The great Dolly Parton, musician, storyteller, philanthropist, entrepreneur, amusement park mogul, and one of the best of us, has passed at the age of 80.
If you've never heard it, I highly recommend the podcast Dolly Parton's America from RadioLab on NPR.
I grew up in the 1980's when Dolly - through radio play, TV and her hit movies Best Little Whorehouse in Texas and 9-to-5 - became a household name. In short, I cannot remember a world before I knew who she was. I even saw her in November of 1985 .sitting in the rafters of the Erwin Center, in a co-headlining tour with Kenny Rogers (Sawyer Brown was supporting).
As I became a teen, country music was *the enemy* for a good patch, as I think a lot of us shut it down who live below the Mason-Dixon line as we build our little lines between us and them. So it was not until after college that I finally clicked to who Dolly was as a musician. It came, really, with the release of Little Sparrow - pretty late for me as it was her 38th album. I believe I bought Emmylou Harris's Red Dirt Girl the same landmark day (unaware of the Trio effort with Linda Ronstadt until Nathan C showed me the way a few years back).
