Lessons I Learned From Dolly Parton

Photograph of Dolly Parton backstage at Madison Square Garden by Matthew Peyton/Getty Images.

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Everything I need to know about surviving this bad economy, I could learn from Dolly Parton. True, Little House on the Prairie might offer more practical advice than the bouffant-wigged glamourpuss who admits she’s spent millions trying to look that cheap. But listening to Parton’s new multi-disc collection Dolly—the first career-spanning box of her career—is way more entertaining. With all her spirited instructions on sewing new clothes from old rags (“Coat of Many Colors”), living rent-free on the river banks (“Gypsy Joe and Me”), and getting a job when there’s not much work to be had (“Mule Skinner Blues [Blue Yodel Number 8]”), she should have called the set The Smoky Mountain Girl’s How-To Guide for Hard Times.

Even her honkytonk classic “False Eyelashes” offers a convincing argument for trying to live well with less: “A pair of false eyelashes/ and a tube of cheap lipstick,” she sings. “A pair of worn-out high-heeled shoes/ and a dress that doesn’t fit/ These are all my possessions, all I have to my name/ and a record played in my hometown is my only claim to fame.” The emotion here is supposed to read as shame. But the way Parton sings it—in a gorgeously wide-mouthed Tweety Bird yodel—it sounds a lot like the pride of a self-made woman. “Oh, this little old gold record?” she seems to say, “Why, I put it together with nothing more than Cover Girl and some chewing gum!”

Now, being poor and reveling in simple pleasures may be the most overused trope in country music. But Parton actually did grow up in a ramshackle one-room cabin with a father who couldn’t read and a mother who struggled to feed 12 kids. So she sees both the good and the evil in that old Backwoods Cinderella story. In “The Good Old Days (When Times Were Bad),” she remembers “mama layin' in suffer and sickness/in need of a doctor we couldn't afford,” then insists, “No amount of money could pay me/to go back and live through it again.” And yet, as country’s Queen of Contradictions—the feminist icon with fake breasts, the Christian woman who modeled her look on the town tramp—she also suggests that this godforsaken upbringing was a blessing. “I had to get rich so I could afford to sing like I was poor again,” she once said.

Dolly’s other specialty is, of course, relationships, and here thrift helps create some of her most inspired metaphors. On “Bargain Store,” she even describes her body as if she were advertising a used tractor-trailor: “Take for instance this old broken heart/ If you will just replace the missing parts/ You would be surprised to find how good it really is.” Yes, love is just like being broke: You’ve gotta spruce up the stuff that’s already lying around the house.

Of course, it’s even more fun to hear Parton hollering about breaking things off. Most songs on Dolly fall into two categories—"I Know You’re Cheatin’ on Me When You Say You’re Out Fishin’/Gamblin’/Starin’ at Some Trollop’s Cleavage" and "I’m Awful Sorry I Dumped That Nice Young Hillbilly Years Ago." And money’s often what sparks her intuition that things aren’t gonna work out. Arguing over bills on “We’ll Get Ahead One Day,” a he said/she said number shared with her longtime collaborator Porter Wagoner, her voice is so charged that it crackles with the real-life financial tension between her and her duet partner, who shared her songwriting revenues. It’s telling that Parton’s version changes Wagoner’s line “If the sun comes up and my wife cuts down/ We’ll get ahead some day” to “If the sun comes up and we both cut down/ We’ll get ahead some day.”