Fresh Air - Dolly Parton

Episode Date: August 26, 2026

The beloved country superstar died Tuesday at age 80. Parton spoke with Terry Gross in 2001 about growing up in rural poverty with 11 siblings, leaving for Nashville to become a star, and coming up with her signature look. "I've always believed that a part of my magic, if there was any, was the fact that I look so artificial — but I am so totally real," she said. Also, jazz critic Martin Johnson reviews jazz singer Cécile McLorin Salvant’s new album, With Every Breath I Take, which he calls her most daring yet. Support public media with NPR+ and enjoy perks for over 25 podcasts like this one. This show’s perks include bonus episodes and curated playlists of archive interviews. 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

This is fresh air. I'm Terry Gross. No matter what their taste is in music, people love Dolly Parton. Musicians and singers from all different genres have covered songs she wrote or made famous, from jazz saxophonist Sonny Rollins to Beyonce. And while politics divide our country, loving her is something that unites us. She died yesterday at the age of 80. Today, as we mourn her death, We're going to feature the interview I recorded with her in 2001. She's been on my mind for the past couple of weeks, ever since I heard one of her songs on the radio that I hadn't heard before. She didn't write it, but her voice is so gorgeous on it.

I had to play it again when I got home and have played it several times since. It's called Old Flames Can't Hold a Candle to You. In 1980, it became one of her many number one hits. Here it is. Tonight, I saw an old friend someone. I used to take comfort from long before I forgot. Dali Parton was a singer, songwriter, actress, entrepreneur, and philanthropist. She was successful enough and had a big enough personality to start her own theme park,

Dollywood. She became a singer on country music star Porter Wagner's TV show in 1967. She went on to have a solo career with many. hits including Jolene, which Beyonce recorded on her country music album, Cowboy Carter, 9 to 5, and I Will Always Love You, which was later a huge hit for Whitney Houston. When I spoke with Dolly Parton in 2001, her recording career had recently returned to the music she grew up with. Her 1999 recording, The Grass is Blue, won the International Bluegrass Music Association's Album of the Year Award. We spoke after the release of her follow-up album,

Little Sparrow, that featured traditional mountain music as well as her original songs in that vein. We started with the title track, which she wrote. That's Dolly Parton with the title track from her new CD, Little Sparrow. Dolly Parton, welcome to Fresh Air. Well, thank you. Ain't you glad we started out with something upbeat? Like a broken heart. But anyway, I thought that would be a good one to start with,

since it is the name of the album that I'm out trying to promote because I need the money because you know it costs a lot to make me look as cheap. Ha-ha. But anyway, thanks for having me on, too. I'm looking forward to spending some time with you. This new CD and your previous CD, The Grass Is Blue, they're both traditional music. And I'm interested in why you're heading in that direction now,

You know, as opposed to a more almost like show business version of country music. Well, I have always loved this kind of music. I really think this style of music is more suited to my voice. This is the kind of music that I used to sing all my days growing up back in the Smoky Mountains. And this music is really so now people are really into the simplicity of it. And so just for fun for myself, there was a poll in the bluegrass community of what person they'd like to hear most do a bluegrass album that hadn't done one, and they said me.

So I won hands down with that, so I said to Steve Buckingham, when we did The Grass is Blue, the album, just before this one. I said, well, let's just do a Blue Grass album. And lo and behold, we won the Blue Grass album of the year with that. So we thought, well, we need to do something along the same lines, but I didn't want to just do a full-blown bluegrass album and try to just do exactly what we did with the other. So we wanted to expand it, so we did a little more mountain music.

We added a little bit of flavor. of some Irish sounds also. So I call this Blue Mountain music. It's like blue grass and mountain music, so that kind of seems to sum up what the style is, I think. You were born in 1946 in a one-room cabin in the Smoky Mountains of East Tennessee. What was the music you heard as a child?

