Quintessential country music star Dolly Parton likes to keep it real.
Larger than life and as authentic as Tennessee hickory, Dolly Parton is one of country music's most successful citizens—she's played with all the greats, scored 25 No. 1 singles (more than any other female country musician), and puts the grand in Grand Ole Opry by virtue of her flamboyance, brash enthusiasm, and quick wit. She lit up the big screen in such movies as 9 to 5, owns a production company that produced the TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, has scored a Broadway show, and has been a philanthropic tour de force, especially in the Smoky Mountains, where she was born—in Sevier County, Tennessee. She has also had a huge impact on the area's tourism industry—23 years ago, she launched Dollywood, an amusement park that attracts 2.5 million visitors annually. I lived in the Smokies for 15 years and visited Dollywood with my then adolescent son. I was charmed by her practice of populating the park with genuine Appalachian craftspeople, musicians, artists. That was rare back then—but she's always been a trendsetter.
Why did you decide to hire people with traditional Appalachian skills at Dollywood? I wanted people working there who were connected with the land and the local culture. They made it real, not phony. It made me feel comfortable. And I guess I thought it would make the visitors feel that way, too.
Are you worried that Dollywood will eventually lose the real in favor of the commercial and packaged? We need to remain true to what we have. In the Smokies, there's always been so much know-how—that pioneer spirit. I'm keen to maintain the soul of the place. To celebrate God's beauty—that means go for a nice walk, smell that air, feel the temperature, hold on to the sense of the moment, take a drift on a trail, look deeply into the stream. That means so much more than all the artifice in the world.
Great Smoky Mountains is one of our most iconic and visited parks. Are you concerned about the health of a national treasure that has been a part of your life for decades? Absolutely. We've just got to pay closer attention to life—and the life of the park. I've written this new CD—with a lot of help—that taps into the park's native heritage. It's called Sha-Kon-O-Hey!—which is Cherokee for "Land of Blue Smoke." The songs reflect on who this land originally belonged to. They were the people who first loved this place. The Indians have a spirit that just makes sense: Close to the land. I wanted to honor that. We worry more about keeping trash away from the bears than we do about the history and environmental quality of the park itself.
