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This is the story of six women who came out of the south, | 0:00:05 | 0:00:08 | |
and changed America for good. | 0:00:08 | 0:00:10 | |
The '60s and '70s were the golden age for this music, | 0:00:12 | 0:00:15 | |
from the battlefield of marriage. | 0:00:15 | 0:00:17 | |
# But liquor and love, they just don't mix | 0:00:19 | 0:00:22 | |
# Leave the bottle or me behind | 0:00:22 | 0:00:25 | |
# And don't come home a-drinkin' | 0:00:25 | 0:00:28 | |
# With lovin' on your mind... # | 0:00:28 | 0:00:30 | |
Loretta Lynn, blue-collar queen, the coalminer's daughter | 0:00:30 | 0:00:35 | |
who made a career of standing up to her man. | 0:00:35 | 0:00:38 | |
# Stand by your man... # | 0:00:38 | 0:00:40 | |
Tammy Wynette, soap opera queen. | 0:00:40 | 0:00:43 | |
She sang of the hurt and pride | 0:00:43 | 0:00:44 | |
of raising a family and standing BY your man. | 0:00:44 | 0:00:47 | |
# And now you tell me Billy Joe's jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge... # | 0:00:47 | 0:00:53 | |
Bobbie Gentry, the mystery queen who walked away from it all. | 0:00:53 | 0:00:57 | |
# Would you lay with me in a field...? # | 0:00:57 | 0:01:02 | |
Tanya Tucker, wild child, tabloid queen who put sex into country. | 0:01:02 | 0:01:06 | |
# Jolene, Jolene, Jolene... # | 0:01:06 | 0:01:10 | |
Dolly Parton, who made millions | 0:01:10 | 0:01:13 | |
singing of the world she'd left behind. | 0:01:13 | 0:01:16 | |
But it was from the black-and-white world of the '50s | 0:01:18 | 0:01:21 | |
that there emerged the trail-blazer, the queen of the night. | 0:01:21 | 0:01:24 | |
# Crazy... | 0:01:24 | 0:01:27 | |
# I'm crazy for feelin' so lonely... # | 0:01:27 | 0:01:34 | |
There was no-one that could cry a song like her, | 0:01:36 | 0:01:38 | |
no-one could make you feel the emotion. | 0:01:38 | 0:01:40 | |
# Crazy for feelin' | 0:01:40 | 0:01:44 | |
# So blue... # | 0:01:44 | 0:01:46 | |
To me, she was the greatest voice of that era. | 0:01:46 | 0:01:49 | |
These records hit me so hard. | 0:01:49 | 0:01:51 | |
Something about Patsy Cline - for a woman in the '50s - | 0:01:51 | 0:01:55 | |
was very progressive. | 0:01:55 | 0:01:56 | |
# As long as you wanted... # | 0:01:56 | 0:01:59 | |
You can put her up there with Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra. | 0:01:59 | 0:02:03 | |
# ..And then someday... # | 0:02:03 | 0:02:05 | |
I never met another woman that could out-sing her. | 0:02:05 | 0:02:09 | |
# ..For somebody new... # | 0:02:09 | 0:02:12 | |
She sells millions of records every year. It's unbelievable. | 0:02:12 | 0:02:17 | |
Patsy didn't just knock the door down, she kicked it in. | 0:02:17 | 0:02:22 | |
# Got a feeling, cos I'm blu-u-ue | 0:02:22 | 0:02:25 | |
# Oh Lord, since my baby said goodbye... # | 0:02:25 | 0:02:28 | |
Patsy was a fighter - feisty, forthright and funny. | 0:02:28 | 0:02:32 | |
You had to be to break through in '50s Nashville. | 0:02:32 | 0:02:34 | |
At the Grand Ole Opry - temple of country music - | 0:02:34 | 0:02:38 | |
Patsy scared the life out of newcomers. | 0:02:38 | 0:02:40 | |
One night I was changing clothes, and that door popped open... | 0:02:40 | 0:02:44 | |
and it was Patsy. | 0:02:44 | 0:02:47 | |
She had on this cowgirl outfit. | 0:02:47 | 0:02:49 | |
As she stood there with her hands on her hips, she said, | 0:02:49 | 0:02:53 | |
"You're a conceited little so-and-so. | 0:02:53 | 0:02:55 | |
"You just waltz in here and do your bit and waltz out." | 0:02:55 | 0:02:58 | |
And I said "Now, wait just a damn minute!" | 0:02:58 | 0:03:01 | |
and we just almost had it right there. | 0:03:01 | 0:03:04 | |
And she laughed. She said, "Anybody that'll stand up to the Cline is OK, | 0:03:04 | 0:03:09 | |
"so we're gonna be good friends." | 0:03:09 | 0:03:11 | |
-TV PRESENTER: -'Patsy Cline, isn't she great?' | 0:03:11 | 0:03:16 | |
She was a good-looking, rough, rugged... | 0:03:16 | 0:03:19 | |
one of the sanest people I've ever met. | 0:03:19 | 0:03:22 | |
She would cuss you out just as quick as somebody else. | 0:03:22 | 0:03:27 | |
If you didn't like it, you knew where the door was, | 0:03:27 | 0:03:30 | |
and she'd tell you that. | 0:03:30 | 0:03:32 | |
Yeah, she could hold her own with a crew of sailors. | 0:03:32 | 0:03:34 | |
Patsy was born in 1932, in the depths of the Depression. | 0:03:36 | 0:03:41 | |
There are reports of her being sexually abused by her father. | 0:03:41 | 0:03:44 | |
It was a troubled childhood. | 0:03:44 | 0:03:47 | |
It was like she preferred not to go there, | 0:03:47 | 0:03:50 | |
and I didn't ask. | 0:03:50 | 0:03:53 | |
When she was 14, her father left the family. | 0:03:53 | 0:03:57 | |
Patsy dropped out of school to work - as a waitress, and a singer. | 0:03:57 | 0:04:02 | |
She's our special guest tonight from Virginia, | 0:04:02 | 0:04:05 | |
and her name is Patsy Cline. | 0:04:05 | 0:04:07 | |
Patsy Cline. How are you, Patsy? | 0:04:07 | 0:04:09 | |
-Just fine. -Nice to see you. The bell rings with me now... | 0:04:09 | 0:04:12 | |
In the 1950s, | 0:04:12 | 0:04:13 | |
Nashville was very conservative, | 0:04:13 | 0:04:15 | |
even more conservative than most of the nation. | 0:04:15 | 0:04:18 | |
# The first thing was the church | 0:04:18 | 0:04:21 | |
# Then the altar... # | 0:04:21 | 0:04:24 | |
Women singers rarely headlined shows, | 0:04:24 | 0:04:27 | |
and the industry assumed that women wouldn't buy their records. | 0:04:27 | 0:04:30 | |
The breakthrough of Patsy Cline was really a watershed moment. | 0:04:32 | 0:04:35 | |
We have a young lady that is fast becoming | 0:04:35 | 0:04:38 | |
one of the leading sellers on phonograph recordings - | 0:04:38 | 0:04:41 | |
Miss Patsy Cline! | 0:04:41 | 0:04:42 | |
# I've loved and lost again | 0:04:42 | 0:04:48 | |
# Oh, what a crazy world we're livin' in... | 0:04:48 | 0:04:52 | |
Patsy was just breaking into the music business | 0:04:52 | 0:04:55 | |
when she met her second husband. | 0:04:55 | 0:04:57 | |
I asked Patsy to dance, and she said she couldn't while she was working. | 0:04:57 | 0:05:03 | |
Later I saw her dancing, | 0:05:03 | 0:05:04 | |
so I went back and said, "You said you couldn't dance." | 0:05:04 | 0:05:07 | |
She said, "That was my husband." | 0:05:07 | 0:05:08 | |
But then one week she showed up and her husband wasn't there. | 0:05:10 | 0:05:13 | |
So I went back and asked her to dance again, and she did, and that was it. | 0:05:13 | 0:05:17 | |
They both had a temper. | 0:05:19 | 0:05:20 | |
He said one time, "If I hadn't taken up for myself, | 0:05:20 | 0:05:23 | |
"she'd have killed me with a baseball bat." | 0:05:23 | 0:05:25 | |
I seen her knock the hell out of him with an iron one time. | 0:05:25 | 0:05:28 | |
They'd have a little fight, and she would call, | 0:05:28 | 0:05:31 | |
and the police would come out and arrest him. | 0:05:31 | 0:05:34 | |
Just two crazy people having fun. | 0:05:34 | 0:05:37 | |
# I go out walkin' after midnight... # | 0:05:37 | 0:05:43 | |
Patsy was always on the road, always working. | 0:05:43 | 0:05:47 | |
I remember very much missing her when she'd have to leave. | 0:05:47 | 0:05:50 | |
Kids cry and have fits, | 0:05:50 | 0:05:53 | |
and I do remember that. | 0:05:53 | 0:05:55 | |
I do remember that we weren't just waving bye. | 0:05:55 | 0:05:58 | |
It was very hard. | 0:05:58 | 0:06:00 | |
That was probably one of the things | 0:06:00 | 0:06:01 | |
that she really didn't enjoy about the business. | 0:06:01 | 0:06:04 | |
# Now, come on in and sit right down and make yourself at home... # | 0:06:08 | 0:06:13 | |
Patsy came up the ranks singing good old hillbilly country, | 0:06:13 | 0:06:16 | |
but now her producer, Owen Bradley, was pushing her towards pop. | 0:06:16 | 0:06:21 | |
From what I understand from Owen, | 0:06:21 | 0:06:23 | |
she really saw herself as a hillbilly. | 0:06:23 | 0:06:25 | |
She didn't want to be... | 0:06:25 | 0:06:27 | |
She didn't want to sing pop songs. | 0:06:27 | 0:06:29 | |
She said, "I've always done | 0:06:29 | 0:06:31 | |
"Western swing, and it's kept food on my table." | 0:06:31 | 0:06:33 | |
I said, "Patsy, honey, | 0:06:33 | 0:06:35 | |
"you listen to Owen. | 0:06:35 | 0:06:37 | |
"You've got the talent, but he's got the ear, | 0:06:37 | 0:06:40 | |
"and he knows exactly what the market needs." | 0:06:40 | 0:06:43 | |
# I fall to pieces... # | 0:06:43 | 0:06:50 | |
The weeping ballads won. | 0:06:50 | 0:06:52 | |
This was something quite new, a sophisticated country pop sound. | 0:06:52 | 0:06:56 | |
She had this huge, heartache voice, | 0:06:56 | 0:06:58 | |
and they chose heartache lyrics for her, | 0:06:58 | 0:07:01 | |
because she could just about weep in tune. | 0:07:01 | 0:07:04 | |
And then they would cushion the sound of her records with strings, | 0:07:06 | 0:07:10 | |
