174: Chad Everett: "Medical Center"
StoryWeb: Storytime for Grownups
This week on StoryWeb: Chad Everett’s TV show, Medical Center. If only I could start with the theme song to Medical Center! If I were telling you this story in person, I’d risk humming a few bars, complete with an ambulance-like scream of notes. But alas, I’m left with mere words to conjure up for you the magic that was Medical Center, an hour-long weekly hospital drama starring Chad Everett as the hip, young Dr. Joe Gannon. Chad Everett and Medical Center were literally my claims to fame when I was in college in the early 1980s at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, commonly known as...
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173: Cynthia Morris: "Chasing Sylvia Beach"
StoryWeb: Storytime for Grownups
This week on StoryWeb: Cynthia Morris’s novel, Chasing Sylvia Beach. What do you get when you combine time travel, intriguing literary history, Paris, and romance? Why, Cynthia Morris’s novel, Chasing Sylvia Beach, of course! I know Cynthia from participating regularly in what she previously called Free Write Flings, month-long excursions that have “flingers” writing freely for fifteen minutes each day in response to various “prompts.” I’ve dipped into Cynthia’s Free Write Flings twice a year for the last several years – every October and February – to generate ideas for...
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172: James H. Cone: "Martin & Malcolm & America: A Dream or a Nightmare"
StoryWeb: Storytime for Grownups
This week on StoryWeb: James H. Cone’s book Martin & Malcolm & America: A Dream or a Nightmare. It has been more than 25 years since I read Rev. James H. Cone’s book Martin & Malcolm & America: A Dream or a Nightmare. I was teaching an English 101 course focused on the writing of the Civil Rights Movement, and I wanted to learn more about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X and to understand better the relationship between them, the intersection points, if any, between them. Of course, I’d already read Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech and his landmark...
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171: Malcolm X and Alex Haley: "The Autobiography of Malcolm X"
StoryWeb: Storytime for Grownups
This week on StoryWeb: Malcolm X and Alex Haley’s book, The Autobiography of Malcolm X. Malcolm X wrote his famed autobiography in collaboration with African American journalist Alex Haley (most famous for his epic book Roots: The Saga of an American Family). If you are one of the many Americans who believe Malcolm X espoused violence, even hate, I urge you to read this compelling book. It reveals Malcolm X as a much more nuanced thinker and leader than depicted in mainstream media. The Autobiography of Malcolm X resonates with so much other American literature before and after its...
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170: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: "Letter from Birmingham Jail"
StoryWeb: Storytime for Grownups
This week on StoryWeb: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s essay “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” In April 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was in Birmingham, Alabama, protesting racism and racial segregation in the city. He was arrested on Good Friday for demonstrating, which a circuit court judge had prohibited. While he was in solitary confinement, Dr. King wrote what is arguably the most important letter in American history. It was addressed to the white clergy of Birmingham, who had publicly criticized Dr. King for getting involved in a matter far from his home in Atlanta. Dr. King began...
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169: Susan Glaspell: "Trifles"
StoryWeb: Storytime for Grownups
This week on StoryWeb, Susan Glaspell’s play Trifles. Born in 1876, Susan Glaspell was a prominent novelist, short story writer, journalist, biographer, actress, and, most notably, playwright, winning the 1931 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her play Alison’s House. She and her husband, George Cram Cook, founded the ground-breaking Provincetown Players, widely known as the first modern American theater company. In fact, it was Glaspell who discovered dramatist Eugene O’Neill as she was searching for a new playwright to feature at the theater. Though she was a widely acclaimed author during...
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168: Elizabeth Strout: "Olive Kitteridge"
StoryWeb: Storytime for Grownups
This week on StoryWeb: Elizabeth Strout’s book Olive Kitteridge. Has there ever been a grimmer, more taciturn main character in a book than Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kitteridge? We’ve all known someone like Olive, someone who looks like she’s just bitten into a lemon, someone for whom a kind of self-righteous grumpiness rules the day. What’s so unlikely is to have such a Gloomy Gus serve as the focal point of a book. And it must be said: Olive Kitteridge is not a sympathetic character. As readers, we don’t like her. Those around her – most notably her son – don’t like her...
