested that “I think there is a little magic in the fact that I’m so totally real but look so artificial at the same time”.
A working-class hero isn’t easy to be, but Parton is living proof that it is even harder to be a working-class heroine. —