and made it a softer-edged country music. | 0:07:10 | 0:07:13 | |
Patsy made quite a lot of records that were quite elegantly arranged. | 0:07:13 | 0:07:18 | |
They didn't sound so country. | 0:07:18 | 0:07:20 | |
Patsy was taking country music into the city. | 0:07:20 | 0:07:23 | |
She'd made the music modern. | 0:07:23 | 0:07:25 | |
Her look was changing too, from cowgirl outfits to cocktail dresses. | 0:07:25 | 0:07:30 | |
I Fall To Pieces was a country AND pop hit. | 0:07:30 | 0:07:34 | |
# But each time I go out with someone new... # | 0:07:34 | 0:07:39 | |
She might not have liked the song much, | 0:07:39 | 0:07:42 | |
but she liked it being a hit. | 0:07:42 | 0:07:44 | |
# ..you walk by, and I fall to pieces... # | 0:07:44 | 0:07:49 | |
She had no money, old car, | 0:07:49 | 0:07:52 | |
and they were going to repossess her refrigerator. | 0:07:52 | 0:07:57 | |
She said, "Hoss, they ain't gonna get my Frigidaire now." | 0:07:57 | 0:08:01 | |
Do you ever cut anything but hits? | 0:08:01 | 0:08:04 | |
Well, I don't if I can help it. | 0:08:04 | 0:08:06 | |
Oh, my. Prove it, girl, prove it! | 0:08:06 | 0:08:08 | |
All right. | 0:08:08 | 0:08:09 | |
# Crazy | 0:08:11 | 0:08:15 | |
# I'm crazy for feeling so lonely... # | 0:08:15 | 0:08:20 | |
Crazy, the number one jukebox hit of all time, | 0:08:20 | 0:08:23 | |
cemented her crossover appeal. | 0:08:23 | 0:08:25 | |
It's become her signature tune. | 0:08:25 | 0:08:28 | |
# ..Crazy for feelin' so blue... # | 0:08:28 | 0:08:33 | |
All Patsy Cline has to do is just barely whisper "Crazy", | 0:08:33 | 0:08:37 | |
and it's like oh...not everything's moonlight and roses | 0:08:37 | 0:08:41 | |
and falling in love for the first time with Prince Charming. | 0:08:41 | 0:08:44 | |
Sometimes love is really horrible, | 0:08:44 | 0:08:46 | |
and it makes you feel like you're going mad. | 0:08:46 | 0:08:49 | |
# Worry | 0:08:49 | 0:08:52 | |
# Why do I let myself worry? | 0:08:52 | 0:08:59 | |
# Wonderin' | 0:09:02 | 0:09:06 | |
# What in the world did I do-o-o? | 0:09:06 | 0:09:15 | |
# Oh, crazy... # | 0:09:15 | 0:09:18 | |
There was so much soul and life to her voice. | 0:09:18 | 0:09:20 | |
She lived all the songs she was singing - | 0:09:20 | 0:09:23 | |
heartache and love. | 0:09:23 | 0:09:24 | |
All the pain and trouble in Patsy's life came through | 0:09:24 | 0:09:28 | |
when she sang these songs. | 0:09:28 | 0:09:30 | |
# I'm crazy for tryin' | 0:09:30 | 0:09:33 | |
# And crazy for cryin' | 0:09:33 | 0:09:36 | |
# And I'm crazy for lovin' you. # | 0:09:36 | 0:09:40 | |
It was all inside, and she let it out in those songs. | 0:09:40 | 0:09:44 | |
It was there for you to hear. | 0:09:44 | 0:09:47 | |
Great singers have some gift. | 0:09:47 | 0:09:50 | |
You gotta believe that they've been crazy, | 0:09:50 | 0:09:54 | |
or that they have fallen to pieces, | 0:09:54 | 0:09:56 | |
or they've lived these songs. | 0:09:56 | 0:09:59 | |
# Crazy for tryin' | 0:09:59 | 0:10:01 | |
# And crazy for cryin' | 0:10:01 | 0:10:05 | |
# And I'm crazy for lovin' | 0:10:05 | 0:10:11 | |
# ..you. # | 0:10:11 | 0:10:19 | |
On the way back from a performance in Kansas City in March 1963, | 0:10:22 | 0:10:27 | |
Patsy was killed in a plane crash. | 0:10:27 | 0:10:29 | |
She was only 30. | 0:10:32 | 0:10:34 | |
I remember Dad waking me up to tell me she wasn't coming home. | 0:10:34 | 0:10:38 | |
It's something you don't understand at four years old, I don't think. | 0:10:40 | 0:10:45 | |
Sweet Dreams was released after her death. | 0:10:47 | 0:10:51 | |
# Why can't I forget you...? # | 0:10:51 | 0:10:53 | |
Some of the songs are kinda sad. | 0:10:53 | 0:10:55 | |
They have a lot of emotion in 'em. | 0:10:55 | 0:10:59 | |
And I do like to listen to 'em to kind of feel close, | 0:10:59 | 0:11:04 | |
and to kinda... to see what she was like. | 0:11:04 | 0:11:07 | |
It helps you to remember a lot about her. | 0:11:07 | 0:11:10 | |
# Instead of having sweet dreams | 0:11:10 | 0:11:15 | |
# About you-u-u-u. # | 0:11:15 | 0:11:26 | |
Now no-one could say | 0:11:28 | 0:11:30 | |
that a woman couldn't top the bill or shift records. | 0:11:30 | 0:11:33 | |
The blue-collar queen went a step further than Patsy. | 0:11:35 | 0:11:39 | |
The coalminer's daughter sang her own songs, drawn from her own life. | 0:11:39 | 0:11:44 | |
They were like bulletins from the front for her millions of listeners, | 0:11:44 | 0:11:47 | |
songs about sorting out your man. | 0:11:47 | 0:11:49 | |
# Well, your pet name for me is squaw | 0:11:49 | 0:11:52 | |
# When you come home a-drinkin' and can barely crawl | 0:11:52 | 0:11:56 | |
# And all that lovin' on me won't make things right... | 0:11:56 | 0:11:59 | |
Oh, Loretta Lynn. | 0:12:01 | 0:12:03 | |
I think she's the greatest female singer-songwriter | 0:12:03 | 0:12:06 | |
of the twentieth century. | 0:12:06 | 0:12:08 | |
# Squaw is on the warpath tonight. # | 0:12:08 | 0:12:10 | |
Here was somebody that was just as country as dirt, | 0:12:10 | 0:12:14 | |
and sang it like the women lived it. | 0:12:14 | 0:12:16 | |
Loretta had lived it by the time she was 13. | 0:12:16 | 0:12:18 | |
Little bit quick there, but that's OK. | 0:12:18 | 0:12:21 | |
She had the background to draw from. | 0:12:21 | 0:12:23 | |
# I was born a coal miner's daughter... # | 0:12:23 | 0:12:27 | |
Loretta was born poor, in a log cabin in the Appalachian mountains. | 0:12:27 | 0:12:32 | |
When she was 13, she fell for the local bad boy - | 0:12:32 | 0:12:35 | |
21 and just back from the army, | 0:12:35 | 0:12:37 | |
Doolittle Lynn, known as Doo or Mooney. | 0:12:37 | 0:12:41 | |
He drank a lot. | 0:12:41 | 0:12:42 | |
Daddy knew there'd be problems. | 0:12:42 | 0:12:45 | |
Her parents didn't want her to marry him. | 0:12:45 | 0:12:49 | |
Daddy told Doo, "If you ever hit her, that's it." | 0:12:49 | 0:12:54 | |
When you're away from your family, you don't know what's goin' on. | 0:12:54 | 0:12:58 | |
She had a child right off. | 0:12:59 | 0:13:02 | |
She was so young, she didn't know what she was getting into. | 0:13:02 | 0:13:05 | |
Just as her parents feared, Loretta - still just 13 - | 0:13:05 | 0:13:10 | |
was getting into a violent marriage. | 0:13:10 | 0:13:13 | |
She said, "I loved him all through it all." | 0:13:13 | 0:13:17 | |
Most women who take the abuse like that from their man | 0:13:19 | 0:13:24 | |
do love their husbands. | 0:13:24 | 0:13:26 | |
His drinking and womanising would feed her songs. | 0:13:26 | 0:13:30 | |
When Loretta was 14, | 0:13:33 | 0:13:35 | |
she followed Doo 2,000 miles across the country to Washington State. | 0:13:35 | 0:13:39 | |
By the time she was 18, she had four children and a guitar. | 0:13:40 | 0:13:45 | |
Mooney heard my sister sing, and loved her voice. | 0:13:45 | 0:13:48 | |
So he got the guitar. | 0:13:48 | 0:13:49 | |
He knew she had a talent. | 0:13:52 | 0:13:54 | |
I know she would not have done it on her own if it hadn't been for Mooney. | 0:13:54 | 0:13:59 | |
Loretta won a local talent contest, | 0:14:02 | 0:14:05 | |
which led to a TV appearance and a record, I'm A Honky-Tonk Woman. | 0:14:05 | 0:14:09 | |
They sent out thousands of copies to radio stations, | 0:14:09 | 0:14:13 | |
but they weren't getting played. | 0:14:13 | 0:14:15 | |
They said, "I guess the best thing to do | 0:14:15 | 0:14:18 | |
"is just hit the radio stations on the way to Nashville." | 0:14:18 | 0:14:22 | |
# Ever since you left me | 0:14:22 | 0:14:25 | |
# I've done nothing but wrong | 0:14:25 | 0:14:29 | |
# Many nights I've laid awake and cried... # | 0:14:29 | 0:14:33 | |
Mooney brought two of the kids to our house, | 0:14:33 | 0:14:35 | |
and two of the kids to his mother's house, | 0:14:35 | 0:14:37 | |
and then they went on the road. | 0:14:37 | 0:14:39 | |
Anybody that talked to her, | 0:14:41 | 0:14:43 | |
she would give them a picture and a record. | 0:14:43 | 0:14:46 | |
# So turn that jukebox way up high. # | 0:14:49 | 0:14:53 | |
By the time they got to Nashville, her song was in the charts, | 0:14:53 | 0:14:59 | |
and that was unheard of at that time. | 0:14:59 | 0:15:02 | |
It was 1960, and they'd arrived in the capital of country. | 0:15:04 | 0:15:08 | |
Loretta was ready to tell it like it is. | 0:15:08 | 0:15:11 | |
We did her very first sessions, | 0:15:11 | 0:15:14 | |
and when we heard her sing we couldn't believe it. | 0:15:14 | 0:15:16 | |
# It wasn't long till all your dreams came true... # | 0:15:16 | 0:15:21 | |
Loretta had the same producer as Patsy, Owen Bradley. | 0:15:21 | 0:15:25 | |
# Success put me in second place with you... # | 0:15:25 | 0:15:27 | |
He didn't push Loretta towards pop. | 0:15:27 | 0:15:30 | |
The first session that we cut with Loretta, I told my brother, | 0:15:30 | 0:15:34 | |
"I don't know what it is about that woman. | 0:15:34 | 0:15:36 | |
Whatever's in her heart comes out her mouth". | 0:15:36 | 0:15:39 | |
And he said, "Yeah. I thought she was sincere. | 0:15:39 | 0:15:41 | |
"That's why I signed her." | 0:15:41 | 0:15:43 | |
# If you don't want to go to Fist City | 0:15:43 | 0:15:45 | |
# You better detour round my town... # | 0:15:45 | 0:15:48 | |
There's no schmaltz about her, | 0:15:48 | 0:15:50 | |
there's no kind of like torch song feel to any of it at all. | 0:15:50 | 0:15:53 | |
It's very, very honest. She's fearless. | 0:15:53 | 0:15:58 | |
"Looking back, sex didn't mean that much to me for a long time." | 0:15:58 | 0:16:02 | |
What do you mean by that? | 0:16:02 | 0:16:03 | |
Well, if you don't know how, you just don't know how! | 0:16:03 | 0:16:06 | |
Yes. That's right. | 0:16:06 | 0:16:07 | |
You don't know what to expect. | 0:16:07 | 0:16:10 | |
No, you really don't know anything about sex. | 0:16:10 | 0:16:13 | |
It takes you years to learn, I think. It did me. | 0:16:13 | 0:16:16 | |
# The dog is a-barkin', and the floor needs a-scrubbin | 0:16:16 | 0:16:20 | |
# One needs a spankin', and one needs a huggin' | 0:16:20 | 0:16:23 | |
# One's on the way... # | 0:16:23 | 0:16:25 | |
She's in a situation where she's got babies, so write about having babies. | 0:16:25 | 0:16:30 | |
I hope it ain't twins again! | 0:16:30 | 0:16:32 | |
You write something that you know about. | 0:16:32 | 0:16:34 | |
That's what real writing is about. | 0:16:34 | 0:16:36 | |
Owen saw that the real Loretta had to shine through the songs, | 0:16:37 | 0:16:41 | |
however it sounded. | 0:16:41 | 0:16:43 | |
I love the line when she says, | 0:16:43 | 0:16:45 | |
"The work we done was hard | 0:16:45 | 0:16:46 | |
"At night we slept cos we was TARD"! | 0:16:46 | 0:16:49 | |
People would say, "Owen, why didn't you change that? | 0:16:51 | 0:16:54 | |
And he said, "No, because that's Loretta." | 0:16:54 | 0:16:57 | |
# Well, you thought I'd be waitin' up | 0:16:57 | 0:17:00 | |
# When you came home last night... # | 0:17:00 | 0:17:02 | |
Her best-known song was co-written with one of her sisters. | 0:17:02 | 0:17:06 | |
Some of the radio stations banned it | 0:17:06 | 0:17:08 | |
because they thought it was dirty, | 0:17:08 | 0:17:10 | |
but I couldn't figure out why, you know? | 0:17:10 | 0:17:13 | |
# And don't come home a-drinkin' | 0:17:13 | 0:17:17 | |
# With lovin' on your mind... # | 0:17:17 | 0:17:19 | |
Southern churches criticised them from pulpits. | 0:17:19 | 0:17:22 | |
DJs raised their eyebrows and said, "We can't play this." | 0:17:22 | 0:17:25 | |
Loretta's rise to fame parallels the rise of the feminist movement | 0:17:28 | 0:17:33 | |
in the United States. | 0:17:33 | 0:17:34 | |
Feminists recognised that this was somebody | 0:17:34 | 0:17:37 | |
who was definitely sticking up for herself as a woman, | 0:17:37 | 0:17:40 | |
and that very much dovetailed with the mood of the country at the time. | 0:17:40 | 0:17:44 | |
# All these years, I've stayed at home | 0:17:44 | 0:17:47 | |
# While you had all your fun | 0:17:47 | 0:17:50 | |
# And every year that's gone by | 0:17:50 | 0:17:53 | |
# Another baby's come... # | 0:17:53 | 0:17:55 | |
You told me that a doctor called you once... | 0:17:55 | 0:17:59 | |
He come to the show and come out to the bus, | 0:17:59 | 0:18:02 | |
and he said that the Pill really had done more for the country people, | 0:18:02 | 0:18:06 | |
way out in the country, | 0:18:06 | 0:18:07 | |
than the Government had. | 0:18:07 | 0:18:09 | |
She broke down barriers for women | 0:18:10 | 0:18:12 | |
like no other female singer-songwriter has done. | 0:18:12 | 0:18:15 | |
I think her lyrics are brilliant. | 0:18:15 | 0:18:17 | |
They're sly, because she's sneaking you with catchphrases. | 0:18:17 | 0:18:20 | |
# Cos now I've got the Pill... # | 0:18:20 | 0:18:22 | |
It's a great way to do it. | 0:18:22 | 0:18:23 | |
Sneak the medicine in the mashed potatoes, you know? | 0:18:23 | 0:18:26 | |
APPLAUSE AND WHISTLING | 0:18:26 | 0:18:28 | |
I relied more on maybe the subtle ways of saying things. | 0:18:31 | 0:18:35 | |
Where I would maybe gloss it over - "Don't make my brown eyes blurry..." | 0:18:35 | 0:18:39 | |
-CHUCKLING -Loretta would do it... | 0:18:39 | 0:18:42 | |
"OK, honey, I'm gettin' you if you don't come home!" | 0:18:42 | 0:18:47 | |
In 1980, Loretta's life story became an Oscar-winning film. | 0:18:48 | 0:18:52 | |
I went to the premiere of the show. | 0:18:52 | 0:18:54 | |
Afterwards I told Loretta, | 0:18:54 | 0:18:55 | |
"It's amazing how everyone else has changed to fit the world. | 0:18:55 | 0:19:01 | |
"You've made the world come to you and you have never changed." | 0:19:01 | 0:19:04 | |
# I lie here all alone | 0:19:04 | 0:19:08 | |
# In my bed of memories... # | 0:19:08 | 0:19:12 | |
She's this little bird-like person with a really sweet voice, | 0:19:12 | 0:19:17 | |
and yet she must be hard as nails, because she's had such a life. | 0:19:17 | 0:19:22 | |
She never deserted her husband, | 0:19:22 | 0:19:24 | |
even when it was really difficult. | 0:19:24 | 0:19:26 | |
Doo died nine years ago. | 0:19:26 | 0:19:29 | |
# Oh, I miss being Mrs tonight. # | 0:19:29 | 0:19:35 | |
At 71, Loretta has just made a dramatic comeback, | 0:19:35 | 0:19:38 | |
singing the kind of songs she's always sung, | 0:19:38 | 0:19:41 | |
on a Grammy-winning album with Jack White of the White Stripes. | 0:19:41 | 0:19:44 | |
# Well, I lost my heart, it didn't take me no time | 0:19:44 | 0:19:47 | |
# That ain't all, I lost my mind in Oregon... # | 0:19:47 | 0:19:51 | |
The intention of making that record was | 0:19:51 | 0:19:53 | |
let's get down to the soulfulness that's inside of her. | 0:19:53 | 0:19:57 | |
All the harshness on that record was Loretta's idea. | 0:19:57 | 0:20:00 | |
She was the one who wanted to keep turning it up. | 0:20:00 | 0:20:02 | |
"I can't hear the kick drum, Jack. "Turn the kick drum up." | 0:20:02 | 0:20:05 | |
# Well, I looked at him, and caught him looking at me | 0:20:05 | 0:20:08 | |
# I knew right then we were playin' free in Oregon... # | 0:20:08 | 0:20:11 | |
I think her best work is now. | 0:20:11 | 0:20:14 | |
I love that she's willing to take chances in a different time | 0:20:14 | 0:20:18 | |
and still keep her music country and be true to who she is, | 0:20:18 | 0:20:21 | |
but kind of add a little rock flair. | 0:20:21 | 0:20:23 | |
# And a pitcher to go-o-o-o-o. # | 0:20:23 | 0:20:27 | |
So Loretta, the blue-collar queen, is still rocking, | 0:20:27 | 0:20:31 | |
still telling it like it is. | 0:20:31 | 0:20:34 | |
But one queen quit 35 years ago and hasn't been seen in public since. | 0:20:34 | 0:20:40 | |
She is the mystery queen, who left country, and then music, behind. | 0:20:40 | 0:20:46 | |
# I was out choppin' cotton | 0:20:46 | 0:20:48 | |
# And my brother was bailin' hay... | 0:20:48 | 0:20:51 | |
All her friends have no idea where she is. | 0:20:51 | 0:20:53 | |
One of the great mysteries of music. | 0:20:53 | 0:20:56 | |
# We stopped and walked back to the house to eat... # | 0:20:56 | 0:20:59 | |
The song that made her name is a mystery too. | 0:20:59 | 0:21:02 | |
You've never heard anything like it. | 0:21:02 | 0:21:04 | |
I didn't know what was going on in the lyric, I had no idea. | 0:21:04 | 0:21:07 | |
And...it's creepy. | 0:21:07 | 0:21:09 | |
# And then she said | 0:21:11 | 0:21:12 | |
# "I got some news this morning | 0:21:12 | 0:21:14 | |
# "From Choctaw Ridge | 0:21:14 | 0:21:19 | |
# "Today, Billy-Joe McAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge..." # | 0:21:19 | 0:21:25 | |
MAN HUMS ALONG | 0:21:25 | 0:21:27 | |
# ..Bridge... # | 0:21:27 | 0:21:28 | |
She never would tell me what Bobbie threw over the Tallahatchie Bridge. | 0:21:28 | 0:21:33 | |
When Bobbie was a little girl in the Mississippi Delta, | 0:21:33 | 0:21:37 | |
her grandma swapped a milk cow for a piano for her. | 0:21:37 | 0:21:40 | |
At six, she could play by ear, | 0:21:40 | 0:21:42 | |
and at seven she wrote her first song, My Dog Sergeant Is A Good Dog, | 0:21:42 | 0:21:47 | |
immortalised years later on BBC TV. | 0:21:47 | 0:21:51 | |
# Sergeant, Sergeant, Sergeant, Sergeant | 0:21:51 | 0:21:53 | |
# Sergeant, Sergeant, Sergeant, Sergeant | 0:21:53 | 0:21:55 | |
# My dog Sergeant is a good dog. # | 0:21:55 | 0:21:58 | |
Born Roberta Streeter, she chose a stage name | 0:22:00 | 0:22:03 | |
from a movie about a girl | 0:22:03 | 0:22:05 | |
who left her country roots to become gentrified. | 0:22:05 | 0:22:08 | |
Bobbie became so gentrified that unlike the other queens, | 0:22:08 | 0:22:12 | |
she left the south and went on to college | 0:22:12 | 0:22:14 | |
to study philosophy and music. | 0:22:14 | 0:22:16 | |
But she also worked in Las Vegas in casinos and cabarets. | 0:22:18 | 0:22:22 | |
It's always her childhood that rings through her songs - | 0:22:24 | 0:22:28 | |
the daily life and colour, | 0:22:28 | 0:22:29 | |
the values and hypocrisies of the deep south. | 0:22:29 | 0:22:32 | |
# Just outside of Delta country | 0:22:32 | 0:22:36 | |
# Where the bitter weeds growin' wild... # | 0:22:36 | 0:22:40 | |
They were like Brer Rabbit stories, | 0:22:40 | 0:22:42 | |
they were folk stories just about her life. | 0:22:42 | 0:22:45 | |
# Sporting her chequered feed-sack dress | 0:22:45 | 0:22:48 | |
# A ruby ring from a Cracker Jack box... # | 0:22:48 | 0:22:51 | |
She played this three-quarter-size guitar, | 0:22:51 | 0:22:54 | |
which gave it a lovely, almost ukulele-sound, | 0:22:54 | 0:22:57 | |
a very bluesy, very funky, bluesy sound. | 0:22:57 | 0:23:01 | |
# He said he saw a girl that looked a lot like you up on Choctaw Ridge | 0:23:01 | 0:23:09 | |
# She and Billy Joe was throwing something off the Tallahatchie Bridge... # | 0:23:09 | 0:23:14 | |
In 1967, Ode to Billy Joe topped the US pop charts for four weeks, | 0:23:14 | 0:23:19 | |
selling three million copies, and made the charts here. | 0:23:19 | 0:23:22 | |
It's just incredibly evocative and cinematic, | 0:23:24 | 0:23:27 | |
the amount of detail in it - a family sitting round a table, | 0:23:27 | 0:23:30 | |
passing black-eyed peas to each other | 0:23:30 | 0:23:32 | |
and all these things that you don't get in Croydon. | 0:23:32 | 0:23:35 | |
Was it an engagement ring that the couple threw from the bridge, | 0:23:35 | 0:23:38 | |
before Billie Joe jumped off himself? | 0:23:38 | 0:23:41 | |
Or a baby? | 0:23:41 | 0:23:42 | |
Originally, it was gonna be a B-side because Capitol got cold feet, | 0:23:42 | 0:23:45 | |
thought it was about abortion. | 0:23:45 | 0:23:47 | |
A lot of people think it was a baby, she was secretly pregnant, | 0:23:47 | 0:23:50 | |
had this baby and then they threw it off the bridge. | 0:23:50 | 0:23:53 | |
She did say once that it wasn't a baby. | 0:23:53 | 0:23:55 | |
I don't know what it was. I'd like to know though. | 0:23:55 | 0:23:57 | |
# Mamma washed and combed and curled my hair | 0:23:57 | 0:24:00 | |
# Then she painted my eyes and lids | 0:24:00 | 0:24:02 | |
# Then I stepped into a satin dancing dress... # | 0:24:02 | 0:24:05 | |
Fancy was another story song - about a girl prostitute. | 0:24:05 | 0:24:09 | |
It's also filled with shameful secrets, | 0:24:09 | 0:24:11 | |
and has often been covered by other singers. | 0:24:11 | 0:24:14 | |
I was nine or ten years old. | 0:24:14 | 0:24:17 | |
It was like so controversial for me to sing at that age, | 0:24:17 | 0:24:21 | |
but I did anyway. | 0:24:21 | 0:24:22 | |
# Fancy don't let me down... # | 0:24:22 | 0:24:26 | |
Fancy is a great song because it's so sassy. | 0:24:26 | 0:24:29 | |
You're singing as this woman, Fancy, who grew up poor | 0:24:29 | 0:24:34 | |
and then her mother turns her out into the street as a hooker. | 0:24:34 | 0:24:37 | |
# Da-da-da Fancy don't let me down. # | 0:24:37 | 0:24:40 | |
I thought Bobbie... | 0:24:40 | 0:24:41 | |
I thought that was one of her best records. | 0:24:41 | 0:24:44 | |
Bobbie was a good singer, she had her own sound. | 0:24:44 | 0:24:46 | |
When you heard her on the radio you knew who it was. | 0:24:46 | 0:24:49 | |
Her voice had a blues quality, | 0:24:49 | 0:24:51 | |
which was rare in those days in a white singer. | 0:24:51 | 0:24:54 | |
Enormous passion in the voice - an enormous drive. | 0:24:54 | 0:24:59 | |
Bobbie became a star in Britain with her own TV show. | 0:25:03 | 0:25:06 | |
It was one of the very first programmes to be shown in colour on the new BBC2. | 0:25:06 | 0:25:11 | |
It was a folk/country/variety show. She wrote the show. | 0:25:14 | 0:25:20 | |
She knew what she wanted. | 0:25:20 | 0:25:22 | |
Very enthusiastic about everything, very, um... | 0:25:22 | 0:25:26 | |
..very on all the time. | 0:25:28 | 0:25:29 | |
Glen Campbell was a guest on the show. | 0:25:29 | 0:25:32 | |
He and Bobbie started singing duets. | 0:25:32 | 0:25:35 | |
# I bless the day I found you... # | 0:25:35 | 0:25:39 | |
Their voices were perfect together. | 0:25:39 | 0:25:43 | |
They liked her better in Mississippi than they liked me! | 0:25:43 | 0:25:46 | |
I'm kidding. | 0:25:46 | 0:25:48 | |
Of course, everyone assumed they were doing more than sing together. | 0:25:49 | 0:25:54 | |
There were rumours of an affair with Bobbie Gentry, I know. | 0:25:54 | 0:25:59 | |
Neither one of us ever initiated anything like that. | 0:26:00 | 0:26:05 | |
It was like, she was, she was... Bobbie's my buddy. | 0:26:05 | 0:26:08 | |
# What do you get when you fall in love...? # | 0:26:08 | 0:26:12 | |
Bobbie married and divorced three times. | 0:26:12 | 0:26:16 | |
The problem is that I married too soon. My career had just started. | 0:26:16 | 0:26:20 | |
I was scared to death that if I didn't do every interview | 0:26:20 | 0:26:24 | |
and make every appearance, | 0:26:24 | 0:26:25 | |
that I would wake up and it would all have gone away overnight. | 0:26:25 | 0:26:30 | |
# I'll never fall in love again. # | 0:26:31 | 0:26:33 | |
With her last husband, she had a child. | 0:26:33 | 0:26:36 | |
I saw her just when the baby was born, | 0:26:36 | 0:26:39 | |
which must have been maybe 20 years ago, | 0:26:39 | 0:26:42 | |
and then she just disappeared. | 0:26:42 | 0:26:44 | |
One theory is that she bowed out | 0:26:44 | 0:26:46 | |
because she couldn't get the control she wanted in the music business. | 0:26:46 | 0:26:50 | |
I applaud her for it. She just stepped down and said, | 0:26:50 | 0:26:53 | |
"I'm gonna do what Bobbie wants to do | 0:26:53 | 0:26:55 | |
"and not be led around by an agent or a manager." | 0:26:55 | 0:26:58 | |
This was where she lived all of her adult life. | 0:27:00 | 0:27:03 | |
There's been no songs, there's been no music. | 0:27:03 | 0:27:07 | |
This tremendous talent just stopped. | 0:27:07 | 0:27:11 | |
# I've watched Mommy and Daddy | 0:27:14 | 0:27:19 | |
# And if that's the way it's done | 0:27:19 | 0:27:22 | |
# I don't wanna play house... # | 0:27:22 | 0:27:24 | |
Bobbie was the mystery, but the next queen's life was an open book. | 0:27:24 | 0:27:29 | |
'She's had more than her share of unhappiness...' | 0:27:29 | 0:27:33 | |
A chaos of drink and pills, | 0:27:33 | 0:27:34 | |
husbands and ex-husbands, | 0:27:34 | 0:27:36 | |
violence and illness. | 0:27:36 | 0:27:38 | |
Her songs charted it all. | 0:27:38 | 0:27:40 | |
Speaking to women stuck in Formica kitchens and loveless marriages, | 0:27:40 | 0:27:46 | |
struggling to keep love alive, | 0:27:46 | 0:27:48 | |
Tammy was their voice. | 0:27:48 | 0:27:50 | |
She had the beauty, the talent. She sang like a bird. | 0:27:50 | 0:27:54 | |
I just always felt sorry for her. | 0:27:54 | 0:27:56 | |
# And if that's the way it's done | 0:27:56 | 0:27:59 | |
# I don't wanna play house... # | 0:27:59 | 0:28:01 | |
Having been married five times, maybe she was telling herself | 0:28:01 | 0:28:05 | |
there is someone out there that's perfect and right for her, | 0:28:05 | 0:28:08 | |
and even though she wasn't having the greatest time | 0:28:08 | 0:28:11 | |
trying to find that person, | 0:28:11 | 0:28:13 | |
she didn't want to give up. | 0:28:13 | 0:28:14 | |
# My daddy said goodbye. # | 0:28:14 | 0:28:21 | |
Her father died when she was a baby. | 0:28:21 | 0:28:24 | |
She was always looking for that support | 0:28:24 | 0:28:27 | |
that she would have gotten from her father. | 0:28:27 | 0:28:30 | |
I believe that that's why she went from the man to man that she did. | 0:28:30 | 0:28:35 | |
Tammy married young and by the time she was 20, | 0:28:35 | 0:28:39 | |
had three children and was heading for a divorce. | 0:28:39 | 0:28:43 | |
She was just ready to say, "I'm outta here." | 0:28:43 | 0:28:47 | |
Back in those days, you just didn't do that. | 0:28:47 | 0:28:51 | |
But the times they were a-changing. | 0:28:53 | 0:28:56 | |
The divorce rate was about to soar. | 0:28:56 | 0:28:58 | |
More and more women were going out to work, | 0:28:58 | 0:29:01 | |
and people were moving from country to town, just like Tammy. | 0:29:01 | 0:29:05 | |
She got a job as a beautician, | 0:29:05 | 0:29:07 | |
earning more money by singing in clubs at night. | 0:29:07 | 0:29:11 | |
She came to Nashville with babies in tow. | 0:29:11 | 0:29:14 | |
She'd been on welfare. | 0:29:14 | 0:29:16 | |
She had lived in projects. | 0:29:16 | 0:29:18 | |
She'd been a beautician. | 0:29:18 | 0:29:20 | |
She crawled over broken glass to get here. | 0:29:20 | 0:29:23 | |
# Just follow the stairway | 0:29:23 | 0:29:28 | |
# To this lonely world of mine... # | 0:29:28 | 0:29:31 | |
Tammy was tough, but it was just too tough all alone. | 0:29:31 | 0:29:35 | |
She got herself a new husband | 0:29:35 | 0:29:37 | |
and door-stepped producer Billy Sherrill. | 0:29:37 | 0:29:39 | |
Straightaway, she had her first hit. | 0:29:39 | 0:29:42 | |
# In apartment number nine... # | 0:29:42 | 0:29:45 | |
She just looked so serious, | 0:29:45 | 0:29:48 | |
and I thought, "Wow, she's real different." | 0:29:48 | 0:29:51 | |
I'd turned on the radio | 0:29:51 | 0:29:54 | |
when they first started playing her. | 0:29:54 | 0:29:56 | |
Boy, her voice stood out. | 0:29:56 | 0:29:58 | |
A really good country singer knows how to interpret a feeling, | 0:29:58 | 0:30:01 | |
knows how to interpret a lyric. | 0:30:01 | 0:30:03 | |
# Loneliness surrounds me... # | 0:30:03 | 0:30:07 | |
From that day on, I was always a fan of hers. | 0:30:07 | 0:30:11 | |
Her songs reflected the roller coaster of her relationships. | 0:30:11 | 0:30:15 | |
# D-I-V-O-R-C-E becomes final today... # | 0:30:17 | 0:30:24 | |
I worked on Divorce - D-I-V-O-R-C-E... | 0:30:24 | 0:30:28 | |
Did I spell that right?! | 0:30:28 | 0:30:30 | |
I also worked on Stand By Your Man. | 0:30:30 | 0:30:32 | |
# Sometimes it's hard to be a woman | 0:30:32 | 0:30:39 | |
# Giving all your love to just one man... # | 0:30:41 | 0:30:46 | |
I had a great feeling about that record when we did it. | 0:30:46 | 0:30:49 | |
She sang with so much soul. | 0:30:49 | 0:30:50 | |
# And if you love him... # | 0:30:50 | 0:30:54 | |
When she hits that high C-sharp, you know, it's pretty thrilling. | 0:30:54 | 0:30:57 | |
You're playing and she sails up and hits that note. | 0:30:57 | 0:31:00 | |
It's an emotion that you feel and she conveyed emotion. | 0:31:00 | 0:31:05 | |
# Stand by your man | 0:31:07 | 0:31:11 | |
# And show the world you love him | 0:31:12 | 0:31:16 | |
# Keep giving all the love you can... # | 0:31:16 | 0:31:23 | |
But it was 1968, | 0:31:23 | 0:31:24 | |
and feminists weren't concerned about her high C-sharp. | 0:31:24 | 0:31:28 | |
# Stand by your man. # | 0:31:28 | 0:31:30 | |
They saw Stand By Your Man as an attack on everything they stood for. | 0:31:30 | 0:31:36 | |
Women didn't want to always be the ones who had to stand by their men | 0:31:36 | 0:31:39 | |
every single time they did something wrong. | 0:31:39 | 0:31:42 | |
# And if you love him... # | 0:31:42 | 0:31:44 | |
Women were kind of rebelling against that attitude. | 0:31:44 | 0:31:48 | |
That song fell in right at that moment. | 0:31:48 | 0:31:51 | |
I heard Tammy say this a thousand times, | 0:31:51 | 0:31:53 | |
"There's nothing in that song that says 'be a doormat'." | 0:31:53 | 0:31:57 | |
It simply says Stand By Your Man. | 0:31:57 | 0:31:59 | |
He's weak, he's frail, he's going to make mistakes. | 0:31:59 | 0:32:02 | |
After all, he's just a man. | 0:32:02 | 0:32:04 | |
Every country woman knows what that's like - | 0:32:06 | 0:32:10 | |
to try to stand by her husband, | 0:32:10 | 0:32:12 | |
no matter whether he's in the right or he's in the wrong, | 0:32:12 | 0:32:15 | |
because that's your commitment as a wife. | 0:32:15 | 0:32:17 | |
To me, it was one of those songs like Loretta's songs. | 0:32:17 | 0:32:22 | |
They were anthems for women of the time. | 0:32:22 | 0:32:24 | |
There were doormat songs, no question. | 0:32:24 | 0:32:27 | |
One was called Don't Liberate Me, Love Me. | 0:32:27 | 0:32:29 | |
But I still say Stand By Your Man is not a conservative song. | 0:32:29 | 0:32:33 | |
It's about nurturing one-another. | 0:32:33 | 0:32:37 | |
A man could sing Stand By Your Woman. | 0:32:37 | 0:32:40 | |
# I feel tears welling up | 0:32:40 | 0:32:42 | |
# Cold and deep inside, like my heart's sprung a leak... # | 0:32:42 | 0:32:45 | |
Then Tammy met another man she would do her best to stand by... | 0:32:45 | 0:32:49 | |
country superstar George Jones. | 0:32:49 | 0:32:51 | |
One night, the man she was meant to be singing with didn't turn up. | 0:32:51 | 0:32:55 | |
The star of the show felt sorry for her. | 0:32:55 | 0:32:57 | |
My dad, out of the blue, | 0:32:57 | 0:32:58 | |
invited her to come out on stage | 0:32:58 | 0:33:00 | |
to sing the duet she was supposed to perform. | 0:33:00 | 0:33:03 | |
You're talking about Tammy Wynette. | 0:33:03 | 0:33:05 | |
-Right. -Is she here? -She's here. -Put her to work. Here we go. | 0:33:05 | 0:33:08 | |
# Well, I'm gonna get on the old turnpike and I'm gonna ride... # | 0:33:11 | 0:33:16 | |
After a while, | 0:33:16 | 0:33:17 | |
they started doing a lot more singing and recording together | 0:33:17 | 0:33:21 | |
and then eventually, I guess the story has written itself. | 0:33:21 | 0:33:24 | |
They fell in love and there you go. | 0:33:24 | 0:33:26 | |
# Step by step, we walk the road together... # | 0:33:26 | 0:33:32 | |
But she was still married. | 0:33:32 | 0:33:33 | |
One night, George Jones came to dinner. | 0:33:33 | 0:33:36 | |
Tammy's husband was shouting abuse at her. | 0:33:36 | 0:33:39 | |
It made my dad angry and he stood up from the dinner table | 0:33:39 | 0:33:42 | |
and knocked the dinner table over onto Don. | 0:33:42 | 0:33:45 | |
He said that he wasn't going to speak to her like that, | 0:33:45 | 0:33:48 | |
and that he was in love with her, | 0:33:48 | 0:33:49 | |
and he said, "I think that she's in love with me too, isn't that right?" | 0:33:49 | 0:33:53 | |
And she said, "Yes, I am," and so they left. | 0:33:53 | 0:33:55 | |
# And in each other's arms, we loved it away. # | 0:33:55 | 0:34:03 | |
And then my dad and mom got together and eventually got married. | 0:34:03 | 0:34:06 | |
She had a lot of feeling, a lot of heart, a lot of soul. | 0:34:08 | 0:34:13 | |
Once we started singing together, it was magic. | 0:34:13 | 0:34:19 | |
The trouble was she couldn't live without George, | 0:34:19 | 0:34:22 | |
but she couldn't live WITH him. | 0:34:22 | 0:34:24 | |
# We're gonna ho-o-o-old on... # | 0:34:25 | 0:34:30 | |
For her, meeting George Jones, | 0:34:30 | 0:34:33 | |
it was just the best and the worst thing in her life. | 0:34:33 | 0:34:37 | |
I mean she just adored him and he did her. | 0:34:37 | 0:34:40 | |
But he had his alcohol problem and drug addiction. | 0:34:40 | 0:34:43 | |
# Life can be rough... # | 0:34:43 | 0:34:46 | |
In the early '70s, | 0:34:46 | 0:34:48 | |
that was when Mom was just beginning to start her drug addiction. | 0:34:48 | 0:34:51 | |
Tammy had serious health problems, | 0:34:51 | 0:34:54 | |
which led to a lifelong addiction to painkillers. | 0:34:54 | 0:34:57 | |
And once again, she was getting abuse. | 0:34:57 | 0:34:59 | |
He was very volatile, and she would not back down. | 0:34:59 | 0:35:03 | |
She would take it and she'd give him his money's worth too. | 0:35:03 | 0:35:09 | |
He was very violent. | 0:35:09 | 0:35:11 | |
'I think they fell in love with each other's singing...' | 0:35:11 | 0:35:14 | |
Just before we finish this song, I want to ask her... | 0:35:14 | 0:35:17 | |
'When that got old, it was the fighting...' | 0:35:17 | 0:35:20 | |
They wasn't getting along. | 0:35:20 | 0:35:22 | |
They felt like they was captured | 0:35:22 | 0:35:24 | |
'and they were trying to figure out how to get out of it.' | 0:35:24 | 0:35:27 | |
I want you to come here. We need help. | 0:35:27 | 0:35:30 | |
They were both big, big stars, | 0:35:30 | 0:35:32 | |
and I just think you can share one mirror there. | 0:35:32 | 0:35:35 | |
# Wedding rings they're on display. # | 0:35:35 | 0:35:41 | |
Tammy stood by George till she could stand it no longer. | 0:35:41 | 0:35:45 | |
I was there at the break-up. | 0:35:47 | 0:35:49 | |
It was the first time she'd ever gone on the road without George. | 0:35:49 | 0:35:53 | |
And she said, | 0:35:53 | 0:35:55 | |
"I'm scared to go on the road without him." | 0:35:55 | 0:35:58 | |
And we're like, "You're kidding!" | 0:35:58 | 0:36:00 | |
She said, "Who'll come to see me? | 0:36:00 | 0:36:03 | |
-"Who'll know who -I -am?" | 0:36:03 | 0:36:05 | |
Another disastrous marriage followed. | 0:36:07 | 0:36:10 | |
This one lasted only 44 days. | 0:36:10 | 0:36:12 | |
People were beginning to laugh at Tammy. | 0:36:12 | 0:36:15 | |
It's not something that I'm proud of. | 0:36:15 | 0:36:18 | |
Because I'm a firm believer in marriage whether... | 0:36:18 | 0:36:21 | |
You obviously are! | 0:36:21 | 0:36:24 | |
For her, it was embarrassing. | 0:36:24 | 0:36:26 | |
She felt like, "I can't divorce again because of my fans." | 0:36:26 | 0:36:31 | |
When she married again, it was to George Richey. | 0:36:31 | 0:36:34 | |
This time, it was to be until death. | 0:36:34 | 0:36:38 | |
We were married 20 years. | 0:36:38 | 0:36:40 | |
And for the most part, | 0:36:41 | 0:36:43 | |
it was absolutely beautiful. | 0:36:43 | 0:36:46 | |
She tried to make something of it, | 0:36:46 | 0:36:48 | |
because by then she was determined not to have another divorce. | 0:36:48 | 0:36:52 | |
She was always ill, and her drug dependency was getting worse. | 0:36:53 | 0:36:57 | |
Sometimes we'd be on the bus, | 0:36:57 | 0:36:59 | |
and she'd be hooked up to breathing machines, intravenous machines... | 0:36:59 | 0:37:04 | |
and unplug herself and go out and sing. | 0:37:04 | 0:37:07 | |
The last tour to England, | 0:37:07 | 0:37:09 | |
I remember calling everyone in the family... | 0:37:09 | 0:37:11 | |
all the daughters, Richey her husband, | 0:37:11 | 0:37:14 | |
and begging and crying not to let Tammy go on the tour. | 0:37:14 | 0:37:17 | |
I was convinced that she'd come back in a coffin. | 0:37:17 | 0:37:20 | |
My husband and I were flying over to England. | 0:37:20 | 0:37:22 | |
And I looked over and I saw this very, very fragile little old woman. | 0:37:22 | 0:37:28 | |
"Oh, my God!" I realised that was Tammy. | 0:37:28 | 0:37:32 | |
We brought her in for a show the BBC did in Birmingham, | 0:37:32 | 0:37:35 | |
and they had to literally carry her on stage. | 0:37:35 | 0:37:39 | |
She was very, very ill. | 0:37:39 | 0:37:41 | |
She was so fragile. And that's the last time I ever saw her alive. | 0:37:41 | 0:37:45 | |
# Precious memories... # | 0:37:49 | 0:37:54 | |
Tammy was only 55 when she died. | 0:37:54 | 0:37:57 | |
There were huge rows between George Richey and her daughters. | 0:37:57 | 0:38:00 | |
The daughters had her body exhumed, alleging wrongful death. | 0:38:00 | 0:38:05 | |
Even in death, she could not find peace. | 0:38:05 | 0:38:08 | |
# Stand by your man... # | 0:38:08 | 0:38:11 | |
Her life was a tragedy, and it was also a triumph. | 0:38:11 | 0:38:15 | |
She was tagged as a spokesperson for the anti-feminist movement. | 0:38:15 | 0:38:20 | |
But she was the one who was a career woman alone on the road. | 0:38:20 | 0:38:23 | |
She was really very, very strong. | 0:38:23 | 0:38:25 | |
She certainly knew women could be the breadwinner and lead the world. | 0:38:25 | 0:38:32 | |
She really was one of the pioneers for women in our business. | 0:38:32 | 0:38:35 | |
Tammy stood for the ideal of the long-suffering wife | 0:38:37 | 0:38:40 | |
holding the home together. | 0:38:40 | 0:38:42 | |
Her own life showed how hard that could be. | 0:38:44 | 0:38:47 | |
# Delta Dawn, what's that flower you have on? # | 0:38:47 | 0:38:51 | |
But the teen queen was from a new generation. | 0:38:51 | 0:38:55 | |
# Could it be a faded rose from days gone by? # | 0:38:55 | 0:38:57 | |
She was the bad girl, no longer the gingham-clad country sweetheart, | 0:38:57 | 0:39:02 | |
but the wild child, never out of the headlines - the tabloid queen. | 0:39:02 | 0:39:06 | |
# To take you to his mansion in the sky... # | 0:39:06 | 0:39:12 | |
Tanya Tucker is a spunky little Texan at heart and always will be. | 0:39:12 | 0:39:15 | |
She's like the cat with nine lives. | 0:39:15 | 0:39:17 | |
There was just too much too soon. | 0:39:17 | 0:39:19 | |
It's like trying to eat too much cake, I guess. | 0:39:19 | 0:39:21 | |
If you eat too much cake, you have to pay a penalty somewhere. | 0:39:21 | 0:39:26 | |
In those early years, I never really felt like I was poor. | 0:39:30 | 0:39:33 | |
We had a trailer house that my dad enclosed | 0:39:33 | 0:39:36 | |
and made it look like a house. | 0:39:36 | 0:39:37 | |
I always had horses and animals. | 0:39:37 | 0:39:42 | |
I kept losing my animals, they got run over. | 0:39:42 | 0:39:45 | |
All these animals kept getting run over. | 0:39:45 | 0:39:47 | |
I swore that if I got any money, | 0:39:49 | 0:39:51 | |
if I ever became rich and famous, | 0:39:51 | 0:39:53 | |
that I would live as far off the road as I possibly could. | 0:39:53 | 0:39:56 | |
So, Tanya really did start out as "trailer trash", | 0:40:01 | 0:40:04 | |
trailing around after her father's jobs. | 0:40:04 | 0:40:07 | |
But pretty soon the whole family would be following HER job. | 0:40:07 | 0:40:10 | |
I told my dad at nine years old. | 0:40:10 | 0:40:12 | |
He asked me, "You wanna be a singer | 0:40:12 | 0:40:14 | |
"or you wanna be a normal schoolgirl, like your friends? | 0:40:14 | 0:40:17 | |
"You let me know right now". | 0:40:17 | 0:40:19 | |
# Daddy said, "Now come, girl | 0:40:19 | 0:40:21 | |
# "We're heading down the road..." # | 0:40:21 | 0:40:22 | |
I looked at him and I said, "I wanna be a singer, Dad." | 0:40:22 | 0:40:25 | |
She never really had a childhood. | 0:40:25 | 0:40:28 | |
She doesn't know anything different than to get up on that stage and sing her ass off. | 0:40:28 | 0:40:33 | |
# That Georgia sun was blood-red and going down... # | 0:40:33 | 0:40:37 | |
Her father was determined that she'd make it. | 0:40:37 | 0:40:40 | |
One night he said, "Tanya, sing me this song." | 0:40:40 | 0:40:42 | |
I sang it and he said, "That ain't you, no feelin' in that." | 0:40:42 | 0:40:45 | |
And I said, "Well, Dad, I really want to sleep. I got school in the morning." | 0:40:45 | 0:40:50 | |
He said, "If you're not gonna sing it, | 0:40:50 | 0:40:52 | |
"why don't you go out there right now and chop them weeds?" | 0:40:52 | 0:40:55 | |
# At times like these, a child in tears | 0:40:55 | 0:40:58 | |
# Never knows exactly what to say... # | 0:40:58 | 0:41:01 | |
So I said, "Fine." | 0:41:01 | 0:41:03 | |
So I'm looking round and scared, you know? | 0:41:03 | 0:41:07 | |
It took me about an hour. | 0:41:07 | 0:41:09 | |
# That Georgia sun was blood-red... # | 0:41:09 | 0:41:11 | |
He said, "Bring her in." | 0:41:11 | 0:41:12 | |
So I went in there and I sang my heart out and he said, "OK, you can go to bed." | 0:41:12 | 0:41:16 | |
# ..And going down. # | 0:41:16 | 0:41:18 | |
He wasn't gonna give up till we got there | 0:41:18 | 0:41:20 | |
and he wanted to make sure that I was in the same place. | 0:41:20 | 0:41:23 | |
And that place would be Nashville. | 0:41:25 | 0:41:27 | |
She caused quite a stir when she came to Nashville. | 0:41:27 | 0:41:30 | |
Nashville needs that every once in a while, it wasn't so bad. | 0:41:30 | 0:41:33 | |
# She's 41 and her daddy still calls her baby... # | 0:41:33 | 0:41:37 | |
Still a child, she had her first huge hit - Delta Dawn. | 0:41:37 | 0:41:41 | |
# ..An' all the folks around Brownsville say she's crazy... # | 0:41:41 | 0:41:44 | |
It kinda started leaking out that I was only 13. | 0:41:44 | 0:41:48 | |
It caused a scandal. | 0:41:48 | 0:41:49 | |
In country music, girls were meant to be sweet and pure. | 0:41:49 | 0:41:53 | |
By the time Tanya was 15, she had sung of illegitimacy, crimes, rape... | 0:41:53 | 0:42:00 | |
And that did create eyebrow-raising in conservative Nashville. | 0:42:00 | 0:42:04 | |
But she chose those songs. | 0:42:04 | 0:42:07 | |
She turned down "Happiest Girl in the Whole USA." | 0:42:07 | 0:42:10 | |
She said, "I'm not singing that!" at 13. | 0:42:10 | 0:42:12 | |
The other remarkable thing about little Tanya was her deep voice. | 0:42:14 | 0:42:18 | |
The first time she sang, I said her voice is lower than mine. | 0:42:18 | 0:42:22 | |
I even asked one of the guys, "Does she smoke?" | 0:42:22 | 0:42:25 | |
She had this wonderful quality about her, | 0:42:25 | 0:42:28 | |
of rawness, of "Don't mess with me. I may be 14, but you lose." | 0:42:28 | 0:42:33 | |
No, it's... | 0:42:33 | 0:42:36 | |
Tanya didn't take any crap off anybody. | 0:42:36 | 0:42:41 | |
I remember seeing her in a club one time. | 0:42:41 | 0:42:44 | |
She had a black eye, and I went, | 0:42:44 | 0:42:46 | |
"My God! What happened to you?" | 0:42:46 | 0:42:48 | |
And she said "You shoulda seen the other girl!" | 0:42:48 | 0:42:51 | |
My dad had taught me how to fight, | 0:42:51 | 0:42:53 | |
"Get that nose. To hell with the hair, just get the nose." | 0:42:53 | 0:42:57 | |
One little punch on that nose and they're gone. | 0:42:57 | 0:42:59 | |
Girls can't take it on the nose. | 0:42:59 | 0:43:01 | |
# Would you lay with me in a field of stone? | 0:43:01 | 0:43:07 | |
# If my knees were scarred Would you lay with me? | 0:43:07 | 0:43:14 | |
# Should my lips grow dry | 0:43:16 | 0:43:20 | |
# Would you wet them, dear...? # | 0:43:20 | 0:43:22 | |
The uproar over Tanya's songs grew, | 0:43:22 | 0:43:25 | |
with radio stations all over the south banning her. | 0:43:25 | 0:43:28 | |
It didn't hurt sales. | 0:43:28 | 0:43:31 | |
Her stage act and clothes became more and more sexy. | 0:43:31 | 0:43:35 | |
I think she was the rebel out of everyone. | 0:43:35 | 0:43:37 | |
When they told her to go one way she wanted to go the other. | 0:43:37 | 0:43:41 | |
What Tanya really did for country music | 0:43:41 | 0:43:45 | |
was allow a female performer, for the first time, to be overtly sexual. | 0:43:45 | 0:43:49 | |
# Straight out of Texas and down around San Anton... # | 0:43:49 | 0:43:54 | |
She had this real chick-meets-Elvis vibe about her. | 0:43:56 | 0:44:00 | |
She was a sex bomb | 0:44:00 | 0:44:01 | |
and I'd never seen that done in country music. | 0:44:01 | 0:44:04 | |
This was rags - not to rhinestones - but to red spandex jumpsuits. | 0:44:07 | 0:44:13 | |
Women just didn't move in country music. | 0:44:13 | 0:44:16 | |
I think I was one of the first ones to actually move. | 0:44:16 | 0:44:20 | |
It feels good on stage when I'm doing it, | 0:44:20 | 0:44:23 | |
so let's just pour the coals on it. | 0:44:23 | 0:44:26 | |
Off stage, her life was hotting up too, | 0:44:27 | 0:44:30 | |
as she moved away from her parents. | 0:44:30 | 0:44:31 | |
# Well, hey, officer | 0:44:31 | 0:44:34 | |
# I admit it, I was speeding... # | 0:44:34 | 0:44:37 | |
I was living in LA having a great time. | 0:44:37 | 0:44:39 | |
I had four cars, a Porsche, had my own house out there. | 0:44:39 | 0:44:42 | |
I had a lot of friends. | 0:44:42 | 0:44:44 | |
We all just sat in a circle and we played songs, and we got high, | 0:44:44 | 0:44:51 | |
and I got to see what a party girl she was. | 0:44:51 | 0:44:55 | |
I was like any other single white female American fun-loving girl. | 0:44:55 | 0:44:59 | |
If I wasn't being hit on I was hitting on. | 0:44:59 | 0:45:01 | |
Then she hit on one that turned out to be big trouble - Glen Campbell. | 0:45:04 | 0:45:10 | |
Nearly a decade after his duets with Bobbie, | 0:45:10 | 0:45:12 | |
he hooked up with Tanya. | 0:45:12 | 0:45:13 | |
Their brawls and their binges on alcohol and cocaine | 0:45:13 | 0:45:17 | |
really did hit the headlines. | 0:45:17 | 0:45:19 | |
One Southerner to another, how about the pleasure of this next song? | 0:45:19 | 0:45:22 | |
Certainly, Mr Campbell, I'm just sittin' here on the front porch. | 0:45:22 | 0:45:26 | |
'I was 21, 22, and that probably didn't help.' | 0:45:26 | 0:45:30 | |
And he was 44 and thinking he was 22, and that probably didn't help. | 0:45:30 | 0:45:36 | |
# Every night I hope and pray | 0:45:36 | 0:45:40 | |
# A dream lover will come my way... # | 0:45:40 | 0:45:43 | |
Being involved in a substance will do it every time. | 0:45:43 | 0:45:48 | |
I mean, that'll wreck a relationship every time. | 0:45:48 | 0:45:51 | |
-# Because I want... -I want | 0:45:51 | 0:45:53 | |
-# A girl... -A boy | 0:45:53 | 0:45:55 | |
-# Just to call... -To call my own | 0:45:55 | 0:45:57 | |
# I wanna dream lover, so I don't have to dream alone. # | 0:45:57 | 0:46:03 | |
In 1980, they sang the national anthem together | 0:46:04 | 0:46:07 | |
at the Republican convention. | 0:46:07 | 0:46:10 | |
Glen says they'd just been higher than the notes they were singing. | 0:46:10 | 0:46:14 | |
Probably if we hadn't been so involved in all that, | 0:46:14 | 0:46:17 | |
we probably could have still been together today. | 0:46:17 | 0:46:20 | |
He says her infidelity ended the affair. | 0:46:20 | 0:46:23 | |
It was like it didn't make any difference. | 0:46:23 | 0:46:26 | |
She would make it with one of my friends, | 0:46:26 | 0:46:28 | |
one of the guys in the band. | 0:46:28 | 0:46:30 | |
She lied so much, she had to hire somebody to call her dog. | 0:46:30 | 0:46:33 | |
She says it was the violence. | 0:46:33 | 0:46:35 | |
A man is always gonna be stronger than a woman, | 0:46:35 | 0:46:37 | |
so therefore I have to... | 0:46:37 | 0:46:39 | |
I have to get him when he ain't looking, you know what I mean? | 0:46:39 | 0:46:42 | |
And that can be dangerous. | 0:46:42 | 0:46:44 | |
Tanya soon caused another scandal by having children out of wedlock. | 0:46:44 | 0:46:49 | |
But all the while, she's kept having country hits. | 0:46:49 | 0:46:52 | |
I'm not the tabloid queen any more. | 0:46:52 | 0:46:54 | |
But I think probably because of that, | 0:46:54 | 0:46:57 | |
it's made me more like a household name. | 0:46:57 | 0:46:59 | |
Pretty much Tanya Tucker's been across everybody's tongue, at one time or another. | 0:47:01 | 0:47:06 | |
# Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene | 0:47:11 | 0:47:14 | |
# I'm beggin' of you please don't take my man... # | 0:47:14 | 0:47:18 | |
Tanya was wild and sexy and got slammed for it. | 0:47:18 | 0:47:21 | |
But our final queen is clever enough to keep everything under control. | 0:47:21 | 0:47:25 | |
HER control. And she does it with a smile that makes everyone love her. | 0:47:25 | 0:47:29 | |
Unlike other queens, Dolly has no children or demanding husband. | 0:47:32 | 0:47:36 | |
Maybe that's helped her become the biggest star of them all. | 0:47:36 | 0:47:40 | |
She's an immensely clever woman and very attractive. | 0:47:40 | 0:47:44 | |
She's like flypaper to me, I can't take my eyes off her. | 0:47:44 | 0:47:48 | |
# Your voice is soft like summer rain | 0:47:48 | 0:47:50 | |
# And I cannot compete with you, Jolene | 0:47:50 | 0:47:53 | |
She's an incredible songwriter | 0:47:53 | 0:47:55 | |
but she's unappreciated as a songwriter | 0:47:55 | 0:47:57 | |
because of all the other things that you can focus on about her. | 0:47:57 | 0:48:00 | |
Her extraordinary appearance, her humour, her ability to act. | 0:48:00 | 0:48:04 | |
Dolly's worth so much money that she could buy Nashville. | 0:48:04 | 0:48:10 | |
# But you don't know what he means to me, Jolene... # | 0:48:10 | 0:48:13 | |
Dolly is the most amazing woman I know | 0:48:13 | 0:48:16 | |
for getting men to do what she wants them to do. | 0:48:16 | 0:48:19 | |
She has been able to take that whole female thing of... | 0:48:19 | 0:48:24 | |
"Do that for me, please!" | 0:48:24 | 0:48:26 | |
and she's just run it down their throats. | 0:48:26 | 0:48:30 | |
# Little sparrow | 0:48:30 | 0:48:33 | |
# Little sparrow... # | 0:48:33 | 0:48:35 | |
Just like Loretta, Dolly was born dirt-poor in the Kentucky mountains. | 0:48:35 | 0:48:40 | |
# ..little thing... # | 0:48:40 | 0:48:42 | |
They've made an entire career out of being who they are, | 0:48:43 | 0:48:47 | |
and that's a really difficult thing for a lot of people to do | 0:48:47 | 0:48:50 | |
because they want to be somebody else. | 0:48:50 | 0:48:52 | |
They want to put on a mask, they want to dress up. | 0:48:52 | 0:48:55 | |
Yet Dolly always did like to dress up. | 0:48:55 | 0:48:57 | |
Her love of the make-over was there from the start. | 0:48:57 | 0:49:01 | |
We've always been really girly-girls, | 0:49:01 | 0:49:03 | |
and when we didn't have make-up, | 0:49:03 | 0:49:06 | |
we would take burnt matches and paint eyebrows on, | 0:49:06 | 0:49:09 | |
and we would take berries from the mountains and paint our lips. | 0:49:09 | 0:49:13 | |
The big hair thing started early too. | 0:49:13 | 0:49:16 | |
I would get up early and tease her hair and fix it in the back, | 0:49:16 | 0:49:20 | |
so it would be as big as she wanted it cos she always loved big hair! | 0:49:20 | 0:49:23 | |
She puts those wigs on and dresses up but when she takes it all off, | 0:49:23 | 0:49:29 | |
she's just country as corn bread. | 0:49:29 | 0:49:31 | |
Just like the rest of us. | 0:49:31 | 0:49:33 | |
Dolly always has her tongue in her cheek. | 0:49:33 | 0:49:36 | |
We didn't have anything money could buy, in fact we was pretty poor. | 0:49:36 | 0:49:39 | |
Folks on welfare used to bring US stuff! | 0:49:39 | 0:49:42 | |
My earliest memory of Dolly would be of her laughing at me | 0:49:42 | 0:49:46 | |
because she always had such a great sense of humour. | 0:49:46 | 0:49:49 | |
Miss Parton? You always look so beautiful. | 0:49:49 | 0:49:52 | |
Do you have any secrets to give us? | 0:49:52 | 0:49:54 | |
Clean living! | 0:49:54 | 0:49:57 | |
Avoid clean living at all costs! | 0:49:57 | 0:50:00 | |
Shock value has always been real important to Dolly. | 0:50:02 | 0:50:05 | |
When they were growing up, there was music all around. | 0:50:07 | 0:50:10 | |
My mother would sing us these beautiful old Irish laments and I'd cry. | 0:50:10 | 0:50:16 | |
It was like watching a movie or something. | 0:50:16 | 0:50:20 | |
When Daddy would drink on the weekends, he would come home, you know, three sheets to the wind. | 0:50:20 | 0:50:25 | |
He would play the banjo and dance, an' all that, | 0:50:25 | 0:50:29 | |
so we didn't know any other way. | 0:50:29 | 0:50:31 | |
At ten, Dolly got her first chance to sing on the radio. | 0:50:31 | 0:50:35 | |
# Give me your word, give me a sign | 0:50:35 | 0:50:37 | |
# Show me where to look and tell me what will I find... # | 0:50:37 | 0:50:42 | |
She knew she wanted to be a star and worked at it. | 0:50:42 | 0:50:45 | |
This little girl paid her dues. | 0:50:45 | 0:50:47 | |
# Meet me on the ground Fly me in the sky... # | 0:50:47 | 0:50:49 | |
I signed Dolly Parton when she was 14 years old. | 0:50:49 | 0:50:54 | |
Dolly and her Uncle Bill Owens would come back and forth | 0:50:54 | 0:50:57 | |
from her home of East Tennessee. | 0:50:57 | 0:50:59 | |
They didn't have any money of course. | 0:50:59 | 0:51:01 | |
Bill would sleep in his car, | 0:51:01 | 0:51:04 | |
and Dolly would stay for 2 a night at the YWCA. | 0:51:04 | 0:51:09 | |
I believe she was still in high school. | 0:51:09 | 0:51:11 | |
She had this tiny little voice. | 0:51:11 | 0:51:15 | |
It was haunting. | 0:51:15 | 0:51:17 | |
And she was doing some songs she had written, | 0:51:17 | 0:51:20 | |