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167: Emily Dickinson: Poem 372, "After Great Pain, a Formal Feeling Comes"
StoryWeb: Storytime for Grownups
This week on StoryWeb: Emily Dickinson’s Poem 372, “After great pain, a formal feeling comes –” For Patricia and our students Emily Dickinson’s Poem 372 is not – technically speaking – a story. And Dickinson is not a storyteller per se. But her nearly 1,800 poems speak deeply and powerfully to the human condition. They give a still unparalleled account of what it is to be human. Poem 372 does have some elements of storytelling. Instead of “once upon a time,” we get “after this, then this.” And then Dickinson describes the numbing, the freezing, the letting go – perhaps...
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166: James Joyce: "The Dead"
StoryWeb: Storytime for Grownups
This week on StoryWeb: James Joyce’s short story “The Dead.” James Joyce’s “The Dead” is widely considered to be his best short story, called by the New York Times “just about the finest short story in the English language" and by T.S. Eliot as one of the greatest short stories ever written. The storyline is simple enough: a long-married Irish couple -- Gretta and Gabriel Conroy – attend a lavish dinner party thrown by his aunts in celebration of the Feast of the Epiphany (January 6). At the party, they each have a variety of conversations with assorted party guests, and...
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165: Richard Thompson: "1952 Vincent Black Lightning"
StoryWeb: Storytime for Grownups
This week on StoryWeb: Richard Thompson’s song “1952 Vincent Black Lightning.” For Jim, in honor of his birthday My husband, Jim, and I love this song by Richard Thompson and its signature line, “red hair and black leather, my favorite color scheme.” In fact, the first concert we saw together was Thompson playing at the Boulder Theater, and of course, I sported a black leather motorcycle jacket. When Thompson sang the song, one of his most popular, and got to this particular line, Jim called out, “Me, too!” Thank goodness, Jim is not a heckler – and he didn’t disturb the...
info_outlineThis week on StoryWeb: Dolly Parton’s song “Coat of Many Colors.”
Call it maudlin or sentimental, but Dolly Parton’s song “Coat of Many Colors” is undeniably an American classic, so much so that it was adapted to a made-for-television movie in 2015 and to a sequel, “Christmas of Many Colors,” in 2016.
The song is not particularly innovative artistically speaking. It doesn’t push the envelope in any way.
And yet . . . it tells the story of the Parton family so honestly, vividly, and memorably – and does so in a neat, three-minute package.
The song tells of the Parton family’s poverty, so profound that the only way Avie Lee Parton can provide a winter coat for her daughter is to stitch together one from old rags given to the family. As she sews the coat for young Dolly, she tells her the Biblical story of Joseph and his coat of many colors. Dolly can’t wait to wear the new coat to school. The joy and pride she feels in wearing the rainbow-colored coat are dashed when the other children at school make fun of her for her coat made of rags. Of course, as a good Nashville hit will have it, by the end of the song, young Dolly has learned a lesson in true love and pride in one’s family.
Parton wrote “Coat of Many Colors” in 1969 while traveling on a tour bus with her singing partner, Porter Wagoner. The story goes that she couldn’t find any paper on which to write the song, so she grabbed a dry cleaners’ receipt for one of Wagoner’s suits. When the song hit it big, Wagoner had the receipt framed. It is now on display next to a replica of the original coat in Chasing Rainbows, the Dollywood museum dedicated to Dolly Parton’s life and career.
The song was released in 1971 as the title track of Parton’s eighth album. Iconic and revered, “Coat of Many Colors” is without a doubt Parton’s “signature song.” It has been covered by Shania Twain, Emmylou Harris, and Eva Cassidy, among others. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution ranked it tenth on its list of one hundred songs of the South. And in 2012, the Library of Congress added “Coat of Many Colors” to its National Recording Registry, a collection of sound recordings that the LOC describes as “culturally, historically, or aesthetically important,” recordings that “inform or reflect life in the United States.” Perhaps most importantly, “Coat of Many Colors” remains Parton’s own favorite of the more than three thousand songs she has penned since she began writing at age seven.