Well, a lot of the stuff that we heard was that old porch-picking music. Old songs brought back from England and Ireland, that old Appalachian music, and a lot of the stuff that people up in the mountains wrote. So my mother was, and all my mama's people used to always play and sing. Mama used to sing a lot. So we would sing like a lot of the old gospel songs.

A lot of old gospel songs were written to sound old, like I say, by a lot of my own people. Who was most musical in your family? All of us. My mother was very musical. And my grandpa Jake, I think, I was a preacher, a Pentecoster preacher, that I wrote a song about many years ago called Daddy Daddy was an old-time preacher man. I think he was a music teacher of sorts back there. in the hills. I have, there's 12 of us kids, six girls and six boys, and we all sing and write

and play. It's just that I think I've taken it farther. I don't know that I'm near as good as some of the others, but I've been more willing to sacrifice and work a little harder than some of the others might have been willing to, you know, to do just because they wanted to have a family and do other things. But there's a lot of talent in this family. Do you remember the first songs that really meant something to you? Yeah, the songs that I used to hear, my folks sing back home and stuff Mama used to sing about, she used to tell stories from the Bible

and sing a lot of those old timey songs. But the stuff I used to hear was a church. One of my favorite songs of all time is if we never meet again this side of heaven. And my dad passed away a few weeks ago and he always loved that song. Of course, I was way too emotional. I'm very sorry.

Thank you very much. But I was too emotional to sing Daddy's Funeral. So like later, I went up to the grave and just sung it for myself and for daddy. So anyway, those are the kind of songs that I always loved. And I recorded, if we never meet again, on an album once from Dollywood, a live album. That album was called Heart Songs, and they are Heart Songs.

So I grew up just loving all those old folk songs of tragedy, like the two little orphans and all that sort of stuff. And someday I hope, and possibly even for my next album, to do an album of those old mountain true folk songs. When did you start writing songs and realizing that you had an ear for that as well as for singing? Well, I started singing already on television when I was 10 years old, but I started playing guitar and writing serious songs when I was about seven. And my mother was always fascinated with the fact that I could rhyme so much stuff.

So she used to keep stuff that I didn't remember I had written, and she has stuff in a trunk many years ago. She said, here's some stuff you might want to look at. This is stuff you used to write for you could write. before you could write it down, and she used to write it down. So actually, I've been doing it all my life, seriously and professionally, since I was 10. Do you remember any of the songs you wrote as a girl? Oh, I used to write songs about Cobdolls.

I had this little Cobb doll, the first song I remember writing. Her name was Tassel Top. It was a little doll that Mama, Daddy had burned poker hole eyes in to make eyes. And Mama had put the corn and silk hair back on her and made a little dress for, and her name was Tassel Top. And I think I was five or six, you know, somewhere in there, seven. And he's like, little tiny tassel top, I love you an awful lot. Hope you never go away. I want you to stay and so on and so on.

So I just wrote all about her dress and all about her hair. So, yeah, I just wrote about everything that, you know, that come to mind. Were you writing about tragic love and heartbreak by the time you were 10? Yes, I was, as a matter of fact. I wrote a song. I can't remember exactly how it goes. but it was about a boy getting killed in the war because we used to hear all those stories back home.

And if they weren't singing those sad-ass songs, they were telling stories about it. And that makes an impression on a little child. So I thought that you needed to write some really songs of tragedy. I thought you had to do that in order to be a mountain singer. And I wonder how it sounded with you as a girl singing these tragic songs. About the same as it does now, my voice ain't changed a lot. Sometimes people say my voice sounds like a little girl singing all these,

Lord awful songs is like this like little sparrow and the silver dagger from the other one. And, you know, Tenderly from this one is like I love to sing all those sad songs. Well, you know, rare is the singer who can sing as much as you have and not have it roughen their voice. Well, my voice is of a high pitch. So I guess I don't, you know, think my voice will ever deepen or lower itself in any way. but it's one of those voices I hope that'll last a long time because I hope to be singing even when I'm old

