Dolly

There is an old recording of three women standing around microphones. The women are Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris, each possessing a voice quite capable of filling the room without assistance, and each accustomed to having her name printed prominently above a door. They called themselves Trio, which was unusually accurate by music industry standards. What is striking now is not simply how good they were. Everybody knows that. It is how much listening must have been going on.

Parton could take the lead. So could Ronstadt. So could Harris. They experimented with the parts, moving between lead and harmony until, as Harris later recalled, the song itself seemed to decide. Three very famous women had discovered the usefulness of getting out of one another's way. There are worse places to begin thinking about Dolly Parton.

Since her death, there has been no shortage of people explaining what Dolly represented. She has been claimed by country music and popular culture, by Christians, feminists, gay fans, Appalachia, Nashville and Washington. Bernie Sanders praised her. Donald Trump ordered flags lowered for her. Even the Democratic Socialists of America found something to admire. Death can assemble a surprisingly broad committee it seems.

Perhaps Dolly transcended politics. That has already been suggested often enough. What is more interesting is that she seems to have possessed something increasingly uncommon among enormously successful people: she did not experience somebody else's presence as a reduction of her own.

Whitney Houston turned I Will Always Love You, a song Parton had written years earlier, into something so enormous that most of the world assumed it was hers. Parton collected the royalties, put some of them into property in a historically Black part of Nashville, and called it the house that Whitney built. Years later Beyoncé came for Jolene. Dolly appeared on Cowboy Carter and welcomed her into country music while other people were still arguing whether she belonged there. Neither triumph cost Dolly anything. Guarding the song had never occurred to her. Holding on to her theme park's name, briefly, might have.

Dixie Stampede carried a name doing more work than a dinner show should, and when enough people said so, the name was retired within a season. She gave no lecture on what she'd really meant. There was no demand that her critics first prove their good faith. The word just went.

Her relationship with gay fans and drag performers was similarly uncomplicated. She liked them and they liked her. She defended their right to be themselves and apparently saw no reason why they shouldn't be her as well.

In Texas, where legislators had managed to make drag sufficiently complicated to require a federal court, Dolly entered proceedings indirectly. Brigitte Bandit, a Dolly tribute performer, testified against the state's drag legislation. Parton reportedly sent her a rhinestone-covered guitar. When a federal judge considered the breadth of the law, Dolly herself became one of the examples of the sort of performance its wording might conceivably catch. Then came one of those details that would look a little too neat if somebody had written it.

On 25 August, the day Dolly Parton died, Judge David Hittner again blocked the Texas law, noting that as written it could just as easily catch a high school cheerleading routine as a drag show. His advice to anyone still offended was, essentially, to leave the room. It is difficult to improve upon a sequence involving the State of Texas, constitutional law, a drag queen, Dolly Parton and a rhinestone guitar. So we won't.

The interesting thing about these stories is how little ideological consistency they require from Dolly. She was not forever announcing her values. She had habits. Books were needed, so books appeared. Families lost homes, money appeared. A word caused unnecessary hurt, so the word disappeared. Someone else had the better voice for the song so Dolly sang harmony. Which makes some of the tributes following her death worth listening to rather carefully.

Everyone seems very fond of Dolly's generosity. We are, it seems, rather less agreed about being generous. Her acceptance of gay people has also been warmly remembered. Acceptance itself remains a more complicated proposition, particularly when the people being accepted then ask to be treated accordingly. This is not especially surprising afterall, funerals have always brought out the best in people's principles. There is little point compiling a roll call of hypocrites. They know who they are, or, more likely, don't. Dolly would probably have found the exercise tiresome anyway.

She spent decades creating one of the most conspicuous identities in American life. The hair, the rhinestones, the breasts, the jokes about all three. There was never much danger of Dolly Parton disappearing into the background and perhaps that was the point. She knew exactly who she was, so Linda Ronstadt did not have to be less Linda Ronstadt. Emmylou Harris did not have to be less Emmylou Harris. Whitney did not have to sing the song less magnificently. Beyoncé did not have to ask permission. A man in a dress did not threaten the woman in the rhinestones.

Back in 1987, three women stood around microphones and worked out who should sing which part.

Sometimes Dolly took the lead.

Sometimes she didn't.

A great many people, now telling us what Dolly Parton stood for, might begin there.