Dolly puts this rural warmth at the core of her new album, “Little Sparrow,” a sweet and simple return to her Smoky Mountain childhood. The album follows her previ-ous labor of love, the Grammy-winning “The Grass Is Blue.” On this record, she mixes acoustic, folk-based mountain music with her emotive vibrato on her songs about love and life in Appalachia–and unlikely renditions of songs by Cole Porter and Collective Soul. Dolly calls this “blue-mountain music.” “It’s the purest thing I’ve ever done,” she says, sipping sparkling water from a crystal glass while recalling tales of mountain ghosts, life without electricity and her own early fashion fiascoes.
PARTON: Hell, no! Just ‘cause I’m singing about a farmer doesn’t mean I have to come out in overalls. Or just ‘cause I’m singing about a woman having a baby doesn’t mean I have to wear a maternity smock. But if I did, I’d put rhinestones on it.
I know this album won’t sell as much as pop or country. But those 100,000 people that buy it are good enough for me. I’m gonna try to do an album like this every two years or so because it’s who I am, what I love. I could never make enough money to buy that feeling out of my soul.
When I came out of the Smoky Mountains, I tried to make a living doing [mountain music], but I couldn’t. I had to prostitute myself in certain ways musically in order to make a living. It’s almost like I had to get rich in order to sing like I was poor again.
I was one of 12 children. We had no electricity, grew our own food, hogs, and lived like pure mountain people. I call that my Smoky Mountain DNA. When I sing, I’m living that again. The song “Mountain Angel”: all my life I heard about this woman who was killed on the mountain, and still wandered around up there, screaming. Hell, with a ghost story like that hanging on your shoulders, every noise would scare you to death. At night we wasn’t about to go outside to the toilet, so that’s why everybody peed in the bed. Anyway, my song is about why she died, and why she’s still up there a-whoopin’ and a-hollerin’.
I grew up in a Pentecostal church where my grandpa was the preacher, and my family would all play and sing in church. We also listened to the “Grand Ole Opry” on a battery-powered radio. My uncle Bill, who was a guitar player, saw me playing, singing and writing on my own and saw great potential there. He got me into a few local radio stations to sing, and they helped us record songs to send to Nashville. I was on TV before we even owned a television or had electricity.
Even when I did realize, I never wanted to forget who I was. I’ve looked gaudy and silly over the years, but it was a country girl’s idea of glamour. Lucky me, people just forgave me. Or if nothing else, they just pitied me, like, “Hell, I think she’s serious, bless her heart. Let’s forgive her for being a fool.” I got away with a lot of s–t ‘cause people knew my heart was true.