I hope to sit at on my own porch and sing those old folk songs and maybe put them down on tapes and sell them. But anyhow I just love and a lot of the songs I write like for instance on My Blue Tears a song that's on this album that I wrote many years ago

and we can play that if you want to after this but I wrote this song and it really uses a lot of the old English style like fly ye away from my own fly yeas far like the yeas and the yeas it sounds old-timey so I had recorded this song numerous times but some of my songs I like so well I think well they just seem to fit here and fit there so it kind of lended itself to that Irish feel so it's one of my favorites you want to play that absolutely but before we do tell us when you wrote it and where you were in your performing

career at the time well I wrote it about the old 25 30 years ago I guess and I was sitting on a couch in a place where I lived over in Antioch, Tennessee, and one of the first houses that I had after I'd moved to Nashville and had gotten married. And I just remember wanting to write something old-timey because I was probably homesick or thinking about the old days. And I just started, you know, just singing it. And I was at that time already probably pretty big name

with the Porta Wagoner show. And that's where I had started. So I was trying to write songs that would make good records. When I first did this one, it was more up-tempo, but on this version of it, I slowed it down. Well, let's hear My Blue Tears, written by Dolly Parton as featured on her new CD, Little Sparrow. Fly as far as you can away from here. And let not your song fall upon my ear. Red your blue wings and I shed my blue tears.

Dolly Parton, in your autobiography, you said that when you were young, you read everything you could get your hands on. The Bible, the farmer's almanac, fairy tales, the funeral home directory. Is that about all there was in the way of books? No. Well, there were books at school, but there were so many of us kids, we didn't dare take school books home because the kids would just chew them up or pee on them or tear the pages out of them. So they'd always tell us not to bring books home because Daddy'd have to pay for them. But I used to read everything I'd get my hands on at school, and fairy tales I love. So I would, you know, anytime there was a break at school, I could get my hands on a book, you know, on the desk or something.

I would read that. I still love books. I read everything. I read all the whatever the hit books are on the bestseller list. I try to read that. People give me gifts because I'd rather read when I travel on the bus and when I fly. I'd rather read than to watch television when I'm home. So I just enjoy that.

There were 12 kids in your family. Looking at your mother and the life that she was leading and the other women in the family, what did you think the life of an adult woman was going to be for you? Well, I knew it wasn't going to be that. I knew that I had to go. It wasn't that I wasn't proud of who I was and where I was from. But I had a dream. I just couldn't imagine myself.

I was babysitting from the time. I have a sister and two brothers older, and there's eight children younger me, so I had a house full of kids because mom was sick a lot. She had one on her and one in her for as long as I remember. So those of us that were home, we had to kind of do the chores. So I had kids. I had a house full of kids, and I just knew that I wanted to do something with my music, and I knew that I was going to leave when I was 18 years old.

And I graduated from high school on a Friday night, and I left for Nashville the next day. Saturday morning. I was ready to go. And then I met my husband the first day I got there. We've been married for 34 years and been together 36 years. I met him 36 years ago. And unfortunately, we never were able to have children of our own, but that's okay too, because after I moved to Nashville, I brought five of my younger brothers and sisters to Nashville that lived with me. We sent them to school. Now they have kids, and those kids call me Aunt Granny and my husband Uncle Pee-Paw. So grandparents are to them. So I've still been saddled with a bunch

kids with no kids of my own. You've said that your grandfather was a preacher, your mother was devout. What was church like when you were young? Oh, well, we were one of those shouting, healing, holy roller churches, you know, and it was high-powered, which was great. I really

learned a sing in church, I think, really with the emotion. And we were a free, you know, it was a free-spirited church. And if you'd wrote a song, a gospel song, of course, you could get up and sing it and play your guitar and whatever. So, So it was really, there was a lot of that hell, fire, brimstone, and scaring you to death if you go out unprepared, which, you know, that's true.

