Radiolab - Dolly Parton's America: Neon Moss

Today on Radiolab, we're bringing you the fourth episode of Jad's special series, Dolly Parton's America. In this episode, Jad goes back up the mountain to visit Dolly’s actual Tennessee mountain home, where she tells stories about her first trips out of the holler. Back on the mountaintop, standing under the rain by the Little Pigeon River, the trip triggers memories of Jad’s first visit to his father's childhood home, and opens the gateway to dizzying stories of music and migration. Support Radiolab today at Radiolab.org/donate.

Duration: 48m
Broadcast on: 07 Nov 2019
Audio Format: other

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WNYC Studios is supported by ODU. When you buy business software from lots of vendors, the costs add up and it gets complicated and confusing. ODU solves this. It's a single company that sells a suite of enterprise apps that handles everything from accounting to inventory to sales. ODU is all connected on a single platform in a simple and affordable way. You can save money without missing out on the features you need. Check out ODU at ODOO.com. That's ODOO.com. Wait, you're listening to Radio Lab from WNYC. I'm Jad, this is Radio Lab. So we've been on a bit of a trill lately over here. Me with my series about Dolly Parton and also at Radio Lab looking at different kinds of music. You know, sort of examining different genres of music and asking where do they come from? Where do they go? Who do they speak to and why? All of these sorts of questions. And today, I want to play you one more of the stories from the Dolly series because I think it speaks to this same set of questions and maybe even completes the thought. And by the way, if you haven't heard the series yet, go to DollyPartonsAmerica.org, if you like. I would certainly love it if you do. You can check it out also on Apple Podcasts. There are four episodes up there. So let me just give you a little bit of context on what you're about to hear in the last episode of the series. This would be episode three, the one before, the one you're about to hear. We zeroed in on one of Dolly's real southern anthems. It's called my Tennessee Mountain Home. I was very surprised to learn that this Tennessee-specific song speaks to so many different kinds of people, very different backgrounds and places. In episode three, we went to Dollywood to see a replica of Dolly's Tennessee Mountain Home. She has a replica of the little cabin where she grew up there at the theme park. And at the end of the episode, we were suddenly, very unexpectedly, given the chance to see her actual Tennessee Mountain Home. I want to play this episode for you on Radio Lab because, you know, it continues with the thread of thoughts that we've been playing with here, but also that visit to Dolly's home really unlocked a very personal narrative for me. So without further ado, here we go. Do you remember the first time you left home or left? Well, the first trip I ever made about my music and the first trip I ever made. I was young, I lived in 12, 11, was to go to Lake Charles, Louisiana from Knoxville. You know, it was a long trip. They put us on a bus. Do you remember how that felt to be on that bus? Yeah, it felt, well, I like the wheels. I remember loving the motion. So there was the studio there. And so Uncle Bill thought I should come down there and make a wreck. And I saw Spanish moths for the first time. I thought it was the strangest, most wonderful, mysterious thing I'd ever seen because it was so different, you know, that swamp and the cypress trees and the drive. I just remember that first time I ever seen like the sand and the beach and the ocean.

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