Fans of Dolly Parton have a new biography to dive into. In “Ain't Nobody’s Fool: The Life and Times of Dolly Parton," Martha Ackmann lays out the singer, songwriter's life from an impoverished childhood to stardom.
Ackmann, who took a lyric from Parton's first hit "Dumb Blonde" for the title of her book, has a penchant for writing about remarkable women: a biography of Toni Stone, the first woman to play professional baseball in the Negro League, another book on the Mercury 13 — 13 women who could have qualified for NASA's astronaut program, but in the 1960s they "were simply the wrong gender. "
More recently, while teaching a course on Emily Dickinson at Mount Holyoke College, Ackmann who lives in western Massachusetts, wrote a biography on the 19th century poet.
As she told NEPM's Jill Kaufman, the segue to Dolly Parton seems perfectly natural.
Marth Ackmann: I've been reading Dickinson since I was 16 years old, I mean I have just read her all my life, and it's kind of the same thing with Dolly Parton.
I write about women who've done sometimes very unusual things that society may not regard as what women should do. And I think Dolly's certainly fits into that category.
NEPM's Jill Kaufman: We mythologize Dolly Parton I think, most of us. Or we're just fans. Do you think as a biographer that you were able to get beyond the mythology?
I hope so. I wanted to show that East Tennessee and that growing up was the wellspring of her imagination. I begin the book talking about her grandparents and how they were booted out of the Smoky Mountains, when the Great Smoky Mountain National Park took over, and they lost their homes there.
I wanted to create in those first couple of pages, you know, that there were just this constellation of forces — location and family and music — that funneled down to her, and she had the genius to turn it into something remarkable.
Tell us about her early life, how she grew up in great poverty, among siblings in a family that was complicated but also very loving.
Dolly once said it wasn't the poverty itself, but rather the shame of it. She was born in a pinched, dark, mountainous region just west of of the Great Smoky Mountains; six brothers, six sisters. Her parents got married – her mother was 15, her dad was 17. He was a tenant farmer and had a drinking problem, and yet her mother very much encouraged creativity.
The story of Porter Wagoner, who was a country music singer, somebody who had a TV show — and who was very involved in the whole scene in Nashville. In Dolly's life, he opened up a pretty major opportunity for her.
Dolly was just beginning to get noticed in Nashville. She moved to Nashville the day after her high school graduation and she was not met with open arms. Record producers didn't think she had a very good voice. She finally landed with Monument Records and had a hit.
Porter Wagoner had the number one country music television show in the United States at that time, and he had lost his "girl singer;" she was leaving the show, quitting and moving back to Oklahoma.
That's a whole other biography right there.
Yeah, yeah, sure is.
So [Wagoner] was looking for a woman to replace Norma Jean. Dolly said he called her into the office. Porter said she called him and wanted to audition. Whatever the case, he hired her, and it was rough going.
People liked Norma Jean. So they found that if they sang duets, people were more accepting of Dolly.
Porter said. They had a kind of blood harmony, and then they became a huge hit.
Meanwhile, Dolly continues to write songs. Her creativity and her popularity began to overshadow Porter's. He didn't like it that Dolly was getting more attention and they began to have terrible fights.
This definitely played out in Dolly Parton's leaving and moving on.
She finally left and wanted to go on and have her own act, her own show. Porter was angry about it, and that's where Dolly's song “I Will Always Love You” came from.
At the moment of their break, she realized she could not tell him verbally what she wanted to, and so put it in a song.
What are your sources for writing about somebody so well known, and well written about?
Well, you're right, there are lots and lots of books and articles about Dolly Parton.
I spent one year reading all the major works and some of the more casual fan kind of stuff, and then hundreds, probably thousands of newspaper and magazine articles.
And, I always start my research, no matter what the subject is, with librarians and archivists, because I trust them!
So I started with librarians in Sevier County, where Dolly is from in East Tennessee and archivist at the Country Music Hall of Fame. Then I interviewed some of Dolly's family members, friends, high school classmates, teachers, her first boyfriend.
I just want to interrupt. Not Dolly Parton, because...?
I did not.
How did that not happen?
How did that how did that not happen!
Well, I certainly reached out numerous times. I should say that since the book came out, I have had some exchanges with with people in Dolly's circle, and I'm hopeful to have more.