But I used to think, well, there's got to be more to that. They had me so scared to God, I was afraid to talk to him. I was afraid he'd talk back. And I was afraid he'd punish me somehow, you know, with stuff. And I really, through the years, found my own place with God. Now, when you were young and singing in church, did you sing about God in church and then sing about sinning at home? Well, I used to sin at church and sin at home, and I talk about it. I used to always sit in church looking out the windows at the boys,

if I could make an excuse to go out and, you know, go to the bathroom because all the outdoor toilets. But anyhow, I was only going out to see the boys. But anyhow, I had a deep faith in God, but I also, you know, was high-spirited and fun-loving. and I, of course, was led to believe that everything you did was a sin, but I don't believe that now. I think it's a sin if you believe it to be, and if it hurts somebody else, it's a sin. But I'm very deep in my faith.

In fact, there's not an album that I do, that I don't do something that is spiritual. In fact, a song I used to sing in church years ago that we did Uptempo, one of the songs we sang every time we went to church was a song called In The Sweet By and By. That's on your CD. too. Yes, it is, and that's why I was going to say when I wanted to do one of those gospel songs on this album, so I slowed this

down and it lended itself real nice to some more of that Irish feel, so at some point if you want to play that one, I think that would be a good choice. Why don't we play that now? Okay, let's do. There's a land that is fairer than

day, and by faith we can see for the father waits over the way to prepare us to dwell. We shall meet, we shall, we shall. That's in the sweet by-and-by from Dolly Parton's new CD, Little Sparrow. Now, when you were young, you sang on the radio, and then you sang on TV, and it was before your family even owned a TV. Did it make it any more or less momentous to be on TV,

knowing that your family and probably a lot of the other people you knew as well didn't even own one to watch you on? Well, I don't think a lot of that registered on me at that time. My purpose was to go sing. I was singing on radio. To me, it was the same as singing on the radio. I didn't even know really what all it meant about singing on television. I just knew it was another place to go sing. They had microphones, and it was a show. So I was going to do the show. And so I don't think I thought about whether or not that somebody couldn't watch. me. But after I did start being like a regular and bought our TV, I wanted my folks to watch it. But I bought the TV, but it didn't last long in the house because nobody around our area had a television. So everybody would come down and sit in our floor and sit on our couch, watch gun smoke and wagon train and Woody Woodpecker and all the shows that were on. Daddy couldn't get him out of the house to get ready to go to work. So he said, this damn television's out of here. So that didn't last long. So it didn't matter if I was on television

or not. You know, it's like me and Woody Woodpecker had to go. That's funny. We're listening to the interview I recorded with Dolly Parton in January of 2001. She died yesterday at the age of 80. We'll hear more of the interview after a break. I'm Terry Gross, and this is fresh air. This is fresh air. I'm Terry Gross. Let's get back to our remembrance of Dolly Parton. She died yesterday at the age of 80. Here's more of the interview we recorded in 2001. Your first record, it was a 45. One side was puppy love, and the other side was girl left alone. How old were you in this came out? I was about 10 or 11, I think, when I cut that. And that came out on Gold Band records probably several months or so after that. That was my very first record.

and that was a very exciting thing for me the first time I ever heard that played on the radio. It was on a local radio show back home. It never did do anything other than just that it was the first. But it did play locally. And I about kill myself. I was sitting on a cabinet, sitting up on the sink cabinet with my, and my aunt was cooking in the kitchen and the radio was on. And my song came on.

And I jumped off of the thing and slid on the floor, slid on the rug and fell and trying to get to work guitar on the radio. So I almost killed myself trying to get to hear my first record. But it was fun. I'll never forget the thrill of hearing myself the first time on the radio. I thought, well, I've made it now.

Of course I hadn't. Could you sing a few bars of one of those songs, the A-Sire to the B-side? Puppie Love, yeah. Puppie Love, yeah. Puppie Love, I'm old enough now to kiss and hug, and I like it. It's puppy love.

