Dolly Parton, 78, On Her Emotional New Album: 'I Just Started to Cry'

'Smoky Mountain DNA' features Parton singing with her family members (living and dead)

Edna Gundersen,

AARP

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Published November 15, 2024

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Dolly Parton fans know how she honed her musical chops in a Tennessee cabin with 11 siblings. But the source of her talent stretches way back — to the 1600s in the British Isles. That story unfolds on the new album Dolly Parton & Family: Smoky Mountain DNA – Family, Faith & Fables (released Nov. 15). It’s part family reunion, part music history lesson, as Parton gathers relatives across five generations to celebrate the traditions that shaped her. Produced by Parton’s first cousin and bandmate Richie Owens, 64, Smoky Mountain DNA finds Dolly performing with aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces — and relatives long gone, thanks to technology that fused her voice to enhanced vintage audio.

Parton, 78, sings the 1870 tune “Rosewood Casket” with her mother Avie Lee, who died at 80 in 2003, and contemporary tunes like bluesy stomper “Not Bad,” with her cousin Shelley Rená. On the spoken-word opening track, she tells about her banjo-player grandfather Jake Owens. “He played in front of the old windup telephone with neighbors on the party line to listen," Parton says. "He was an early pioneer of music streaming, don’t you think?” The ambitious project also encompasses 19 recorded performances by Parton and her extended family at Knoxville’s storied Bijou Theatre and a four-part docuseries that will stream in 2025.

She's stopped touring (but may do an occasional performance), and she's busy. Since August, she's released her Dolly Beauty cosmetics line, published the children's book Billy the Kid Comes Home for Christmas and the best-selling cookbook Good Lookin' Cookin', and talked with Jennifer Aniston, 55, about a potential remake of her 1980 film 9 to 5. Her Tennessee theme park Dollywood celebrates its 40th anniversary in 2025, and the concert series Dolly Parton’s Threads: My Songs in Symphony, with her telling stories on video and 11 city orchestras performing her tunes, opens in Nashville March 20 (where she'll do a cameo appearance). A companion book to the Smoky Mountain DNA album is in the works.

Parton and Owens told AARP about their family collaboration, lineage and the good folks of Appalachia.

What sparked Smoky Mountain DNA?

Parton: We have all these old tapes and records by family members. Richie and I got the idea to record it for posterity — for the family, and for people that love things like the old Carter Family records.

Owens: After World War II, my grandfather’s sons saw an opportunity to make money instead of just picking on the back porch or in church. They recorded everything at radio stations to document all their stuff. Dolly said, “We’re starting to lose people. We need to do this.” She’d lost two of her brothers.

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How did this experience affect you?

Parton: When I started singing in my headphones with my grandpa, my mama, my aunt Dorothy Jo, I’d just cry, because it took me back and I’d relive my childhood. There’s a whole lot to be said about precious memories and what they call "unseen angels." And it was very emotional singing updated stuff with the young ones, thinking about how all this will be carried on even after I’m gone.

What research went into drawing up the family tree?

Owens: We did a lot of work with genealogy experts in the U.K., 23andMe and ancestry.com. Getting down to dental records. My grandfather told us all these stories, and they turned out to be true.

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Tell us about the fiddle that inspired traditional instrumental “Grooms Tune,” a retooling of the song “Bonaparte’s Retreat.”

Owens: The fiddle belonged to Union soldier Henry Grooms, who was murdered with two other musicians in 1865 by Confederate raiders. Before they killed him, he played “Bonaparte’s Retreat” in a dead man’s tuning, which gives it a droning sound. Jake Owens got the fiddle in 1917, and it’s still in the family. The story is in the book and movie Cold Mountain.

What hurdles did you face making the album?

Owens: We used the process Peter Jackson did with The Beatles: Get Back, grabbing the vocal and building new music tracks around it. And it was a challenge to pick songs that would best represent each singer. There was no reason to make a 16-year-old girl who listens to Taylor Swift and Billie Eilish sound like Kitty Wells or Patsy Cline.

Parton: I made it a point to sing with everybody, because we’re not going to be around forever. It was wonderful getting to sing “When Possession Gets Too Strong” with my [late] uncle Louis and “I Just Stopped By” with my uncle Henry.

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What becomes of the material that didn’t fit on the album?

Parton: There’s so much. I’m sure there will be ways to put it out, like at Cracker Barrel and streaming. [She launched sales of her 2023 Rockstar album at Cracker Barrel stores.]

How do you keep track of a family this big?

Parton: Well, it ain’t easy! Sometimes I’d like to lose a few of them, but they always manage to find me. Somebody said, “I’m going to get you some of those genealogy kits.” I said, “Lord, I don’t need to know any more family — I got all the family I can handle.”

What will viewers learn from the Smoky Mountain DNA docuseries?

Parton: I think they will be curious about my relatives and how I’ve been influenced by that old-world music.

Why is Appalachian music so appealing?

Parton: I think there’s something that goes with families that grow up on the dirt and make their living from the dirt. It’s about the things you go through. If you live it, you feel it, you know it and sing it every day. You get a different lonesome kind of depth and emotion than if you’re just singing something you’ve heard. So many of those people live way back in mountains. They just don’t get out and aren’t influenced by the outside world. They still sit on the porch and sing the old songs. It keeps it honest and innocent.

How would you characterize Appalachian people?

Richie Owens

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Owens: They have resilience, emotion, passion and empathy. Families help each other, and people don’t give up in hard times.

Parton: They’re quality people, tenderhearted and deep. They have a rich and spiritual base. When times are so hard, you kind of have to depend on God or something bigger and better than yourself, or you’d never make it. There’s that spiritual nature in their music that makes it so sweet.

How did Appalachia shape your career, Dolly?

Parton: It made it. I grew up listening to mountain people singing all those old ballads. So much of what we all write and sing takes on that old-timey sound. That’s the music I love the most, and it naturally comes out of me. It’s in my Smoky Mountain DNA.

You recently published Good Lookin’ Cookin’ with your sister Rachel, and recorded the duet 'Have the Heart' with Post Malone. What’s next? You’re not retiring, right?

Parton: Right. I’m in the middle of working on my life story as a Broadway musical [Hello, I'm Dolly]. We're hoping that’s going to open in the spring of 2026, and we’re hoping to premiere it in Nashville in the fall of 2025.

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