LISTEN: John Bowman, “Silverthorn Mountain”

Artist: John Bowman
Hometown: Hendersonville, Tennessee
Song: “Silverthorn Mountain”
Album: The Hole
Release Date: September 27, 2019
Label: Mountain Home Music Company

In Their Words: “Last summer, some friends and I were rehearsing for a show at the Wilson County Fair. He said, ‘Let’s do “Silverthorn Mountain.”‘ I knew Merle Haggard had written it and it was a good song. I told my buddy that I was thinking about recording it, and I’m glad I did. I love this simple song about a man who has a checkered past and the piece of land that brings him so much joy and peace. The song also shows Haggard’s love of country and the fact that he received a second chance at life. This is the first ‘bluegrass’ song I’ve cut since the last CD I made with the Boxcars.” — John Bowman


Photo courtesy of Mountain Home Music Company

LISTEN: Monica Rizzio, “Don’t Keep Me Up Waiting”

Artist: Monica Rizzio
Hometown: Cape Cod, Massachusetts
Song: “Don’t Keep Me Up Waiting”
Album: Sunshine Is Free
Release Date: October 4, 2019
Label: Washashore Music

In Their Words: “Growing up on the music of Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard, Patsy Cline and Dolly Parton, my first instinct was to count beats like the the old country waltzes, 1, 2, 3… 1, 2, 3. Most of my writing the past few years has been a cocktail of one part Texas Roots, one part the miles of my boots, and I had never written a waltz before. The chorus for ‘Don’t Keep Me Up Waiting’ came to me before the rest of the song, as my husband and his buddies had a pretty good Sunday Night Irish Whiskey and Football ritual going on at the local pub last winter. They are totally harmless, were having a blast, but they are also totally clueless. This song is for them.” — Monica Rizzio


Photo credit: Joe Navas

22 Top Country Duos

Country music was made for duets. Not only because those tight, tasty harmonies are a foundational aspect of the music, but also because country accomplishes heartbreak — and every other make and model of love song — better than almost any other genre. (Thought quite possibly better than all other genres.) It just makes sense to have two singers, one to play each role in a lost, soon-to-be-lost, or (rarely) divine, never-perishing romance. But the format isn’t restricted to lovers or their placeholders, it can just as seamlessly fit heroes and acolytes, parents and children, siblings, peers, fellow pot smokers, and on and on.

Take a scroll through these twenty-two country twosomes:

Kenny Rogers & Dolly Parton

We couldn’t have this list without these two. They should be the start, middle, and end of any definitive list of country duos. So we’ll just make the easy choice and kick it all off with Kenny and Dolly — that extra intro about their friendship and the years they’ve known each other? Swoon.

Loretta Lynn & Conway Twitty

After saying what we did about Kenny & Dolly we knew this pair needed to come next — so as to not rile anyone. Out of countless duets we could have chosen, how could any top “You’re The Reason Our Kids Are Ugly?”

Willie Nelson & Ray Charles

For inexplicable reasons people tend to forget Ray Charles’ incredible forays into country. His collaborations with Willie are stunning for the extreme juxtaposition of their voices and styles — they feel and swing so distinctly and differently, but all while perfectly complementary. “Seven Spanish Angels” ranked a very close second to this number in our selection process.

Glen Campbell & John Hartford

The most-recorded song in the history of recording? It’s said “Gentle On My Mind” holds that honor. And goodness gracious of course it does. Here’s its writer and its popularizer and hitmaker together.

Lee Ann Womack & George Strait

Together, Lee Ann and George were beacons of the trad country duet form, especially in the ’90s and early 2000s. This one from the jewel in the crown of Lee Ann’s discography, Call Me Crazy, is crisply modern, but with decidedly timeless vocals.

George Jones & Tammy Wynette

A broken, country fairy tale of a love story, George and Tammy’s relationship was infamously fraught, but damn if that didn’t just make their duets ever more… ethereal. Which doesn’t justify that Tammy Wynette kinda pain, to be sure, but it does remind us that if country can do anything better than all other genres, it can be sad.