When I worked at a hiking lodge in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park high atop Mt. LeConte, I was mesmerized by a photo history book of the area as it existed before it was made into a national park in 19##. Families had lived scattered throughout the rugged but spectacularly beautiful terrain. Among those original families were the Partons and the Ogles. Dolly Parton and Judy Ogle, as is told in the television movie, became best friends in school and remain so to this day.
Born in 1946 in Locust Ridge, a very small and remote community just north of the Greenbrier Valley in the Great Smoky Mountains, Dolly was the fourth of twelve children born to Avie Lee and Robert Lee Parton. Her mother was a singer and taught her young daughter religious music as well as the traditional ballads her ancestors brought with them when they settled in the Smoky Mountains.
Raised as a Pentecostal in the Church of God, Dolly became a singing sensation at an early age. When she was thirteen, she appeared on the Grand Ole Opry, where she met Johnny Cash, who encouraged her to pursue her career in the way that felt right for her.
The day after her high school graduation in 1964, Dolly Parton moved to Nashville. On her first day in the city, she met Carl Dean, her future husband, in a laundromat. Dean is now retired from his work paving asphalt roads in Nashville. And according to both Parton and Dean, he has seen her perform only once. Perhaps Carl Dean is one of the reasons Dolly Parton stays so rooted to her past despite the wigs and gowns and over-the-top makeup.
What I love about Dolly Parton is that she spans two worlds that seem at once far apart and extremely close. As told in “Coat of Many Colors” and in the numerous interviews Parton has given throughout her long career, the Partons lived a hardscrabble life in Locust Ridge. Dolly Parton very much has one foot squarely planted in that mountain past. The fact that she feels a strong tie to her home and her people is made clear in her theme park, Dollywood, and her other business ventures in nearby Pigeon Forge, just a few miles from the one-room cabin where Parton was raised with eleven siblings. Parton employs many people at Dollywood who are descended from those original mountain families.
But Dolly Parton also very much has her other foot planted just as firmly in the glitzy, glamorous, modern world of show-biz – Nashville, where she makes her home, and Hollywood, where she has made her films. She herself is larger than life, a walking, talking, singing coat of many colors. She embodies – literally – that in-your-face joy and fierce mountain woman pride.
Dolly’s exceptional accomplishments – from recording numerous country and bluegrass albums to receiving a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, from making several films to being named to the Country Music Hall of Fame – are a testament to her ability to stay connected to her past while embracing the much wider world beyond Locust Ridge. In recognition of her many successes, Dolly Parton has received the Library of Congress’s Living Legend Award, the presidential National Medal of Arts, and Kennedy Center Honors.
To learn more about Dolly Parton, visit the Library of Congress’s extensive digital archive about the Appalachian musician. Begin your exploration by reading the LOC’s biography of Dolly Parton. Then locate Locust Ridge exactly on maps of the Great Smoky Mountains. You can peruse a timeline of Parton’s life as well as a discography of Parton’s recordings. To place Parton’s career within the history of country music, take a look at the country music timeline provided by the LOC.
To explore the song and its spin-offs, consider purchasing the 1971 album Coat of Many Colors. You can also buy a children’s picture book based on the song as well as DVDs of the 2015 TV movie, Coat of Many Colors, and the 2016 sequel, Christmas of Many Colors.
Visit thestoryweb.com/parton for links to all these resources and to listen to the original 1971 recording of “Coat of Many Colors.” You can also watch an early 1970s television appearance in which Dolly Parton performs “Coat of Many Colors.”
Revisit this classic American song – and find out how even the glitzy, glamorous Dolly Parton brings life to her deep-seated mountain pride.