It's got one of those silly songs, you know, You pull my pig tails, you make me mad. Then you kiss me, make me glad. Sometimes you even make me sad. Still, you're the sweetest sweetheart I ever had. Oh, puppy love, puppy love. And I was trying to get all those little bebop 50s kind of sounds in there, too. But anyhow, needless to say, it didn't sell much, but it was a start.

Now, these were songs you co-wrote, I think, with your uncle? My aunt, Dorothy Joe, co-wrote the other side. The girl left alone. Oh, yeah, that's when you was talking about. earlier about singing those sad songs. I was 10 years old singing, I'm a girl left alone. There's no hope for me.

I'm tossed to and fro like a ship on a sea. I made my mistakes and now I must pay. Now how many mistakes could I make 10 years old? Now I can see that there's no hope for me. But anyway, it's like a 10 years old. So I wrote my Uncle Bill, who was also my manager at the time, that also produced that record, the A and the B side, we wrote Puppy Love together.

So those were just, you know, like I say, you got to start somewhere. And then my first record after that, I wrote with another uncle of mine. I was 15 years old, got on a major label, which was Mercury. And I had a song called It May Not Kill Me, but it's Sure Gonna Hurt. How did that go? Oh, it's the bat.

That's about it. It may not kill me, but it sure going to hurt. And then it goes into fast tempo, It's just about like losing somebody. It's like you're going to walk away and I'm going to stay. And I don't like it. It may not kill me, but it's sure going to hurt. So when you were 18 and you took a bus to Nashville, left home,

were you hoping to be a performer, a songwriter, both? Yeah, I was going to be all of that. I was going to be everything I could be. But definitely I was going to be a songwriter and a singer. And that was what I headed out to be, was to be a star. and I vowed that I wouldn't go home until I had something to show for it, and I didn't, but I was very, very homesick. And it was a, well, I actually got real lucky, but it was about a year before I really had enough to show for it to think I could go home.

And then I got lucky, too. I had a top 10 record on a song called Dumb Blonde, like just because I'm blonde, don't think I'm dumb, because this dumb blonde ain't nobody's fool. That was my first top 10 record, and I was, I guess that was in about 66. 60, no, it was in about 65, I guess, somewhere in there. So I just knew that that's what I had to do, and that was my destiny. I know now how lucky I was, because I know a lot of people that got there about the same time I did, had twice the talent, still ain't made it. So I know how lucky I've been, and I'm grateful for it every day because I love what I do.

Another thing you did early on is that you sent songs to Buddy Killen, the head of Tree Publishing, which is a big country music publisher. And did you get other people to record your songs? Well, I wrote a song with my Uncle Bill Owens, the same uncle that I was talking about. We had the song of the year, the BMI Song of the Year in 1966, and Bill Phillips had a song called Put It Off until Tomorrow. You've hurt me enough today. And a lot of people through the years have recorded that song. So, yes, I had different songs recorded by different artists, that being the biggest at that time. And I did write for Tree for a while.

Buddy Killen was very good to me. and then Buddy, I mean, Fred Foster, who owned Monument Records, took me over, and I started to write for combine music and record for Monument Records. And that's where I had Dun Blonde and Something Fischy. I had two or three top ten records before I started with the Porta Wagner show in 1967. Well, since you mentioned Porta Wagner, let me play a recording that you made with him in 1968, and then we'll talk about that period of your life. and the song is just between you and me.

Who wrote the song? Did you write this? No, I didn't write that. And come think of it, I don't know who wrote that. Off top of my head, that's been a few years. Okay, so this is Dolly Parton with Porter Wagner, recorded in 1968. So I feel so blue sometimes I want to die. And so I'm walking hard.