Reba McEntire & Linda Davis

One of the best country songs, duets, and music videos EVER MADE. Theatrical and epic and a little silly and downright catchy and Rob Reiner and… we could go on forever.

Tanya Tucker & Delbert McClinton

Tanya is back with a brand new album and its well-deserved level of attention has been helping to re-shine the spotlight on her expansive career. Forty top ten hits across three decades. Who does that? Here she duets with Delbert McClinton on their 1993 hit, “Tell Me About It.”

Alan Jackson & Jimmy Buffett

Hey, if this has to be stuck in our heads for the rest of the month, it should be stuck in yours, too. Fair’s fair. It’s only half past [whatever time it is], but we don’t care.

Johnny Cash & June Carter Cash

One of the most recognizable duos in the history of the genre, immortalized not only in their discography but in a film adaptation of their love as well, Walk the Line. We all know “Jackson” as familiarly as the ABC’s, so here’s a slightly lesser-known beaut. (Keep watching til the last verse for an adorable bit from June.)

Eric Church & Rhiannon Giddens

Country is at its best when it surprises us. This collaboration is certainly, on the surface, unexpected, but the message of the song isn’t the only way these two artists can relate to each other. Over the course of their careers they’ve both fought their way from the fringes to the centers of their respective scenes. More of this, please.

Dolly Parton & Porter Wagoner

Dolly got her start with Porter Wagoner on his television show in the 1960s. They can certainly be credited with pioneering, popularizing, and epitomizing the country duet format. One of her most famous hits, “I Will Always Love You,” was written for Porter as she lamented leaving their act to go totally solo. (We’re a little glad she did.) You can tell they sang this song just a few gajillion times together, give or take.

Pam Tillis & Mel Tillis

Father/daughter duos in country aren’t as common, but they certainly aren’t unheard of. Pam and Mel are a perfect example. (The Kendalls are another.)

Patty Loveless & Ralph Stanley

Patty Loveless received the first ever Ralph Stanley Mountain Music Memorial Legacy Award in 2017 at Ralph’s home festival, Hills of Home, in Wise County, Virginia. Patty and Ralph were longtime friends and collaborators during his lifetime and even through her mainstream country success she referenced bluegrass and Ralph as influences — and she cut a few bluegrass records as well.

Alison Krauss & James Taylor

It’s. Just. Too. Good. Like butter. Like a warm bubble bath. Like floating on a cloud. Two voices that were meant to intertwine.

Charley Pride & Glen Campbell

These two were made to sing Latin-inflected harmonies together, weren’t they? Charley Pride gets overlooked by these sorts of lists all too often. But dang if he didn’t crank out some stellar collaborations, too!

Gram Parsons & Emmylou Harris

“Love Hurts” and boy, if Gram and Emmylou don’t make you believe it heart and soul and body and being. The definitive version of this Boudleaux Bryant song? Perhaps.

Willie Nelson & Merle Haggard

Icons being icons. And friends. And amazingly talented, ceaselessly musical comrades. You love to see it. (We could’ve/should’ve chosen “Pancho & Lefty.” We did not.)

Vince Gill & Amy Grant

There are quite a few reasons why the Ryman Auditorium basically hands this husband and wife duo the keys to the place each December. Basically all of those reasons are evident in this one. It’s fitting that this video came from one of those Christmas shows, too.

Dolly Parton & Sia

Dolly literally outdoes herself, re-recording “Here I Am” for the original soundtrack for her Netflix film, Dumplin’, after she first cut the Top 40 country single in 1971. Clearly she and Sia have much more in common than an affinity for wigs; their soaring, acrobatic voices seem so disparate in style and form until you hear them together. Listen on repeat for the best therapeutic results.

Robert Plant & Alison Krauss

[Insert entire Raising Sand album here, because how could we ever choose?] Lol jk, here’s “Killing the Blues.”

Carrie Underwood & Randy Travis

Cross-generational, meet-your-hero magic right here. Little did we know what was in store for Carrie Underwood then. But the way Randy looks at her up there, you can tell he knows she’s goin’ places.