and they were so good. | 0:51:20 | 0:51:21 | |
You could tell that one day she was gonna happen, | 0:51:21 | 0:51:24 | |
and it didn't take too many years after that till she really did. | 0:51:24 | 0:51:27 | |
The day she left high school, Dolly moved to Nashville for good. | 0:51:27 | 0:51:32 | |
The very next year, she had a number one hit. | 0:51:32 | 0:51:35 | |
# Don't try to cry... | 0:51:35 | 0:51:38 | |
# Your way out of this | 0:51:38 | 0:51:41 | |
# Don't try to lie... # | 0:51:41 | 0:51:43 | |
When we did Dumb Blonde, Dolly was fresh from the mountains. | 0:51:43 | 0:51:48 | |
She was obviously very bright. | 0:51:48 | 0:51:51 | |
It's proven she's certainly not a dumb blonde. | 0:51:51 | 0:51:54 | |
# Because I'm blonde, don't think I'm dumb | 0:51:54 | 0:51:57 | |
# Cos this dumb blonde ain't no-o-body's fool. # | 0:51:57 | 0:52:01 | |
She's still got the same squeal as she had in high school. | 0:52:01 | 0:52:04 | |
Ha, ha, ha! That's enough of that! | 0:52:04 | 0:52:06 | |
And she was still feisty just like she is now. | 0:52:06 | 0:52:10 | |
# When you left, you thought I'd sit and you thought I'd wait | 0:52:10 | 0:52:13 | |
# And you thought I'd cry You called me a dumb blonde... # | 0:52:13 | 0:52:18 | |
Now I wanna call out a little gal... | 0:52:18 | 0:52:20 | |
In 1967, country star Porter Wagoner spotted her. | 0:52:20 | 0:52:23 | |
I haven't called you out yet. Wait a minute there. | 0:52:23 | 0:52:26 | |
For the next seven years, she was his partner on his TV show. | 0:52:26 | 0:52:30 | |
# It's my time to cry, yeah | 0:52:30 | 0:52:33 | |
# It's my time to cry, oh | 0:52:33 | 0:52:35 | |
# It's my turn to cry, mmm | 0:52:35 | 0:52:38 | |
# It's my time... # | 0:52:38 | 0:52:41 | |
This was the most fruitful time for her own writing. | 0:52:41 | 0:52:45 | |
The songs just poured out of her. | 0:52:45 | 0:52:48 | |
# I go wanderin' once again | 0:52:48 | 0:52:53 | |
# Back to the seasons of my youth | 0:52:53 | 0:52:59 | |
# I recall a box of rags that someone gave us... # | 0:52:59 | 0:53:03 | |
I think Dolly's best material | 0:53:03 | 0:53:05 | |
is the stuff that she really wrote from the heart, | 0:53:05 | 0:53:09 | |
back in the early '70s. | 0:53:09 | 0:53:10 | |
# There were rags of many colours... # | 0:53:10 | 0:53:13 | |
Songs that are to me her richest poetry. | 0:53:13 | 0:53:17 | |
She had no collaboration with other people | 0:53:17 | 0:53:20 | |
to write all these great songs. | 0:53:20 | 0:53:22 | |
# Mama sewed the rags together | 0:53:22 | 0:53:25 | |
# Sewing every piece with love | 0:53:25 | 0:53:27 | |
# She made my coat of many colours... # | 0:53:27 | 0:53:30 | |
Coat Of Many Colours is my favourite of anything that she's ever done. | 0:53:30 | 0:53:36 | |
# In my coat of many colours Well, I hurried off to school | 0:53:36 | 0:53:41 | |
# Just to find the others laughing and making fun of me | 0:53:41 | 0:53:48 | |
# And my coat of many colours that Mama made for me... # | 0:53:48 | 0:53:52 | |
It really appealed to me - | 0:53:52 | 0:53:53 | |
your parents didn't have enough money to buy you new clothes | 0:53:53 | 0:53:57 | |
so they patched up the ones that you had, | 0:53:57 | 0:53:59 | |
and the other kids at school all laughing and stuff. | 0:53:59 | 0:54:02 | |
Well, my early life was a bit like that - a bit patched up. | 0:54:02 | 0:54:06 | |
No, I couldn't understand, | 0:54:06 | 0:54:09 | |
cos I felt I was rich... | 0:54:09 | 0:54:12 | |
Dolly can be funny and at the same time, | 0:54:12 | 0:54:16 | |
she can write Coat of Many Colours | 0:54:16 | 0:54:19 | |
and you realise that she's as deep as John Lennon ever tried to be. | 0:54:19 | 0:54:25 | |
But she's much prettier than he is, that's for sure. | 0:54:26 | 0:54:31 | |
The thing I like about Dolly, | 0:54:31 | 0:54:32 | |
is that her songs do have a story and a background. | 0:54:32 | 0:54:35 | |
They're from a kind of real place, as opposed to just rhyming. | 0:54:35 | 0:54:40 | |
# Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jo-lene | 0:54:40 | 0:54:46 | |
# I'm begging of you, please don't take my man... # | 0:54:46 | 0:54:52 | |
They're such real songs, such honest songs. | 0:54:52 | 0:54:57 | |
I think that I'd like to hear some more of those, | 0:54:57 | 0:54:59 | |
because I think we've gotten away from that in Nashville. | 0:54:59 | 0:55:03 | |
That's what made us different from the whole world. | 0:55:03 | 0:55:06 | |
# ..New Orleans | 0:55:06 | 0:55:09 | |
# So far from my Blue Ridge mountain home... # | 0:55:09 | 0:55:14 | |
From the very start, | 0:55:14 | 0:55:16 | |
Dolly looked back to the childhood home she'd left behind. | 0:55:16 | 0:55:19 | |
# There was a boy who loved me dearly | 0:55:19 | 0:55:24 | |
# But I broke his heart... | 0:55:24 | 0:55:26 | |
She made country into a myth and then she left IT behind too. | 0:55:26 | 0:55:30 | |
# ..my Blue Ridge mountain boy. # | 0:55:30 | 0:55:37 | |
# Tumble out of bed and I stumble to the kitchen | 0:55:37 | 0:55:39 | |
# Pour myself a cup of ambition... # | 0:55:39 | 0:55:41 | |
With great difficulty, Dolly got away from the Porter Wagoner show. | 0:55:41 | 0:55:45 | |
Her music went pop and she headed for Hollywood. | 0:55:45 | 0:55:49 | |
Dolly always had the ability to plan ahead while she's charming you. | 0:55:49 | 0:55:56 | |
# Working nine to five What a way to make a living... # | 0:55:56 | 0:55:59 | |
Country music followed Dolly into the mainstream...at a price. | 0:55:59 | 0:56:04 | |
The reign of the country queens was coming to an end. | 0:56:04 | 0:56:07 | |
Dolly's business career took off. | 0:56:07 | 0:56:09 | |
She became a myth in her own right. | 0:56:09 | 0:56:12 | |
# Drives you crazy and you let it... # | 0:56:12 | 0:56:14 | |
She said, "They don't call it show art, they call it show business. | 0:56:14 | 0:56:18 | |
"Let's treat it like a business." | 0:56:18 | 0:56:20 | |
Dolly has had more top ten hit records than any other woman in country music by far. | 0:56:20 | 0:56:25 | |
And has become bigger than country music, bigger than Nashville. | 0:56:25 | 0:56:29 | |
# It's a rich man's game | 0:56:29 | 0:56:31 | |
# No matter what they call it... # | 0:56:31 | 0:56:32 | |
Dolly has her very own theme park - Dollywood. | 0:56:32 | 0:56:36 | |
My daughter's more interested in going to Dollywood than she is of Disneyland. | 0:56:36 | 0:56:40 | |
"Can we meet her?" | 0:56:40 | 0:56:42 | |
She's a Dolly Parton obsessive fan. | 0:56:42 | 0:56:45 | |
She keeps asking me, "What does she look like? Tell me again." | 0:56:45 | 0:56:48 | |
And we go through... "Big blonde hair, enormous breasts." | 0:56:48 | 0:56:54 | |
# In the sweet by and by, | 0:56:54 | 0:57:00 | |
# We shall meet on that beautiful shore... # | 0:57:00 | 0:57:06 | |
Having conquered the world, Dolly has returned to her musical roots. | 0:57:06 | 0:57:10 | |
# In the sweet by and by | 0:57:10 | 0:57:13 | |
# We shall meet... # | 0:57:13 | 0:57:15 | |
The bluegrass albums are just outstanding. | 0:57:15 | 0:57:18 | |
Little Sparrow and stuff, those are... | 0:57:18 | 0:57:21 | |
Oh, my God! | 0:57:21 | 0:57:24 | |
# ..beautiful shore... # | 0:57:24 | 0:57:25 | |
I asked her once, "How do you get all your songs ready for an album?" | 0:57:29 | 0:57:33 | |
She said, "I go to a house I've got in Kentucky | 0:57:33 | 0:57:36 | |
"and it's a wooden house, it's not great." | 0:57:36 | 0:57:39 | |
And she fasts... | 0:57:39 | 0:57:41 | |
for a week or so, and then she writes. | 0:57:41 | 0:57:45 | |
That seems to do the trick for her. | 0:57:45 | 0:57:47 | |
She seems to get back to where she belongs that way. | 0:57:47 | 0:57:50 | |
Which is a peculiar way to do it, | 0:57:50 | 0:57:52 | |
but I always knew she was a lot more complicated than she lets you think she is. | 0:57:52 | 0:57:58 | |
The golden age for the country queens is over. | 0:58:03 | 0:58:07 | |
The decades when what they did and said changed the world, | 0:58:07 | 0:58:10 | |
when they were adventurers on the road to independence - are no more. | 0:58:10 | 0:58:14 | |
But unlike most pop stars, | 0:58:14 | 0:58:16 | |
queens of country have long careers and loyal audiences. | 0:58:16 | 0:58:20 | |
Those who died too young still sell millions, | 0:58:20 | 0:58:23 | |
and the queens who survived still sing. | 0:58:23 | 0:58:26 | |
# Love is in the water Love is in the air | 0:58:26 | 0:58:29 | |
# Show me where to go And tell me will love be there? | 0:58:29 | 0:58:33 | |
# Will love be there? | 0:58:33 | 0:58:37 | |
# Teach me how to speak Teach me how to share | 0:58:38 | 0:58:41 | |
# Teach me where to go And tell me will love be there? | 0:58:41 | 0:58:45 | |
# Will love be there? | 0:58:45 | 0:58:48 | |
# Oh, heaven, let your light shine down... # | 0:58:55 | 0:58:59 | |
E-mail us at [email protected] | 0:58:59 | 0:59:01 |