So what? They say, you. that time will heal all wounds in mice and men and I know that someday I'll forget and love again

Just between you and me I've got my doubts about it Just between you Much to forget That's Dali Parton With Porter Wagner You performed on his popular TV show for a while and, you know, made several recordings with him. How did you start

working with him? Well, Porter had the number one syndicated country television show in the country at that time. He had a girl on there for many years named Norma Jean, who had become a very big country star in her own right. And she got married, was getting married, and moving back to Oklahoma City and left the show. And that left the spot. So Porter was looking for a girl. singer and I had people have been talking about me in town you know the new girl in town and that I had something fishy

dumb blonde and a couple of other songs and so Porter had just got wind of that and he'd just called me down to his office for an interview and so I sat down with my guitar and started singing songs that I'd written and he was very impressed

and I got the job and that's how that happened then we started doing duets together which we were very successful I with the show for seven years. What does you learn about performing doing a weekly TV show? Well, you have to learn a lot of things, not just the weekly TV show, but we also went out on the road together, did stage shows. I learned a lot from Porter watching professional people work like that

as far as how to talk to an audience and how to be comfortable in front of a camera. And I had done TV back home when I was a kid. I had grown up singing on radio on TV back in Knoxville, Tennessee. But you have to learn how to not do silly things because the camera's on you, not pick your nose and stuff like that, or not to scratch your head or nothing, no other parts of your body. So you have to kind of just learn how to be aware that you're on because people are aware of you. So it's amazing how you really, I'm just like a sponge. I just gather up everything.

You don't really realize what all you are learning. Just by watching professional people work, because a lot of the artists and stars that would come on Porter's show all the time. every week. You learn something from everybody. Well, I thought we could hear your original version of I Will Always Love You, which was used again in the movie The Bodyguard and was a huge hit for Whitney Houston. Do you remember writing this song and what you were thinking of when you wrote it? Oh, absolutely. I remember that one. That one was about when I was leaving Porter Wagner because I had been with him seven years. I had told him,

because, see, I had plans to have a solo career of my own. I hadn't planned to get caught up with another group. But Porter's show was very successful and it was a thing to do. And when I had told him I would stay, I told him I would stay for five years because I wanted to go on. But I stayed two years longer, but I kept staying and staying and I kept wanting to go because I felt like I really needed to go out on my own if I was ever really going to have a solo career. And Porter was dead against it. He wouldn't hear of it. And he had a fit. We fought a lot. There was a lot of problems going on. And no matter how I would try to talk to him to make, I could not make him understand. And I thought, well, why don't you just write a song about him, just say you appreciate him and you appreciate everything he does and that you'll always love him for everything he's done, that you'll always love him, period.

So I just, out of a broken heart of not being heard or anything, knowing I had to make major decisions that would ultimately change my life forever and his, for that matter, I wrote that song one night out of great grief and depth and just trying to say the right things to say goodbye. Well, why don't we hear your version, your original version of I Will Always Love You? Okay. That's Daly Parton, recorded in 1974. So do you know how this song ended up being used in the body? Guard? Well, they had told me that when Kevin Costner and Whitney Houston were doing this movie, Kevin also, I think, produced this movie and put all this stuff together. There was a song they had wanted to use that they had planned to use as the theme song instead of, I Will Always Love You, and then come find out,

like a few weeks before, that they had, I don't know what the song was, but a few weeks before, the song they had planned to use, someone else recorded it and put it out. So they were in desperate need of a song to say basically what I Will Always Love You said. And from what I understand, Kevin Costner's secretary said, Did you ever hear a song that Dolly Parton, that country star, you know, the one with the big boobs and the big hair? Seriously, she said, Dolly Parton, that country star. She said she had a song called I Will Always Love You, and I think it'd be perfect. And she brought it into him, and they said he loved it.

And so they chose it. We're listening to the interview I recorded with Dolly Part. in 2001. We'll hear more of it after a break. This is fresh air. This is fresh air. Let's get back to the interview I recorded with Dali Parton in January of 2001. Now, you said that when you were young, you knew you wanted to be a big star. Why did you want to be a star? Because I wanted to be rich. I wanted to travel. I wanted to be famous. I wanted to do stuff. I wanted to be seen, I guess. I need a lot of attention being brought up in the family of 12. You don't get much attention unless you're in trouble.