BGS 5+5: Chris Shiflett

Artist: Chris Shiflett
Hometown: Santa Barbara, California
Latest album: Hard Lessons
Personal nicknames (or rejected band names): Shifty, Jake Jackson, Boat Plastic

What other art forms — literature, film, dance, painting, etc — inform your music?

I remember a few years back I realized that I only ever read books on current events, history, politics, etc… and wasn’t reading much fiction, so I dove into some classics and took a couple creative writing classes. You have to put good ingredients into your brain to get the ideas flowing.

What was the first moment that you knew you wanted to be a musician?

It was the summer between 8th and 9th grade. I went to visit a friend of mine down in Los Angeles and it was right when the glam rock thing was kicking off in the mid-’80s. We walked all over Melrose and everyone looked like Hanoi Rocks. I was hooked.

What’s the toughest time you ever had writing a song?

If a song is too hard to write than I usually give up. When they’re too labored they never sound very good.

Which elements of nature do you spend the most time with and how do those impact your work?

I try to surf as much as I can. Sadly, it’s never enough. I don’t know if there’s a direct correlation to song writing but surfing just makes me happy. Puts me in a good frame of mind.

How often do you hide behind a character in a song or use “you” when it’s actually “me”?

Almost never! I’ve tried writing songs in character but they never seem to come out very good. I think sometimes we all use “you” when we mean “we” but that’s just life, right?


Photo credit: Brantley Gutierrez

Track by Track: Tom Russell’s ‘October in the Railroad Earth’

Cowboys, T-Bone steaks and wolverines — there’s no forgetting Tom Russell’s passion for the West in his latest album. At 72, Russell is long established as one of America’s most poetic of troubadours, and the images he evokes throughout October in the Railroad Earth are as powerful as ever. But where does he get his ideas? Read on as Russell reveals the inspirations behind each track.

1. “October in The Railroad Earth”

Title taken from the prose poem by Jack Kerouac. Jack recited it on The Steve Allen Show, on a jazz record, and parts of his recitation appear on my record Hotwalker. Jack’s prose (and this song) highlight Kerouac’s time working as a railroad brakeman in San Francisco. Bill Kirchen plays the freight train/ truck-driving Telecaster parts here. Jack’s books (most never published in his lifetime) are called out in the outro…he died with 62 bucks in the bank.

2. “Small Engine Repair”

An older song of mine I never recorded — until now. Scottish actor Iain Glen sang the song in the Irish movie Small Engine Repair, based around my song title. Iain Glen has gone on to star in Game of Thrones, Downton Abbey, and other major films and TV series. I wrote the song about the man who fixed my lawn mower in El Paso. Funny it ended up as an Irish film.

3. “T-Bone Steak and Spanish Wine”

A few years ago I drove up an old canyon in Northern California and rediscovered a steakhouse and bar I’d played in over forty years back. Nothing had changed. The dinner special on the outside sign remained the same over the years. I sat down with the owner for a glass of wine and we sang the old songs and escaped into the past.

4. “Isadore Gonzalez”

A Tex-Mex corrido based on the true story of Isadore Gonzalez, a Mexican vaquero (cowboy) who appeared in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show in the late 1880s. He died in a horse accident when the show was in England and he’s buried in Bristol in an unmarked grave. He tells his story in the Mexican-corrido style with the Grammy Award-winning Los Texmaniacs (Max and Josh Baca) providing the music.

5. “Red Oak Texas”

A sad but true tale of two twin boys from Red Oak, Texas, who were rebels and delinquents in high school — but straightened out when one twin joined the Army and the other the Marines. They were sent to the Middle East and became heroes, but they never adapted to regular life once they returned home. One twin locked himself in his room for a year and read the WWI poetry of Robert Graves, a famed English poet. Graves may have invented the phrase War is Hell. The Red Oak Texas twins lived it. I left out the grisly parts.

6. “Back Streets of Love”

My GPS (Global Positioning System) love song. Where are we now, who are we anyhow? I’ve never adapted well to the idea of taking map orders and directions from a satellite, or a voice screaming: proceed to the route! My global position? Artist and musician, sir, driven by a signal deep in the blood, like every poet in the game my direction stays the same, lost on the backstreets of love.

