Dolly, Much Better than Dooley

Daughter Number Three-Point-One highly recommended the new limited-run podcast "Dolly Parton's America," so yesterday I tried out the first episode on RadioLab. (It's created by that show's Jad Abumrad, and the full series is here.)

As everyone should always expect, DN3.1 was right: the podcast is excellent, and Dolly Parton is fascinating. The first episode even has the wonderful Sarah Smarsh (and her grandmother) in it.

But one thing I wanted to discuss from the episode is a fact I never knew, or only kind of knew.

You know the song "Tom Dooley"? I grew up with it, via the Kingston Trio. It was their all-time biggest hit. But I have to say, even though I realized at some point later in life that it's about a man who murdered a woman, I didn't fully internalize how screwed up it is until I listened to this podcast.

Tom Dooley is a classic narcissist who killed his girlfriend or wife and is only sad because he got caught, and the song makes us as the listeners participate in that point of view:

Met her on the mountain
There I took her life
Met her on the mountain
Stabbed her with my knife

Hang down your head, Tom Dooley
Hang down your head and cry
Hang down your head, Tom Dooley
Poor boy, you're going to die

This time tomorrow
Reckon where I'll be
Down in some lonesome valley
Hanging from a white oak tree

This time tomorrow
Reckon where I'll be
Hadn'ta been for Grayson
I'da been in Tennessee

Hang down your head, Tom Dooley
Hang down your head and cry
Hang down your head, Tom Dooley
Poor boy, you're going to die

Poor boy my ass!

This song wasn't a main topic in the Dolly Parton podcast, though it was mentioned as a genre example. More attention was given to a song Parton grew up listening to, but which I hadn't heard of called "Knoxville Girl":

I met a little girl in Knoxville, a town we all know well
And every Sunday evening, out in her home, I'd dwell
We went to take an evening walk about a mile from town
I picked a stick up off the ground and knocked that fair girl down

She fell down on her bended knees, for mercy she did cry
"Oh Willy dear, don't kill me here, I'm unprepared to die"
She never spoke another word, I only beat her more
Until the ground around me within her blood did flow

I took her by her golden curls and I drug her round and around
Throwing her into the river that flows through Knoxville town
Go down, go down, you Knoxville girl with the dark and rolling eyes
Go down, go down, you Knoxville girl, you can never be my bride

In the podcast episode, they trace that song back to a real murder in the 17th century in Shrewsbury, England. At the time, traveling singer-songwriters acted almost as journalists at executions, writing up the stories of the crimes and taking them far and wide. I say "almost" because somehow (gee, somehow) the songs were always from the point of view of the killer, never the killed. The song would be modified as the singer moved from place to place to localize it, and finally someone brought it to America and turned the location into Knoxville. (The song has its own Wikipedia page.)

The way this ties into the Parton podcast is that her songs (especially in her earlier years) turn that approach on its head, representing women's points of views from within dire situations. She wasn't the only one who did this, the show tells us, but she did it the best.

Time to give Dolly Parton, in podcast and music, a listen.