Sad country make me so incredibly happy.
It’s well known, and well-documented, that Dolly Parton grew up very poor (well, money-wise), in the mountains of east Tennessee. She’s become an icon because she’s obviously an incredible talent in the music world, but I think it’s safe to say that what most people admire about her is what an amazing person she is. Through philanthropic efforts like her Imagination Library Foundation, giving back is always at the top of her to-do list.
She famously grew up dirt poor in the mountains of east Tennessee with 11 brothers and sisters, though she always notes how much love they had in their family, even if everybody in their area was poor with three o’s. Her mom, Avie Lee, was born on October 5th, 1923, in Lockhart, South Carolina, which was small cotton farming community. Her father was a preacher, and according to Dolly’s website:
“She learned to make the best of what she had, a skill that would come in handy in her life as a wife and mother.”
Avie married Dolly’s dad, Lee Parton, in 1939, and they had 12 children, six boys and six girls. She was very musical, and Dolly often credits her as her first musical influence, as she was a “gifted vocalist, arranger and interpreter of traditional mountain songs.” Dolly was very close with her mom, and she remained close with both of her parents throughout their entire lives. Of course, you probably know that Avie inspired one of Dolly’s most iconic songs, “Coat Of Many Colors.”
And it was Avie who fostered Dolly’s love of music from a very young teenager, and as a teenager, Avie sang in a trio gospel group with her sisters, Estelle and Dorothy Jo, and they performed at churches, revival meetings, and local radio programs throughout the Smoky Mountain region. Later, in the ate 1960s, Avie formed a gospel group with her daughters Willadeene, Stella, and Cassie, and they recorded a family project called The Parton Family Sings In The Garden, which was reissued by Owepar (Dolly’s company) in 2024.
And in a feature with Southern Living last year, Dolly spoke about the kinds of music her mom would play, which included plenty of old-timey songs that Dolly says she brought over from “the Old World.” Dolly explained that most of them were incredibly sad, but she and her siblings loved them:
“My mama knew all the old songs, brought over from the Old World. She would cry, and we would love it. We’d say, ‘Mama, tell us again about that girl who loved that boy.’ Mama could jerk a tear out of you.”
Sounds like my kinda lady…
Those types of songs included “The Knoxville Girl,” “Down in the Willow Garden,” “Little Rosewood Casket,” and more, which are all traditional Appalachian murder ballads, and Dolly even covered “Little Rosewood Casket” back in the day.
Dolly remembers “watching” the radio with her mama in the evening, and she was bitten by the music bug from a very young age. Of course, she came from a very musical family, and had a natural talent for songwriting, which is her first love.
She wrote songs about anything and everything that happened to her, something she still does to this day:
“If it happened, I wrote a song about it.”
Famously, she penned her classic hit “Jolene” about a bank teller that was flirting a little too much with her husband, Carl Dean, who owned an asphalt paving company and was looking to get a loan for a new machine. I think many of us have heard the story, but obviously, Dolly didn’t like the two of them interacting the way they were.
She explained to Southern Living that she told Carl there had to be someone else he should be talking to about asphalt:
“I told him, ‘I don’t believe this long-legged, beautiful girl is who you ought to be talking to about asphalt.'”
Dolly did gracefully protect the real name of “Jolene,” and I have always wondered who that woman really is, what her side of the story was, and how she feels about the incredibly famous country song all these years later…
“I changed the names to protect the guilty.”
A saint from the beginning…
And this past Friday, Owepar Entertainment, which Dolly started with her Uncle Bill Owens in 1967, released a new project, Smoky Mountain Mama, a reissue of a rare recording of Avie showcasing a collection of old mountain songs, making it not only a special family heirloom but a rare piece of Appalachian musical history. Of course, it includes many of those sad songs Dolly first fell in love with, and those are a country and folk speciality, so it’s no surprise that was some of her first favorite music.
She’s just like us…
There’s something about sad old mountain songs that cut even deeper, and it’s just amazing that the Parton family has these in their archives and were kind of enough to share them with the world.
Avie Lee was encouraged by her brother, Louis Owens, and of course Dolly, to go back into the studio to preserve the mountain ballads and fold songs she used to sing for her children, which are a very important piece of Appalachian history, that ultimately became Smoky Mountain Mama. She sadly died on December 5th, 2003, at the age of 80 in Sevierville, Tennessee.
Smoky Mountain Mama was sold as a cassette tape only in Dollywood in 1990, and because it was produced in very small quantities, it became a highly sought-after collector’s item and it’s just incredible that they were able to preserve it and release it now for all of Dolly’s fans to enjoy. It was restored using a surviving quarter-inch reel-to-reel master used for the original cassette production, and it really is amazing to hear Avie Lee’s renditions of traditional Smoky Mountain music.
She seems like an incredible person, clearly someone who raised another incredible person and tons of great children, and her influence on Dolly cannot be overstated. These kinds of songs are a dying breed, you’d be hard pressed to find many people at all who know them in the modern age, especially those of younger generations even in this region of the Appalachian mountains where the Parton family lived, but it has been forever persevered as a very important piece of music and history in general here.
Definitely check out some of the songs below… you will find it easy to tell where Dolly got so much of her once-in-a-generation talent and why she fell in love with sad songs as a young child. Her mom made them hauntingly beautiful and I could listen to this all day long:
“The Wedding Bells”
“The Eastbound Train”
“Little Bessie”
Smoky Mountain Mama Tracklist
1. The Wedding Bells
2. Little Rosewood Casket
3. The Eastbound Train
4. Three Babes
5. Orphan Girl
6. Pretty Fair Miss
7. The Blind Child
8. Two Orphans
9. Little Bessie