7. “Hand-Raised Wolverines”

Years ago I was touring in Canada and the booking agent was a friend named Louise. We had a few days off on the tour and I challenged Louise to find us something interesting to do. She booked us into Edmonton Maximum Security Prison for a concert, and the next day took us out to a private game park where a friend of hers let me inside a cage with semi-tame wolverines, the fiercest animals, pound for pound, on earth. I use that experience as a metaphor for modern times.

8. “Highway 46”

A nod towards the ’50s and ’60s music out of Bakersfield. I heard Bob Dylan on the radio in 1962 the same night I heard Buck Owens. I thought it was all the same — sort of hillbilly/folk music with voices that cut through the fog. Buck Owens, Merle Haggard, Wynn Stewart…voices from a Wurlitzer jukebox. Telecaster guitars and pedal steels. Searing treble. Highway 46 runs from the California Coast towards the San Joaquin Valley, the road where James Dean died in a car crash.

9. “When the Road Gets Rough”

We were stuck in heavy traffic somewhere in England and the guitar player was complaining about his cold hotel room, the driver was coughing and chewing aspirin, and the cafes along the rest stop route didn’t offer much in the way of cuisine. We’d been out for two weeks and spirits were raw…my wife, Nadine, turned to me and said, “That’s when the road gets rough.” Then we wrote this song.

10. “Pass Me the Gun, Billy”

Back in the mid 1960s I was living with my cowboy brother, Pat, on his ranch on the edge of San Luis Obispo, California. He was watching TV on night when he heard gunshots in the far pasture. “Poachers,” he yells. Someone was shooting at his cows. Pat was always ready for a Wild West adventure. And, kids, we got our adventure. Big time. It reminded me of something out of James Dickey’s novel Deliverance.

11. “Wreck of the Old 97”

One of the first songs I learned to play on guitar. I heard it on Johnny Cash’s first Sun Record release: The Hot and Blue Guitars of Johnny Cash. The song tells the true tale of the wreck of a Southern Railway mail in route from Monroe, Virginia, to Spencer, North Carolina, on September 2.


Photo credit: Nadine Russell

BGS 5+5: Orville Peck

Artist: Orville Peck
Hometown: Unknown
Latest Album: Pony

What’s your favorite memory from being on stage?

I think country music to me is about storytelling. I really tried to stay true to that on this album by making each song stand as its own story, while keeping the subject matter really personal. So anytime I’m singing one of these songs on stage and I look out in the audience and catch someone who’s singing along to the words or crying — that’s an incredible moment for me. Not just because they are reacting to my story, but because in that exact moment they are also sharing their same story with me. That exchange…there’s nothing like that in the world.

What other art forms — literature, film, dance, painting, etc — inform your music?

I grew up loving books, films and theatre. I think the iconography of old cowboy novels and Westerns clearly had a lasting effect but I also loved anything that focused on outcasts. Films by David Lynch, Gus Van Sant, John Waters. I always loved the villains or the sidekicks way more than the heroes.

What was the first moment that you knew you wanted to be a musician?

I just always knew I wanted to be a performer since I was really little. I was a lonely kid with a huge imagination so I was always making something or singing or playing my dad’s guitar. Later I would train as a ballet dancer, work as a professional actor, go on tour playing drums and guitar in punk bands — no matter what I was doing I never considered anything other than performing.

What’s the toughest time you ever had writing a song?

It’s funny because I’m actually not a very technical musician. Every instrument I play, I taught myself and I tend to approach all art, even music, from a visual place. So oftentimes I can visualize what a song looks like, how it feels, how I want other people to feel listening to it, but it can maybe take me awhile to translate that into sound. “Hope to Die” took so many tweaks to sound like what I saw in my head, I think I probably drove the engineer crazy.

What rituals do you have, either in the studio or before a show?

My live band usually goes out to warm up before me so I’m often the last one left to go on stage. It sounds kinda corny but I really try to take that time to focus on what the songs mean to me and to not feel too conscious about the performance. I think all the years of being a stage performer made me feel like I had to stifle anxiety or nerves underneath a performance and kind of put on a “show face” but I actually try to keep things a bit more connected now. I’m a lot more accepting that if I’m nervous or anxious — that’s just part of the show that night.


