On Dolly

Dolly Parton died today, at 80 years old. Not that old by modern standards really and if there were rumours of ailing health I wasn't aware of them but who knows.

It's hard to know what to say about Dolly. There's the music, of course, and that will speak for itself for generatios to come. Dolly was one of those songwriters who wrote music so fine that it could be co-opted and interpreted by anybody: Whitney Houston made I Will Always Love Your her own, but it will always have started with Dolly.

There's the feminism which she was a pioneer of, though not alone. Dolly tells a great story about I Will Always Love You when Elvis wanted to record it (Presley, not Costello.) The problem is Elvis's manager's policy that people sign over 50% of the publishing rights to Elvis for any song he recorded. She refused, Elvis never recorded it and a legend was born. Imaging being that young and that sure of yourself to give up what would have been an astronomical sum of money, even after giving half of it up.

There was the charity work, which she went about silently and politely as the best charity work is done. Her Imagination Library gave literally hundreds of millions of books to kids who couldn't afford it, all because she loved reading. There's more, and hopefully none of that stops just because she's gone.

Doly entered my life as a kid with records played on one of those shitty suitcase records we all had, and so many duets with Kenny Rogers played while driving in the car with my dad. I've loved the video of We Got Tonight below for a long time because it wasn't hers originally, a fact that she points out gently with a reference to Sheena Easton. It wasn't a compeitive jab: Dolly loved everyone.

There'll never be another Dolly. Times have changed too much, but the world is lucky that we had this one. Go do something kind and unnecessary for someone tonight as a way to remember her. She would have.