Consider This from NPR - Saying goodbye to Dolly Parton

Episode Date: August 25, 2026

Dolly Parton's singular performing career spanned seven decades and only grew in prominence over that time. With that bright crystalline voice and signature twang, Parton was one of country music's most recognizable and universally adored ambassadors to broader popular culture.Parton died on Tuesday at the age of 80.This episode was produced by Erika Ryan, Matt Ozug and Karen Zamora, with audio engineering by Ted Mebane.  Our director is Jonas Adams.Our interim executive producer is Courtney Dorning, who also edited this episode.Support public media with NPR+ and enjoy perks for over 25 podcasts like this one. This show’s perks include bonus episodes and sponsor-free listening. Learn more at plus.npr.org.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

It's consider this where every day we go deep on one big news story. Today, a music superstar has died. Here you come again. Just when I've begun to get myself together. You walk's right in the door, just like you've done before. And wrap my heart round your little finger. That bright, crystalline voice is the great, The legendary Dolly Parton.

She died at the age of 80. Parton was a singularly beloved figure with a reach extending far beyond country music. Who hasn't sang that song to themselves walking to work? Over the years, Parton spoke to NPR frequently about her career, her work, how she stayed true to herself and to her roots. When I was little, I used to put a tin can on a tobacco stalk, stick it down in the cracks. on the front porch, and that was my stage. She told Talk of the Nation in 2012 where her dreams began. And all the little bitty kids and the animals out in the yard were my, that was my audience.

But, you know, to me, I was pretending I was singing, you know, in the grandol opera or just singing, you know, I didn't really even know what all I was doing, except that I felt like I was entertaining because music was a big part of my family, my mother's people especially. Parton explained her decades-long staying power in an interview with my co-host, Wanna Summers. Well, that's why I am where I'm at and still where I'm at, because I just am myself. I'm shaping being me because I know who that is. I know what a will and won't do. I know what I can and can't do. One thing Parton could do was, of course, right.

She shared some of the lighter aspects of her songwriting process with MPR's Melissa Block. Sometimes I get woke up in the middle of the night because I often dream about singing songs. And I used to think I'd remember where I'll be singing in a dream. And I know it's not a song I know. And so I just try to keep a little tape recorder or a notepad. But even on planes, I just ride on a barf bag. If I get an idea for a song, I just find my purse, try to find a pencil, and write on anything I can. That's how all writers do it, though.

Consider this honoring the legacy of a larger-than-life cultural icon, Dolly Parton. From NPR, I'm Elsa Chang. It's Consider This from NPR. Dolly Parton's singular performing career spanned seven decades and only grew in prominence over that time. She was one of country music's most recognizable and universally adored ambassadors to broader ponder. culture. Reporter Julie Haidt has this remembrance. In Parton's songs, stage banter, and interviews, she always presented herself as a humble yet audacious mountain dreamer made good. She built her identity on proudly claiming the Appalachian poverty and ingenuity she came from.

Because I remember time we didn't have electricity in the early days. Here's Parton on NPR in 2002. And I was thinking how far I've come. From no electricity to now to living in this high-tech world, that's selling my records as they are. Long after Parton's success has helped her escape, she continually returned to her stories of what it was like growing up as one of 12 kids and a rural hamlet nestled in the smoky mountains of East Tennessee.

We barely made it, but we did make it. And, you know, we had a lot of stuff that money can't buy anyhow, as I often talk about, things like love and kindness and understanding. And we have music. mother's people were very musical. So that really got us through a lot of hard times and the fact that on both sides of my family, the Partons and the Owens family, had a great sense of humor. Parton began writing ballads and ditties and singing on local radio when she was just a kid and couldn't wait to get to Nashville as soon as she graduated high school in 1964. In those days,

it was hard enough for women to make headway as singers in country music and even rarer for them to also established themselves as songwriters. As Parton told NPR in 1989, she realized that accentuating her silhouette got a reaction, but she treated her songwriting as her greatest asset. That's what I take more serious than anything else that I do in the business. It was my songwriting that got me out of the Smoky Mountains and that I feel that has taken me into all the places. The fact that I've, you know, had this outrageous look, that's helped, and the fact that that I've had a good outgoing personality and a good healthy attitude has helped too. But to me, the guts and the root of the whole thing is the right.

Parton was certainly not naive about operating in a male-dominated field. When veteran hitmaker Porter Wagner asked her to join his TV show, she slipped into the role that was most readily available to women in Nashville, duet partner to a male star. But her wit and magnetism helped her transcend the limitations of being his girl's singer and eventually move on to focusing on her solo career in 1974. With her own recordings, Parton built a varied country repertoire. She had a love for and away with sentimental ballads and southern Gothic tragedies

that sounded positively ancient. But she was also open to working with sleek pop sounds, which by 1978 meant disco. For Emmeth's Kia, a much younger alternative rocking Appalachian artist, it was inspiring to hear how Parton's potent vocal sound anchored her music, whatever the style. Her mountain twang and her sound, like, obviously that is what makes a dolly song a dolly song, really. Parton earned dozens of top 10 country hits,

and her professional ambitions grew along with, with her career. She insisted that she was not leaving her countryness behind, but bringing it with her as she crossed over into pop stardom and moviemaking in the late 1970s and early 80s. She gave memorable performances in 9 to 5, the best little whorehouse in Texas, and steel magnolias, alongside celebrated actors like Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, Julia Roberts, and Sally Field. Parton opened her own theme park, Dollywood, and the Smoky Mountains. And in actual Hollywood, she did not fade into the background, not with the over-the-top hyperfeminine look that she cultivated for years, those piled high blonde wigs and stiletto heels and tight-fitting costumes that she told in PR in 2014 she had

modeled after a woman from back home. And it's true. I look totally artificial, but I like to think I'm totally real where it really counts. But my look came from a very sincere place. It's just a country girl's idea of glamour, just like the song I wrote Back was Barbie. I grew up poor and ragged, just a simple country girl. In front of audiences, Harton made endless self-aware jokes about her exaggerated appearance.

And as the years went on, that made her a role model for drag queens. Like Dolly put on a Dolly costume every day. That's Parton admirer Trixie Mattel. You know, Dolly played Dolly on stage. Dolly played Dolly in the musical of Dolly in real life. When I think back now watching Dolly, it's like, was I watching my first drag show? Not only did Parton's performances help Trixie Mattel find her way to becoming a funny folk-singing drag queen herself, they made people of all sorts of cultures, identities, and ideologies feel like Parton,

was theirs to claim. It's the one thing maybe a hardcore conservative and a drag queen can have middle ground on. WNYC devoted an entire podcast to exploring Parton's universal appeal in 2019. Once she reached middle age, Parton frequently returned to songs and sounds associated with the pleasures and hardships of her mountain youth.

These old bones will tell you story. These old bones will never lie. At the same time, new generations embraced her celebrity as a given, whether or not they paid attention to country music. Everything she did and said was news, even if she cannily avoided wading into issues that had the potential to be divisive. But in the end, of all that Dolly Parton created, her greatest work of art was the indelible image that she fashioned for herself over a lack of, lifetime of dressing up backward brilliance in showbiz splash. For NPR News, I'm Julie Hyde in Nashville. This episode was produced by Erica Ryan, Matt Ozug and Karen Zamora, with audience

with audio engineering by Ted Mebain. Our director is Jonas Adams. Our interim executive producer is Courtney Dorney, who also edited this episode. Just to find the others laughing, and I'm making fun of me and my coat of many colors, my mama made for me.

It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Elsa Chang.