Photo credit: Carlos Santolalla

Dale Watson Makes Himself at Home in Memphis

Call us lucky that Dale Watson is feeling so lucky these days. He’s recently bought a house in Memphis, the city where he recorded his new album Call Me Lucky at Sam Phillips Recording studio, purchased the famous nightclub Hernando’s Hideaway, and continues to develop his sound and to reign as the king of Ameripolitan music. Call Me Lucky includes traveling tunes, love songs, and trucking songs, all under three minutes, and featuring Watson’s signature rockabilly sound.

On the slow-burning ballad “Johnny and June,” Watson and Celine Lee, who co-wrote the song, channel Cash and Carter as they look into each other’s eyes and sing about how deeply their lives are intertwined: “you’re the cream in my coffee/you’re the grits to my gravy/you’re the wind in my sails/a lullaby to my baby.” Cash’s drummer W.S. “Fluke” Holland provides the driving beat for “The Dumb Song,” which features a galloping bass line straight out of the Man in Black’s catalog. Every track features Watson’s inventive songwriting, from the Waylon Jennings-like “Restless” to the scampering Merle Haggard-esque “You Weren’t Supposed to Feel This Good.”

BGS caught up with Watson by phone for a chat about songwriting and his new album.

BGS: You recorded this album in Memphis at Sam Phillips Recording studio. Why did you decide to record it there?

Watson: Mostly I record my albums here in Austin, either at my studio, but sometimes at Willie’s or at Ray Hubbard’s studio. A friend of mine, Matt Ross-Spang, who’s a great producer, had been working over there and I went to visit him. I became close to the Phillips family. Since the 1960s, some of the greatest American records have been made there. It felt like home, and it has this great sound, of course.

What made you decide to buy a house in Memphis?

I’ve always liked Memphis. Wherever I was going that took me in that direction, I’d stop in there. The city has grown but it’s done well in cleaning itself up. Memphis reminds me of Austin in the ‘80s. I can record where I want but I wanted to come here to do this one.

You recently purchased the fabled Hernando’s Hideaway nightclub. Is it open yet? How does owning a club help you in your own music?

We’re still doing work on the club but hope it will open up sometime later this year. Hernando’s Hideaway is the only bar where Elvis, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, and Charlie Rich played in, never at the same time, though. I am able to get discs from new bands, so I hear some new music. As the owner of the bar, I have to really look for these people to perform and play the kind of music I want in the bar. If I sit in the bar, though, I am going to hear some music that I really like and that I want to hear more of.

Is this album a bookend to your 2015 album Call Me Insane?

(Laughs) I never put those two things together. I never thought of that. The label wanted to go with one of songs for the title, and this is what they chose.

Who would you say are your major influences?

Merle Haggard, Ray Price, Buck Owens, Lefty Frizzell, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins.

Can you define Ameripolitan? How did you come up with the term?

I came up with the term out of frustration, I think. (laughs) I’d be somewhere, and people would ask me what kind of music I do, and I’d say country music. They’d say, “I love Kenny Chesney.” Nothing against them, but by today’s standard of country music, they’d be disappointed with my music. If I tell them my music sounds like Hank Williams or Jimmie Rodgers or Merle Haggard, more often than not people say they’ve never heard of that.

So, it’s easier to explain what we are by using a different word, Ameripolitan, to describe original music with a prominent roots influence. It starts with Jimmie Rodgers and has a relationship to music between Rodgers and Hank Williams. We’ve been holding the Ameripolitan Awards Show now for six years and promoting the music. We held the first four shows in Austin; this year’s show we held in Memphis.

You have a knack for writing songs quickly. What’s your view of songwriting? When did you start writing songs and playing guitar?

Early on, I learned to write from my dad, who wrote songs. When I was about seven or eight years old, I started making up songs on a ukulele. A little later I wrote a song about the girl across the street. All the good ones are about the girls. (laughs) I’m not writing “American Pie.” I pick a subject or I write about people or a situation I see. You write and you write and you have an album.

