Working Girl

Throughout our country’s history, there’s never been an artist who has captured America’s particular mythology — its dreams, its disappointments, its diversity of experiences — as completely as Dolly Parton. Now, more than 50 years into her legendary career, she’s proving there’s still something left to learn about her — and about ourselves.

- Emily Lordi

In June of 1967, Dolly Parton sat down for an interview with a Nashville writer named Everett Corbin. Parton was 21, and had yet to release her first solo album, but the surviving audio recording reveals that she was already shaping her account of herself with the editorial finesse of a one-woman P.R. firm: “I was born — we’ll start with when I was born, OK? — I was born on January the 19th, in 1946, in Sevier County, in Sevierville, Tenn. It’s a little town between Knoxville, Tenn., and Gatlinburg, Tenn. And you might shorten it by saying, ‘the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains.’ ” Parton dutifully answers Corbin’s questions (telling him she most enjoys writing and singing “real strong, pitiful, sad, crying ballads”), before steering the conversation toward a topic he hasn’t asked about, but should have: “Well, I have a new album out, I didn’t mention — or it’s not out, but . . . it should be out by the end of this month. But it’s called ‘Hello, I’m Dolly.’ ”