Dolly Parton represents all that’s best about America

After the storming of Congress last week, numerous American commentators looked at the Proud Boys, the QAnon Shaman and Trump himself and said, in so many words: ‘This is not who we are.’ Undoubtedly true. It raises, however, an interesting supplementary question: who, in fact, are you?

Looking through the ranks of those who might represent the best values of America, we arrive quite quickly at Dolly Parton. She came from a family in rural Tennessee of both grinding poverty and honest, decent aspiration. Sacrifices on their part, and
a 30-hour bus journey to Louisiana, let her make her first recording in 1959, at 13. Her first LP, in 1967, opened with the still classic song ‘Dumb Blonde’, Dolly both acknowledging and dismissing the initial impression of her appearance.

In the past 53 years she has released 64 studio albums, including 18 with other artists. She has recorded more than 1,000 songs. Early in her career, she successfully shed the usual high degree of control and emerged as a talented songwriter — she is said to have written more than 5,000 songs. A dabbling with Hollywood gave us a small number of classic roles, and I recommend another view of 9 to 5 and the otherwise gruelling tearjerker Steel Magnolias. Everyone else in each movie seems to be acting, rather elaborately; Dolly is wonderfully authentic and truthful without making the slightest apparent effort, and quite irresistible.

The immense riches this has brought have been used by Dolly selflessly and benevolently. In 1986, she bought a struggling theme park in Tennessee and set about developing it as Dollywood. It is a festival of Americana. By all accounts, it is enchanting: ten pleasant minutes on YouTube will convince you that the nine rollercoasters pull off a difficult combination in being both thrilling and charming, wooden tracks plunging and rattling through the Tennessee woods.