I was cleaning up my place for a move a couple of years ago and I found a good song that we dusted off. The only time I wrote songs on the way to the studio to go on an album was for the Sun Sessions. I wrote about four to five songs on the way there. I started playing guitar when my brother Jim needed a rhythm guitar player in his band. He taught me how to play some chord progressions. Two years later I had my own band and I learned on the job.

You wrote “Inside View” on the spot in a club. How did you come up with it?

We were playing the Continental Club in Austin. There were these two girls near the stage and they kept screaming for me to play “inside view, inside view.” Well, we didn’t have a song called that but I said, “All right, ‘Inside View.’” I turned to my band and I wrote the song there on stage. My drummer and road manager, Mike Bernal, usually records our music; he’ll send it to me later to refine. Usually I have to go back and re-record, but I didn’t have to do that with “Inside View.” I get most of my ideas from my audience.

How did the idea for “Johnny and June” come to you?

I was driving with my daughter when the idea came to me, and she wrote it down as I told her about it. I played Johnny’s guitar on that one. It’s got that Cash vibe to it and it’s a duet between Celine and me.

There’s a song on the album called “David Buxkemper.” How did that song come about?

I never met the guy before I wrote the song. One day I got an email through my website from this guy named David Buxkemper. He told me he was a big fan of the Reverend Horton Heat, and he’d seen me on tour with Heat. He told me he was a truckin’ farmer, and he was a big fan of my trucking songs. He also told me he and his grandfather used to watch Hee Haw together and that he liked listening to trucking songs while he was farming. I was intrigued by his story, and with a name like that—you can’t make that up! So I asked him for more details about his life and ended writing this song about him. I like writing about real people.


Photo credit: Mike Brown

BGS 5+5: The Delines

Artist: The Delines
Hometown: Portland, Oregon
Latest album: The Imperial
Band members: Amy Boone, Cory Gray, Sean Oldham, Freddy Trujillo, Willy Vlautin

Answers by Willy Vlautin

Which artist has influenced you the most … and how?

Man oh man that’s a tough question. I go in phases so I can’t name just one. I grew up worshipping Willie Nelson, he’s always been my personal sorta saint, next was X and then The Pogues and Los Lobos then probably Tom Waits and Louis Armstrong and a dozen others as well.

What’s your favorite memory from being on stage?

The Delines were playing a gig in Madrid and in the audience, right in front of the stage, were two couples making out. A man and a woman and then two men, and I went to myself, goddamn maybe what we’re doing is working! With Richmond Fontaine no women ever came to our shows. It was all middle-aged drunk dudes and none of them had probably made out with anyone in years.

What other art forms — literature, film, dance, painting, etc — inform your music?

I always write songs thinking they are part of a movie and I write novels for a living so those two have always been a big part of my life. I love novels more than anything and I could spend my life in a movie theater. Since I started, I’ve written in characters and stories. For a shy kid it was always easier for me to do it that way. I could say what I needed to say without anyone looking at me. I was way too insecure otherwise. Writing in stories gave me complete freedom from everything, including myself.

What’s the toughest time you ever had writing a song?

Probably from age 12-26. I wrote obsessively, hundreds of tunes and not one good one. Not a single one. You would have thought I’d have stumbled upon one or two but I didn’t. But I loved writing them even though I knew I was no good at it. And then finally a good song came to me. I was 27 and worked at a trucking company loading trucks and all the drivers were talking about seeing shit on the road late at night, white line fever. I was like hot damn, I’ll write that tune. So I write the tune about a long haul trucker who never calls his wife and all the while his wife is on a bender and ends up in a psych ward. I was so proud of the tune, my first good one after 14 years of writing bad ones. Then I played it in a bar one night and a guy comes up to me and says, “That sure don’t sound like Merle’s ‘White Line Fever’ to me.” That’s when I found out Merle Haggard had already written the tune. Even when I was certain I’d gotten a good one someone had already done it.

What was the first moment that you knew you wanted to be a musician?

It started for me around ten but I never thought I would be much of a musician. I just always wanted to plant my flag with musicians because I grew up believing in records more than anything else. Records were always my favorite friends in life. So after a while, just to get closer to them, I joined up.


Photo credit: Jason Quigley

Dolly Parton Carries Childhood Memories Throughout Her Career

Back through the years, I go wandering once again
Back to the seasons of my youth…

So begins “Coat of Many Colors,” which Dolly Parton frequently cites as the favorite song she’s written. That 1971 country classic is just one example of Parton’s ability to view the world through a child’s eye, whether she’s writing about her own life, placing a fictional young character in dramatic circumstances, or simply making a connection to a new generation of kids.

The newest example of this gift is Dumplin’ – a Netflix film where an overweight teenager finds solace in Dolly’s music. Leading up to the movie’s release, Parton released a duet version of “Here I Am” with Sia – an ironic choice, as the pop star is famous for singing with her back to the audience. But that anthem of self-declaration sets the tone for the Dumplin’ soundtrack, underscoring one of the reasons that a teenage girl would love Parton’s music in the first place. The heartfelt film is based on a young adult novel by Julie Murphy.

Seeing an early cut of Dumplin’ inspired Parton to write “Girl in the Movies,” a thoughtful song that finds her identifying with that very character — the “girl in the movies.” Parton told NPR that she wrote it for every little boy and girl. The song carries a strong message, she says: “Don’t just live in a fantasy of watching someone else live their lives. You star in your own role. You be the star of your own life.”

Parton has embodied that perspective for 60 years. In fact, 2019 is the 60th anniversary of the first time she released a song she wrote – in this case, “Puppy Love,” composed with her uncle Bill Owens. Parton was 11 years old when she wrote it, 12 when she recorded it, and 13 when it was released as a single on the tiny Goldband Records. She sang locally around Knoxville, Tennessee, and moved to Nashville on the day after she graduated from high school in 1964. Two years later and still chasing her dreams, she married Carl Dean, a lasting union that nonetheless yielded no children of their own.

Yet time and time again she incorporated a child into the storyline of her music. For example, in “Mommie, Ain’t That Daddy,” Parton sings from the perspective of a woman whose kids happen to see their father begging for money. In “Jeannie’s Afraid of the Dark,” Parton describes Jeannie as a child who feared burial; her duet partner Porter Wagoner then reveals that Jeannie dies. “Malena” is another doomed child who dies on the night of her birthday, finally receiving the set of wings she’d asked for.

By 1970, Parton had carved out a solo career in addition to her role on Porter Wagoner’s TV show. Her first No. 1 hit, “Joshua,” tells the story of an orphaned girl who hears about a mysterious man living a good ways down the railroad track. Curious, she seeks him out – and then promptly moves in with him. (“Why, you’re just what I’ve been lookin’ for!” she exclaims.) The poetic “Coat of Many Colors” arrived a year later, serving as a morality tale that still resonates decades later.

Parton employed that same autobiographical approach for “In the Good Old Days (When Times Were Bad),” a gem from My Tennessee Mountain Home. Reflecting on her childhood years, she sings, “No amount of money could buy from me the memories I have of them / No amount of money could pay me to go back and live through it again.” (Merle Haggard identified with the lyrics so much that he recorded a version, too.) Another of the compositions on that album is simply titled “I Remember” and finds her blissfully recalling those seasons of her youth. Of course, as she matured, so did her songwriting, most notably on poignant compositions like “I Will Always Love You,” “Light of a Clear Blue Morning,” and of course, “Jolene.”

Still, if you dig into her albums from this era, you’ll find songs like “Me and Little Andy,” about a poor girl and her dog who wind up on Dolly’s doorstep. She agrees to let them spend the night; by morning, the girl and the dog are both dead. Another one, “Mammie,” is about a midwife who raises a child after the mother dies at birth and then teaches the child to sing and play guitar — but Mammie herself doesn’t live to the end of song. “Silver Sandals” recounts the story of a disabled young girl who couldn’t walk; when she inevitably dies, Dolly and Porter imagine her happily walking up the golden stairs of Heaven.

On a brighter note, Dolly reminisces about a banjo picker she knew as a kid named “Applejack.” Almost like a precursor to Dumplin’, Parton composed “Shattered Image” about sitting on a bridge as a girl and throwing rocks into her reflection in the water. She compares the experience to the way people were shattering her public image as an adult. A 1979 album cut, “Nickels and Dimes,” is a co-write with her brother Floyd Parton, who died in December. While writing it, Dolly thought about how she’d open up her guitar case in downtown Knoxville as a young girl and busk in order to get enough quarters to buy hamburgers. By the time the song ends, she’s a star, but here’s how it begins:

“I used to stand on the corner and sing as a child
And I’d play my guitar and sing as the people went by
The sidewalks were crowded but I’d just sing louder ‘cause I didn’t mind
Spending my time, spinning my rhymes, and singing for nickels and dimes.”

Even beyond her musical output, Parton has kept a strong bond between herself and a younger generation. In 1986, she invested in a theme park in East Tennessee and rebranded it as Dollywood – a gift that keeps on giving, with new attractions added nearly every year. And it’s not all roller coasters. Parton’s mother sewed a replica of the fabled coat of many colors to display in the museum dedicated to Dolly’s life and career.

Nearly a decade later, Parton instituted the Imagination Library, where pre-school children receive a monthly book at no charge. To these lucky kids, Parton is known as “The Book Lady.” Meanwhile, “Coat of Many Colors” has been successfully transformed into a children’s book and an award-winning TV movie, in addition to being recorded by the likes of Eva Cassidy, Emmylou Harris, Joey & Rory, and Alison Krauss & Shania Twain.

When Parton was 70 years old, she secured a No. 1 country album with 2016’s Pure & Simple. One of the most charming songs on it is titled “I’m Sixteen,” where she sings, “It goes to show you’re never old / Unless you choose to be / And I will be sixteen forever / Just as long as you love me.” A year later she released her first-ever children’s album, I Believe in You.

As 2019 begins, Parton is in the spotlight again. On January 6, “Girl in the Movies” will compete for a Golden Globe award in the category of  Best Original Song in a Motion Picture. A month later, she will be recognized as the MusiCares Person of the Year at an all-star concert event, just a day before the Grammy awards. Along with celebrating her magnificent musical achievements, the presentation also acknowledges the fact that the Imagination Library has given out 100 million books since its inception. Parton is the first member of the Nashville music community to be honored at the annual MusiCares gala.

Way down in the fall, Parton will return to the Grand Ole Opry, celebrating the 50th anniversary of her induction in October. But her history to the Opry stretches about a decade before that. When she was 13, Parton and her uncle Bill Owens had lingered outside the Ryman to meet Johnny Cash. When he emerged, a starstruck Parton begged Cash to let her sing on stage – but it would take a while for this dream to be realized. In time, Opry star Jimmy C. Newman gave up his slot for her, although Cash handled the introduction that night. According to Parton’s autobiography, Cash told the audience, “We’ve got a little girl from up here in East Tennessee. Her daddy’s listening to the radio at home, and she’s gonna be in real trouble if she doesn’t sing tonight, so let’s bring her out here!”

Parton wrote about this career milestone in her book: “I know I had never heard a crowd cheer and shout and clap that way. And they were doing it all for me. I got three encores. This time I was prepared for an encore, but not three, not at the Grand Ole Opry. Someone told me later, ‘You looked like you were out there saying, “Here I am, this is me.”’ I was. Not just to that audience but to the whole world.”


Illustration: Zachary Johnson

WATCH: Matt Campbell, “That’s The Way”

Artist: Matt Campbell
Hometown: Nashville, Tennessee
Song: “That’s The Way”
Album: The Man With Everything
Release Date: November 9, 2018
Label: Flour Sack Cape Records

In Their Words: “I woke up with the hook of the song in my head, not sure where it came from or what to do with it. I was listening to a lot of Merle Haggard at the time. Country music has a rich tradition of artists staking out political positions, but a lot of modern takes are full of platitudes or play to lowest common denominators. I’m staking out my own position in no uncertain terms, informed by my own experiences. I thought of it as Western Swing song, but the more the lyrics came together the phrasing turned into something closer to rap. I suppose that makes sense because my view is that you have to blur a few lines to make sense of America, if only for your own sanity.” — Matt Campbell


Photo credit: Emily Beaver