You know, it's like, so I think it was just, I just had a very outgoing personality, and I wanted to be outgoing all the time. Now, you've joked that if you were a man, you would have been a drag queen. I always say that it's a good thing. I was a woman,

because if I'd have been a man, I would have been a drag queen, just because I'm so damn gaudy, because I like all the flesh and the glitter, and, you know, I just love, you know, just, I love playing in my clothes. I love playing, you know, in my life. It's like I love makeup.

I love, clothes and I got the kind of personality can pull it off and I just I just love you know what what I do I'm comfortable being myself even if I make other people uncomfortable with the way I look if I'm comfortable with it then it you know it's it's okay with me how did you first start dressing in that um um what's what's the word I'm looking for almost oversized go a oversized go a oversized kind of way where if your hair was big it was going to be real big well I think A lot of that came, though, from a very serious place. That was a country girl's idea of what glamour was.

And when I, you know, I didn't have any money to have stuff, and I've often joked about it, but it's the real truth that I patterned myself after what they considered the trash in our hometown. There was this one woman I thought she was beautiful. And, you know, she had the peroxide hair, and she, you know, had it all piled up on her head and had red fingernails and red lipstick and, you know,

wore her powder. And I just thought she was a pretty thing I'd have. seen and mama said i would quit looking at her she ain't nothing but trash and i thought ooh that's what i want to be when i grow up trash so that's where kind of my look came from and then how the glamour girls and the movie stars and all that you know it was really like like that but it was still you know i mean i enjoy it i still like doing it and i've always just it's like when they say less is more that's not my motto mine is more is more and the more i can get the more i want of life and of everything. And it's like, but in addition to me being all that God in all, I take my music

and my writing very, very serious. And hopefully, people know that my heart is true. And I've always believed that a part of my magic, if there was any, it was the fact that I look so artificial, but I am so totally real. And I think when you hear these kinds of songs, I think you know that has to come from the heart. We're talking about this really oversized image that you've created, but your new CD and the CD before that are really kind of scale down. You know, they're traditional songs and bluegrass songs, sung, you know, with a really good band behind you, but they're very show-busy.

Do you almost feel like you need to change how you look on stage when you're singing these kinds of songs with the kind of band that you have? No, I know I don't think so, because I think people have come to know me as I am, and some people will never accept the people, fact that I'm a serious writer and a serious singer and the ones that do accept it, they know it for a fact and they overlook the image, which I've enjoyed playing in the image. So the only change I would make, only just from a show business fashion statement, I may wear

some things that may be cut a little bit more country western, you know, like if I, but it'll still be beaded. It'll still have shine and glitter on it. So it's not that I don't think I have to wear overall in order to sing about a farmer. I don't think I have to, I don't think I have to. I think people would really be more disappointed if I dress down because they're so used to seeing me be the way that I am. I think that that would bother them more. They'd think, well, I wish you to wear one of them rhinestone dresses

instead of that old corny-looking thing. So if I dress down as plain and as real as some of this music is, I would definitely look like Farms' daughter. Dolly Parton, a pleasure to talk with you. Thank you so much. Well, thank you. My interview with Dolly Parton was recorded in January 2001. She died yesterday at the age of 80.

She's gone, but will always have her music. One of her most famous songs was Jolene. Beyonce introduced even more people to it when she recorded it on her country music album, Cowboy Carter. Here's Dolly Parton's 1973 recording of Jolene. Jolene, Jolene, Please don't take my... Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, just because you care.

Your beauty is beyond compare with flaming locks of orphan hair with ivory skin and eyes of emerald green. Your smile is like a breath of spring. Your voice is soft like summer rain. Jolene, about two in his sleep. And there's nothing I can. Coming up, jazz critic Martin Johnson reviews the new album by singer Cecil McClureen. This is fresh air. This is fresh air.

