I never listened to country music. Not really — not until late in high school, when rockers I already loved (the Byrds, the Grateful Dead, the Flying Burrito Brothers) started crossing over into it. That was my door in.
I didn’t know Hank Williams. I didn’t know George Jones. I didn’t know Tammy Wynette.
But I always knew Dolly Parton.
Everyone did. That’s the thing about her — you didn’t have to be a country fan to know exactly who she was. She sure had a brand.
The rags-to-riches origin story: a one-room cabin in the Smoky Mountains, one of twelve kids, a coat made of rags that became a song, then a children’s book, then a legend. The look: the wig, the rhinestones, everything turned up past eleven. And the line she’d deliver with a wink whenever anyone asked her about it — “You know it’s really expensive to try to look this cheap.”
