Photos: Dolly Parton/Instagram
BY DARCY DOUGHERTY MAULSBY
I don’t know life without Dolly.
As I write this, Dolly Parton has only been gone two days. The airwaves are filled with “9 to 5” and “I Will Always Love You.”
One of the first Dolly songs I remember was “Islands in the Stream,” her duet with Kenny Rogers. Even to a grade-school kid’s untrained ear, I could tell Dolly was extraordinary. Years later, when she brought her “Backwoods Barbie” tour to the Des Moines Civic Center in 2008, you can bet my family and I were there.
After Dolly died on Aug. 25, it seemed like everyone was talking about her incredible legacy. We’ve all been inspired by her decades of charity work. We know the uplifting story of her impoverished childhood in the Smoky Mountains of eastern Tennessee and her improbable rise to country music superstardom. We’ve seen her hit movies.
But we don’t know the half of it.
Hello, Dolly
All the retrospectives about Dolly reminded me of a TV segment I watched a few years ago. Dolly explained how she used lyrical opposites to write “The Grass is Blue.”
Those poignant words, which soar above the haunting notes of the acoustic guitar, mandolin, bass and fiddle, still stop me in my tracks:
“I’ve had to think up
a way to survive,
Since you said it’s over,
told me goodbye.
I just can’t make it
one day without you,
Unless I pretend that
the opposite’s true.”
And then comes the heartbreaking chorus:
“Rivers flow backwards.
Valleys are high.
Mountains are level.
Truth is a lie.
I’m perfectly fine,
And I don’t miss you.
The sky is green,
And the grass is blue.”
Dolly wrote this song in 1999 in about 30 minutes during a lunch break on the set of Blue Valley Songbird, a made-for-TV drama. She started playing with the concept of opposites to convey the intense denial and emotional shock of a painful breakup. She often credited the rapid, effortless flow of the song to divine intervention, because she was so tired, in mind and spirit.
It reminds me of the writing wisdom, “No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.”
“The Grass is Blue” can only come from someone who knows hardship. Loss. Pain.
Surely that couldn’t be the perpetually joyful, effervescent Dolly, right?
“Ain’t Nobody’s Fool”
Turns out Dolly wasn’t superhuman. Dolly’s countless hits, including “The Grass is Blue,” aren’t just masterclasses in songwriting. They reflect the soul of a survivor.
The day after Dolly’s high school graduation in 1964, she boarded a bus for Nashville. Record executives turned her down. One said her voice sounded like a screech owl. When she finally had an opportunity with Monument Records, they wanted her to be a pop star. She refused.
Dolly’s talent and focus would catapult her to the top of country charts. When Hollywood came calling and Dolly became a movie star, many in Nashville accused her of betraying her roots. Dolly made it clear she wasn’t leaving Nashville; she was taking Nashville with her.
All that fame came with a price. By the mid-1980s, Dolly struggled with depression and even contemplated suicide, according to her biographer, Martha Ackmann, who wrote “Ain’t Nobody’s Fool: The Life and Times of Dolly Parton.”
Dolly refused to be counted out. Songwriting remained an antidote to her pain and gave her a new sensitivity for those who struggle.
Maybe that’s why this American icon’s music touched so many of us. Beneath the rhinestones, the blond hair and the larger-than-life personality was a country girl who kept choosing hope. If it seemed like Dolly was one of us, it’s because she was.
Darcy Dougherty Maulsby lives near her family’s Century Farm northwest of Lake City. Visit her at www.darcymaulsby.com.
