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