download the PDF version - Ultra High Fidelity Magazine

Software
Dolly Parton on her 1987 album, Rainbow
Queen of Country
The original Queen, never dethroned, is
Loretta Lynn. But then came Dolly, to claim
her own crown.
A
derivation of Western music —
an original and totally American
style whose rhythms suggested
horseback travel and whose lyrics
evoked campfires under the stars — country
music became popular in the 50’s and has
never ceased to grow. It has moved from the
prairie to the clubs and concert halls, and
the horse has given way to the pickup truck,
and to the luxurious buses that ferry country
stars, their crews and instruments. Far from
the lights of the cities, those campfire evenings
have lost none of their appeal. You have to
attend a country music festival to understand
it. Such colorful spectacles bring together for
a few days singers, musicians and fans, in
a celebration of music, friendship and joy
of living.
Dolly Parton
One of the most delicious voices
capable of carrying a country lyric from
the page to our hearts, fresh as a mountain
stream, with a hint of lightness that
reveals its overflowing tenderness…such
is the voice of Dolly Rebecca Parton.
It was in 1946, in a valley at the
foot of Tennessee’s Smoky Mountains,
that was born the fourth of eventually
12 children. Irish and Scottish by her
father, she was one-eighth Cherokee on
her mother’s side.
It’s easy to imagine that her childhood
was not one of ease, yet she received
life’s greatest treasure, love. Her father
knew hard work, and her extraordinarily
devoted mother used her ingenuity to
moderate her children’s feelings of poverty.
Of course all that devotion couldn’t
save her from exhaustion when she had
by Reine Lessard
a child in her womb and another in her
arms, busy with housework, cooking and
sewing. When she fell seriously ill, as
happened several times, the father was
off at his job and the children were left
to themselves.
The Partons have the essentials of
life, but certainly not all of the modern
comforts. No electricity, no radio other
than one whose battery is perpetually
dead, without TV of course, without
books other than school texts, with a
single toilet for all. Bathing means going
down to the river, at least in summer.
In winter life is more difficult, though
somehow they all manage to keep clean.
Mother Parton makes the soap. The
children must trek long miles through
all kinds of weather to attend the oneroom
country school with one teacher
for some 20 pupils.
It is only by hearsay that they learn of
the century’s conflicts and catastrophes,
and in the same fashion they learn of the
existence of such important persons as
film stars. Mountain life in Tennessee at
the time little favors personal development.
Dolly is the only one of her family,
and perhaps of her village, to finish high
school. It’s not that she likes school, as
she will later admit, but that her intuition
tells her she will need certain basic
ULTRA HIGH FIDELITY Magazine 57