Our jazz critic Martin Johnson says all 20th century jazz greats have cast long shadows that their 21st century protegees must escape, but few musicians have a harder task than vocalists. Evading the extraordinary grounds set by first-name legends like Ella, Billy, and Sarah, and establishing a distinctive style of her own is a daunting task. Yet he says, Cecil McLaurin-Salvant has accomplished just that. amid a remarkable series of recordings and live shows, she's created a unique vocal style and curatorial skills that make each new recording an event.

Her latest recording, with every breath I take, is her most daring yet, a traditional recording with an orchestra and a program of ballads, yet Martin says that although rooted in the classics, Salvant always sounds in the moment. They say, into your... And in this heart of flame, a flame that flickered one day, die away. Duke Ellington, sophisticated lady, has been a classic for so long that it's often referred to as a warhorse.

Yet when Cecil McClurentz-Sauvant sings it, she imbues it with curiosity. She's convinced that there are new aspects in the song to redeem and highlight. Her singing is a quest to find and celebrate them. Drinking. Never thinking of tomorrow. Nonchalon diamonds shining, dancing, dining. With some man in a restaurant. Is that all you really want?

That spirit of inquiry is what makes McLorincolent's special and without peer, even in an ear of great young jazz vocalists like Samara Joy, Veronica Swift, and Somi. Cecile, yes, she's on a first-name basis with the jazz community, has amazing range and astonishing technique, but she employs them purely in the investigation of a song. Isn't it real? Are we a pair? Class on the ground.

Send In The Clowns is already a slow number, but Cecil decelereserates it to communicate all of the longing, hope, and dismay in the lyrics. The emotions of a song are Cecile's focus. On previous recordings, she's made songs by Stevie Wonder and Kate Bush her own with this style. But on her new recording, she tackles ten great American songbook standards with similar aplomb. Here's her take on the Buddy Johnson classic, ever since the one I Love's been gone. Answered the phone, but the phone didn't ring. I'm all confused about every little thing.

Cecile records with the Dutch Metropole Orchestra under the direction of Jules Buckley. The arrangements are by Canadian big band leader Darcy James Argue, with whom she created an oratorio called Ogress that is being made into a film. One of the most remarkable aspects of the recording demonstrated thereon ever since the one I love's been gone is how Cecile, who often records in just duo or even solo settings, makes an orchestral recording sound intimate, as if more than a dozen musicians comfortably squeezed into your living room. I used to visit all the very gay places,

those come what may places, Where one relaxes on the axis of the wheel of light, the field from jazz and cocktails. Cecil's spirit of inquiry and formidable technique make her music contemporary, and her talent as a storyteller makes it affecting. Billy Strayhorn's lush life has been in the canon of American songs for many decades, Yet McLaurin's take feels new and fresh and makes the wistful reflections of the song much more potent. It's music with an extraordinary past and an amazing present. Life is lonely again.

And only last year, everything seemed so short. Now, if it's awful again, A trough full of hearts could only be... Martin Johnson writes for the Wall Street Journal and Downbeat. He reviewed With Every Breath I Take by Cecil McCluren-Salon. Tomorrow on Fresh Air will feature Tanya's interview with Riz Ahmed. He's nominated for an Emmy for his performance in the Prime Video Series Bait. He plays a British Pakistani actor auditioning to be the next James Bond.

Ahmed is also a writer and creator of this series. He starred in a film adaptation of Shakespeare's Hamlet, and he'll explain while he believes the most famous speech in the English language has been misunderstood for centuries. I hope you'll join us. To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at NPR Fresh Air. Fresh Air's executive producer is Sam Brigger. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our engineer today is Adam Stanishefsky. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Anne Rebel Donato, Lauren Crenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Yucundi, Anna Bauman, and Nico Gonzalez Whistler. Our digital media producer is Molly C.V. Nesper. Roberta Shorock directs

the show. Our co-host is Tanya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross.