Dolly Parton: How to Make Decisions (Even If They Break Your Heart)
October 31, 2023
Glennon Doyle:
Welcome back to We Can Do Hard Things, and happy Dollyween. Today, you are not going to believe this but Dolly Parton is here. Dolly is going to tell us how she makes her toughest decisions by trusting her gut even when it breaks her heart. That will blow your mind. She’s going to teach us how to be brave enough to try something brand new at 77, and she’s going to tell us how she’s been mothering the world her entire life through just amazing projects like lately, the Imagination Library, where I think … Sister, does every kid in the freaking country get a book from Dolly Parton? Is that a thing?
Amanda Doyle:
It is for promoting literacy in early education. At a lot of child development centers and places, under resourced places throughout the country, you just sign up and then you get a book every month to your house. It’s wild. She started that because her dad could not read and never went to school, and so didn’t have a chance to learn to read and write. So she created that in his honor. Very, very cool.
Glennon Doyle:
Oh god. Dolly kills me. Before we begin, I’m just going to say that my favorite Dolly Parton quote ever is this as follows, my whole family knows, somebody asked her how she feels when people call her a dumb blonde, and she said, “It doesn’t bother me, because I know I’m not dumb and I’m not blonde.” All right. Welcome, Dolly Parton.
Dolly Parton:
Hi, there.
Amanda Doyle:
Oh.
Dolly Parton:
Hi.
Glennon Doyle:
Hello, Ms. Parton.
Dolly Parton:
How’s everybody?
Amanda Doyle:
Overwhelmed with Joy. Such an honor to be with you, Ms. Parton.
Dolly Parton:
Well, thank you. Well, I’m proud to be with you, so thanks for the nice compliment.
Amanda Doyle:
Oh my goodness. We just want to tell our listeners the joy that is happening today. Everybody, Dolly Parton is here. From Locust Ridge to global fame, you, Ms. Parton, have been a constant leader, as a business innovator, advocate for education, your courage to do the right thing and perhaps just as importantly, when you learn something is hurtful, your resolve to immediately change it is what the world needs more of. From Imagination Library’s 200 million books to schoolchildren, to Dollywood’s reinvigoration of an entire local economy, to lifting us up with when life is good again and investing in our vaccine, you are always there for us. There is no doubt that your gift of Travelin’ Thru for Transamerica not only changed hearts, but saved lives. Your stories of those who are shut out and shut in, those counted out or cast out, the way you treat each person’s story with the inherent dignity and respect and awe that every person deserves, thank you for that gift to the world.
Dolly Parton:
Wow. I don’t know if I can measure up to all of that. You’re getting emotional here. Wow. Well, thank you so much, but I don’t know that I’m all that, but I try to do what I can and I’ve been around long enough to ought to be doing something good for somebody, and I’ve had a good, long productive life, and I like sharing and I like loving people and accepting people for who and how they are because that’s how I want to be treated. So thank you for all those wonderful remarks and like I said, I don’t know if I can measure up, but I’ll do my best.
Glennon Doyle:
You already have. So that’s done. We wanted to say that you so often use songwriting as a way to tell the untold stories of underdogs and outsiders and the underdog outsider stories you choose to tell are often those of women, women who have had abortions, women who have been committed to institutions by their own husbands, women trying to hold families together and working so damn hard to stay afloat. What’s your favorite story that you’ve told about a woman’s life, one that’s changed you to know and to tell?
Dolly Parton:
Well, I think one that changed me and actually was very helpful, I think, to a lot of women, was the name of my first album, and it came from an honest place. It’s my song Just Because I’m a Woman. That was my first RCA album and I wrote that about … it’s really about I can see you’re disappointed by the way you look at me, I’m sorry that I’m not the woman you thought I’d be like, someone thinking that they’ve married a virgin when they haven’t. Anyway, I’ve made my mistakes, but listen and understand, my mistakes are no worse than yours just because I’m a woman and that goes all the way through the whole thing about just talking about those kinds of things that a man will take a good girl and ruin her reputation, but when he wants to marry, well, that’s a different situation.
Dolly Parton:
He’ll look for an angel to wear his wedding band, and it’s like, well, he’s left somebody else just broken and laying in the sand, so to speak. It’s like I know that I’m no angel like you thought I’d be so anyways, my mistakes are no worse than yours just because I’m a woman and this goes on and on about that sort of a thing. I think we often go through that, and that was a need that I feel within myself because I’ve been married to my husband about eight months, and then he started asking me questions about my past, and I said, “Now, I don’t want to lie to you because I’m a pretty open, honest person, so don’t ask me nothing you don’t want the truth about.” Anyway, I told the truth and he wasn’t too happy about that and then I wrote that song.
Dolly Parton:
I’ve always been one to uphold myself as a woman and to uphold other women as I can because written many songs, as you mentioned, about women and their situations, songs that wouldn’t play on the radio like Down from Dover about an unwed mother and The Bridge about a girl that had been left behind, left with a baby and all that. I kind of cover it all. I’m a songwriter.
Amanda Doyle:
I am obsessed with you as a business icon. It just feels like you were so ridiculously ahead of the times in terms of the decisions that you made that I imagine felt hard. I’m wondering if you can tell us the story about when Elvis Presley asked you to record your song. What did you tell him? Because your confidence in yourself to say what you needed to say to Elvis Presley.
Dolly Parton:
Well, let me clarify that whole story because sometimes it gets distorted. That was one of the hardest business decisions that I have ever had to make. Elvis loved the song and he wanted to record the song, and I’d never met Elvis before, and I was going to get to meet him at the session that day.
Amanda Doyle:
And it was I Will Always Love You, right? That was the song.
Dolly Parton:
The song I Will Always Love You. I’m sorry, I thought I had said that. But anyway, it was the song I Will Always Love You and so he loved that and even Priscilla told me years later that he sang that song to her the day they divorced and they were coming down off the steps of the courthouse, so wasn’t Elvis, so don’t blame Elvis. I loved Elvis. So I was ready to go, I was so excited. I mean, I told everybody “Elvis will be recording my song I Will Always Love You.” The night before or late afternoon, the day before the session, Colonel Tom Parker had tried to get in touch with me and so I thought it was about maybe to ask if I’d be willing to do pictures or that sort of thing. He proceeds to tell me that they do not record anything with Elvis unless they have the publishing or at least half the publishing.
Dolly Parton:
I’d already had a number one song on it myself and so that was the most important copyright in my publishing company and I told him, I said, “Well, I’m not going to be able to do that”, and he said, “Well, then we’re not going to be able to record the song.” I even said, I think, “Does Elvis know about that?” and he said something to the effect of, “I’m Elvis’s manager and I make the business decisions.” I said, “Well, this is a heartbreaker for me, but I’m not going to be able to do it”, and so I didn’t, and that broke my heart, but I felt I had to stand up for my rights, for my creativity and for the things that I’m hoping to leave for my family when I’m out here.
Amanda Doyle:
And was it difficult, did you struggle with it or was it just you knew you had a bright line, “My songwriting and my intellectual property, it stays with me, and that’s it”?
Dolly Parton:
If it had been maybe another song that was not that important, if it had been something new, I might’ve considered splitting the publishing to get Elvis to sing something, but not that song because it had already proven itself. It had been number one already, but that was hard. But that’s the kind of decisions you have to make as a business person. But yes, it broke my heart. I cried all night about it and then even now in my rock album, I wrote a song about it called I Dreamed About Elvis, and it’s all about Elvis coming to me in my sleep, and it tells the whole story about the song and Colonel Tom screwing that up about us singing I Will Always Love You. I sang it with Ronnie McDowell, who sounds exactly like Elvis, and I had a conversation with Elvis and he sang with me on I Will Always Love You and used The Jordanaires. It’s a real special cut from the album that tells that story.
Dolly Parton:
I said, “I’ve got to hear Elvis”, or at least a sound alike, see how he would sound on this song. So that’s what I did. But anyway, getting back to being a businesswoman, those are the decisions you have to make. I don’t even know that I even considered that one for a moment, but I had to make that decision as I’ve had to make other heartbreaking decisions through the years. But I just believe that I have to protect my rights.
Glennon Doyle:
It’s so interesting because when you say you’re able to make decisions that break your heart, it means that there’s something else in you that is above and beyond even your own heart.
Glennon Doyle:
I am a spiritual person too. I feel like I always have one foot in the spiritual world and one in this world, and I’m always trying to figure that out. You make decisions as someone who’s so grounded in something. Don’t you have a morning spiritual routine that you go through each morning? Is that something that you do?
Dolly Parton:
Oh, I’ve always done that. I’ve always been a person that … I do my prayers, I do my affirmations, I do my requests so to speak, and I just send it out there. But that part of me that’s not my heart, when I say breaks my heart to do it, then I have to draw on my higher wisdom. I have to draw on that thing that’s bigger than me. I have to try and listen very close to what that voice is saying to me, and that’s how I make so many of my decisions. A lot of people call that your gut feeling like, “I knew in my gut that that was the thing to do.” Well, I know in my heart and in my higher self what the right things are because I pray about it and leave myself open to the right answers.
Dolly Parton:
The only times I’ve ever made major mistakes, if you want to call them that, are times that I didn’t listen to that voice and allowed a situation or someone just to say, “Oh, you know what, maybe it’s not that big of a deal”, but I always pay for it if I go against that higher wisdom.
Glennon Doyle:
Our friend, Cheryl Strayed says sometimes you have to be brave enough to break your own heart. We need to tell you that in our home, we listened to your new album with our 15-year old who was as blown away that we were talking to you today as our 80-year-old dad. That is a weird thing. That’s weird. You’re the icon of the 15-year olds and of the 80-year olds. Wow. The new album is a delight. Rockstar. Besides some new fantastic songs, you collaborated with so many greats, including our dear friend, Brandi Carlile, so that was a special moment for us.
Dolly Parton:
I love her too.
Glennon Doyle:
Oh, isn’t she just a special human being?
Dolly Parton:
Oh, she is. She’s a doll. I’ve loved her for years. We’ve always had a connection. We always talk about our writing, but we talk about life and we’re just very similar in our spirit and in the way that we create and the way we feel about people. She’s got a good little heart in her, and she is so gifted, and I respect and appreciate all God’s gifts, and she’s certainly got a great one.
Glennon Doyle:
We could not agree more.
Dolly Parton:
But getting back to your 80-year-old and your 15-year-old, I’ve been around a long time. For six decades, I have been in show business, in the business growing, and people kind of have grown up with me. I was lucky enough to be on Hannah Montana with my little fairy goddaughter, Miley Cyrus, who sings one of the songs in the album with me, her song Wrecking Ball, but when I was on Hannah Montana, well, I just started a whole new career with all the young kids. The little kids loved Aunt Dolly because that’s what I was on the show and so they have followed me too, but then the 80-year-olds and the people like that were following me when I was growing in the business. I think that people feel like they know me. I’m like a relative, someone they’ve always known and that they’ve always kind of liked. It’s like, “Oh, Aunt Dolly’s coming. We’re going to have a good time.” I kind of feel like people just relate to me because they’ve always seen me.
Glennon Doyle:
It just seemed like so much fun listening to Rockstar. What was your favorite part of recording it?
Dolly Parton:
Well, I just loved the idea that I was going to do a rock album. Here I am 77 years old and I’m going to be a rock star, and so I thought, “Well, I have to call it Rockstar just for fun and I did it because they put me in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and I didn’t feel I’d done enough to earn that particular title. So I thought, “Well, I got to have a rock album to go along to kind of earn my keep”, so to speak. But then when I started doing these great iconic songs in the studio by myself, I was thinking, “Wow, wouldn’t it be cool to get some of these great iconic artists to sing that wrote or sang on these songs originally?” I thought, “How cool would that be?”
Glennon Doyle:
It is cool.
Dolly Parton:
Just getting in the studio, getting to know some of these people personally and just hearing their voices and mine live at the same time, or in my headphones just hearing that was amazing. For instance, when I did Magic Man with Anne Wilson, who is a fantastic singer, I mean, I had to really put on my top belt for some of that stuff because I thought, “Well, I have to. She’s a great singer, so I have to really dig down deep and get everything I have to match that”, because no way you can out sing them, but you want to try to be as good as, or at least not to embarrass yourself. It was fun to get in the studio. It was kind of a challenge, but a sweet melodic kind of challenge on some of the stuff. We weren’t fighting, but it was almost kind of like a competition. We’d look at each other, laugh and think, “Oh yeah, you’re going to hit that note? Well, I’m going to hit this one. Oh yeah, you think you can outdo me? Well, watch this.”
Amanda Doyle:
How did you narrow it down to those songs? It must have been overwhelming. That’s a very interesting creative endeavor to try to do that.
Dolly Parton:
It’s funny, I got a kick out of it when you said, “How did you narrow it down?” I think, “Narrow it down?” Nobody ever intended to do 30 songs ever in their whole life.
Amanda Doyle:
That’s true.
Dolly Parton:
I had not intended to do that many songs. Usually when you record any album, you go in and you have a few extras, but you think, “Oh, good, I’ll have a few left in the can” we call it, a song left on the shelf for bonus tracks or to re-release some other time. But I was just doing this on a demo scale. I didn’t tell anybody I was actually recording the album. My management, nobody, because I just went in with Kent Wells, who’s my musical director. I said, “I don’t want you to tell nobody”, and we kind of swore the musicians to secrecy, “Don’t be talking about this till we see what we’ve got and then see if this is really something I need to be doing.”
Dolly Parton:
Anyhow, we got great musicians and I kept recording these songs, and then I thought, “Oh, I forgot so-and-so, I forgot this and Carl’s favorite song or this”, and so I just kept recording until one day … plus, I was going to just narrow down to 12 maybe, at the most 12 or 13 songs, and so one day Kent said, “Now, Dolly got to stop. You can’t record every damn song that’s ever been written in rock and roll.” So finally we stopped and then when we got ready to think about putting the album together, we thought, “We can’t leave this out. We can’t leave this out. We can’t leave that out.” So I thought, “Well, why don’t I just put it out? I’ve never done a rock album, never going to do another one”, so I thought, “Well, let’s just do it”, so we did it.
Amanda Doyle:
You once said about being underestimated, “By the time they think I don’t know what’s going on, I’ve got the money and I’m gone”, which I want to tattoo on my body. I am so interested in this idea of you being underestimated and what that may have to do with your very feminine fashion persona presentation. What do you think that has to do, if at all, with this underestimation and how do you use fashion to express yourself and to navigate your way through culture and what does that have to do with being underestimated or not?
Dolly Parton:
Well, actually, the way I look it came from a very serious place is a country girl’s idea of glam. Just like my little song Backwoods Barbie, “I’m just a backwoods Barbie, too much makeup, too much hair. But don’t be fooled by thinking that the goods are not all there, and don’t let these false eyelashes lead you to believe that I’m as shallow as I look, because there’s a lot to me.” Back in the day, back in the early days when I had said what you just said, and I’ve got the money and gone before they realize it, meaning that back in the early days, still looking trashy like I did more so even back then, I just was always myself. I just always felt certain I had to dress a certain way because I was comfortable. But I have to admit, I could see why people would think, “Oh, that girl can’t know much. She got to be a dumb blonde. You wouldn’t be smart and dress like that going into a business meeting.”
Dolly Parton:
But I had no problems with any of that because I had six brothers, my dad, my uncles, and my grandpas, and I loved men. I’m not intimidated to walk in a room with a bunch of men, but when a lot of these really smart businessmen in those early days, I knew I had a product and I would often say, “Look, I think I got something that can make us all a bunch of money,” that type of an attitude. But when you first go in, sometimes when you look like that, some of them just thinking about that and looking about that, not paying attention to the business, so before they would realize it, sometimes I’d made a deal that they couldn’t get out of. That’s kind of what I meant. Don’t take anybody for granted, that judging that book by the cover, you know, there’s that song.
Dolly Parton:
That’s basically what I meant. Don’t judge anybody, don’t judge me, because there’s a whole lot to me, and I can’t tell anybody else how to run their business, but I’ve often said I’m a very professional Dolly Parton, and that’s the only person I’m really responsible for in business or anything else. You can share all your knowledge or anything you know, but you’re the one that’s responsible for you and the decisions that you make.
Amanda Doyle:
When you came to Nashville and you were doing this from the beginning, this fashion, this style sense has always been you and Behind the Scenes, which is your new book, tracks all of that so beautifully. But people were tying to get you to change that early in Nashville.
Dolly Parton:
Yes.
Amanda Doyle:
When do you think it switched to when people understood, “Oh, she’s doing something here” and they stopped trying to get you to change?
Dolly Parton:
Well, pretty soon after I’d had my first … people started paying attention when I started having hit records.
Amanda Doyle:
That’ll do it.
Dolly Parton:
I started having songs that I had written that other people were singing. That was when at first people were thinking, “Ah, she’s not as shallow as she looks”, that kind of thing. But I thought people would love seeing my progression, to chronicle my whole life in pictures, because there’s some pretty ridiculous funny stuff in there. I even laughed out loud myself trying to put these pictures and things together, thinking “Were you serious about that, Dolly? Well, I guess I must’ve been because I had it on and I was really supporting it.”
Amanda Doyle:
“I was working that.”
Dolly Parton:
Yeah, I was working it, and what’s great, I get a chance to talk about all the great people that have helped make me what I am, to help create that image and the clothes that I’ve worn from my early days of mama making some of my first little stage clothes to the next door neighbor making clothes to my first people in Nashville and then on up to where, like you’re talking about, on the Oscars, singing my song Travelin’ Thru. I just tell the stories about where I was, who these people were, what I was doing at the time. I’m really proud because it tells more stories like what we’re talking about today.
Glennon Doyle:
I used to be a third grade teacher, reading teacher, and I’m a writer now, and so you and the Imagination Library move my heart so much. Abby and I always talk about this, which is that some of the women that we know in our lives or in the world who have the most vibrant and effective kind of world-changing, mothering love are people who are not raising their own children, the most amazing mothering people who mother the whole planet. Can you tell us what’s the last thing you’ve done to mother the world that you are most proud of?
Dolly Parton:
Well, I’m always mothering somebody. Even as I was leaving this morning, I’ve got little nieces and nephews that I keep overnight sometimes, but I always believed that God didn’t let me have children so everybody’s kids could be mine and I think I’ve proven that a lot through the Imagination Library. Everybody comes to me for their mothering. I’m known as the Dolly Mama in my family and with my friends. They come for advice, they come cry on my shoulder, they come for whatever they need to do. I’m just the one that’s kind of there because I’ve always been everybody’s Aunt Dolly. It’s just a love inside of me, because I grew up … like I said, I’m from a family of 12 and I get a lot of my love and stuff that I was taught through my own mother and my grandpa who was a preacher, so we taught that it’s better to give than to receive, and you got to love one another. That was instilled in me, and that’s just part of who I am.
Glennon Doyle:
It sure is. I want to ask you for some personal advice. We have a little one who’s entering the music industry. She’s 17. Right, she’s 17?
Abby Wambach:
Mm-hmm.
Glennon Doyle:
Brandi’s producing her, and she’s just a little creative songwriter, that’s what she loves the most, and now she’s entering into this world. What advice would you give to a little budding songwriter who’s entering the business world?
Dolly Parton:
Well, first of all, I think music is a wonderful, wonderful thing to have in your life, to learn to play the guitar … even if you never make it as a success in the business, to be able to write songs about things you see and feel and to be able to sing them. But it’s wonderful if you can stick with that. But I always tell my little nieces, nephews, “Learn to play the guitar. You’ll be the hit of any party. You’ll be the hit of any campfire gathering or whatever. If you can play and everybody gets to sing along, you’ll be popular anyway, and then if you’re good enough, if you’re good enough, then you can become famous and play your guitar like Ed Sheeran. You can sit around a fire and sing it, or you can stand out on a stage in front of a hundred thousand people and do it.”
Dolly Parton:
But I would just say to be true to yourself, and if you love it that much, you’ve got to put the time and effort. Nobody ever, ever made anything unless you worked that dream. I remember when I first started playing guitar, my little fingers were so sore and so blistered and hurt so bad, but I kept playing that until they became calloused on tips where I could actually play. They do. Real guitar players, you got those fingers there, you got to work it. But most, even some of my own family, when they get to where them fingers start hurting, they quit learning to play. I said, “Well, you’re never going to get anywhere if you’re not willing to deal with the callous, you’re not willing to deal with a problem. This comes up in your life. There’s a lot of calluses out there.”
Abby Wambach:
Oh, good.
Dolly Parton:
You just name them different things. But I would just say stay with it and enjoy it above everything else and just keep trying and just keep focused and like I said, be you and gather your own strength and just step out and don’t be afraid of it. My motto is, or I’ve always said, that my desire to do something is greater than my fear of it.
Abby Wambach:
You’ve been in the industry for six decades. You are a businesswoman, you are a musician. You’ve done, it seems like, everything. What is the identity or title that you feel most at home calling yourself?
Dolly Parton:
I’m just Dolly. I’m just Dolly doing everything that Dolly wants to do or that I feel I’m capable of doing, making a difference. I’m very proud. A lot of people ask me if I have one thing that I’m proud of stuff, that’s really kind of a hard question because I’m very, very proud of, like we were talking about, the Imagination Library, that I can get that many books in the hands of that many children, but I’m also proud that I’m a member of the Grand Ole Opry. I’m proud that I can be a songwriter. I want to be known for everything that I do that’s worthy of calling attention to.
Abby Wambach:
Wow.
Amanda Doyle:
One of the things that keeps running through my head is I’ve heard you say that your favorite song that you wrote was Coat of Many Colors. I don’t know if that’s true, but I read it and also it’s my daughter’s favorite book, that you turned into that book and it’s amazing to me because that song is a lot about the love and care that your mother put into that gorgeous jacket that she made you that also people were making fun of you about because it was all quilted together. You came from this cabin, no running water, your father was a sharecropper, your delivery of your birth was paid with cornmeal, with your coat of many colors that became such a part of how we know you to this book about all of this fashion.
Amanda Doyle:
Do you ever think about the way your mom … thinking back to the time where she makes you this coat and it becomes this moment in your life where you love it but people make fun of you for it, and now you have all of your fashions and the impact of that on the world? What is the connection you make to those two in your head?
Dolly Parton:
I make a lot of connection to that because it’s like what you were saying, just all those patches in that coat, they really signify so much of what I’ve done in my life. Mine has been a life of many colors, and it is true that that’s my favorite song because it does signify so much more. It deals with the bullying, it deals with acceptance. It deals with the love of family and certainly my mother, but that little song, that little story, has meant so much to so many people and for so many different reasons. So many people have been made fun of for one reason or another. It’s a terrible feeling to be made fun of for any reason, to not be accepted as yourself for any reason. You just need to love one another and try to be open-hearted and accepting of people and things and life, of your own self as well.
Glennon Doyle:
Ms. Parton, thank you. You being yourself on purpose for so long in front of us has allowed all of us to be more of ourselves on purpose, and we are so grateful for you.
Dolly Parton:
Thank you so much to all of you, and I hope I’ve helped somebody out.
Glennon Doyle:
As always, you have.
Amanda Doyle:
I’m sure you have.
Glennon Doyle:
Bye, Pod Squad. See you next time.
Glennon Doyle:
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