Cécile McLorin Salvant's latest album is her most daring yet

TERRY GROSS, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. No matter what their taste is in music, people love Dolly Parton. Musicians and singers from all different genres have covered songs she wrote or made famous, from jazz saxophonist Sonny Rollins to Beyonce. And while politics divide our country, loving her is something that unites us. She died yesterday at the age of 80. Today, as we mourn her death, we're going to feature the interview I recorded with her in 2001. She's been on my mind for the past couple of weeks, ever since I heard one of her songs on the radio that I hadn't heard before. She didn't write it, but her voice is so gorgeous on it I had to play it again when I got home and have played it several times since. It's called "Old Flames Can't Hold A Candle To You." In 1980, it became one of her many No. 1 hits. Here it is.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "OLD FLAMES (CAN'T HOLD A CANDLE TO YOU)")

DOLLY PARTON: (Singing) Downtown tonight, I saw an old friend, someone who I used to take comfort from long before I met you. I caught a spark from his eyes of forgotten desire. With a word or a touch, I could have rekindled that fire. But old flames can't hold a candle to you. No one can light up the night like you do. Flickering embers of love, I've known one or two, but old flames can't hold a candle to you.

GROSS: Dolly Parton was a singer, songwriter, actress, entrepreneur and philanthropist. She was successful enough and had a big enough personality to start her own theme park, Dollywood. She became a singer on country music star Porter Wagoner's TV show in 1967. She went on to have a solo career with many hits, including "Jolene," which Beyonce recorded on her country music album "Cowboy Carter," "9 To 5" and "I Will Always Love You," which was later a huge hit for Whitney Houston.

When I spoke with Dolly Parton in 2001, her recording career had recently returned to the music she grew up with. Her 1999 recording "The Grass Is Blue" won the International Bluegrass Music Association's album of the year award. We spoke after the release of her follow-up album "Little Sparrow" that featured traditional mountain music as well as her original songs in that vein. We started with the title track, which she wrote.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LITTLE SPARROW")

PARTON: (Singing) Little sparrow, little sparrow, precious, fragile little thing. Little sparrow, little sparrow, flies so high and feels no pain. All ye maidens, heed my warning, never trust the hearts of men. They will crush you like a sparrow, leaving you to never mend. They will vow to always love you, swear no love but yours will do. Then they'll leave you for another, break your little heart in two. Little sparrow, little sparrow, precious, fragile little thing. Little sparrow, little sparrow, flies so high and feels no pain.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)

GROSS: That's Dolly Parton with the title track from her new CD "Little Sparrow." Dolly Parton, welcome to FRESH AIR.

PARTON: Well, thank you. Ain't you glad we started out with something upbeat (laughter) like a broken heart?

(LAUGHTER)

GROSS: No...

PARTON: But anyway, I thought that would be a good one to start with, since it is the name of the album that I'm out trying to promote 'cause I need the money, 'cause you know it costs a lot to make me look this cheap. Ha-ha.

(LAUGHTER)

PARTON: But anyway, thanks for having me on, too. I'm looking forward to spending the - spending some time with you.

GROSS: This new CD and your previous CD, "The Grass Is Blue," they're both traditional music. And I'm interested in why you're heading in that direction now, you know, as opposed to a more almost, like, show business version of country music.

PARTON: Well, I have always loved this kind of music. I really think this style of music is more suited to my voice. This is the kind of music that I used to sing all my days growing up back in the Smoky Mountains. And this music is really so now. People are really into the simplicity of it. And so just for fun, for myself, there was a poll in the bluegrass community of what person they'd like to hear most do a bluegrass album that hadn't done one, and they said me. So I won, you know, hands down with that. So I said to Steve Buckingham when we did "The Grass Is Blue" - the album just before this one - I said, well, let's just do a bluegrass album. And lo and behold, we won the bluegrass album of the year with that.

So we thought, well, we need to do something along the same lines, but I didn't want to just do a full-blown bluegrass album and try to just do exactly what we did with the other. So we wanted to expand it, so we did a little more mountain music. We added a little bit of flavors of some Irish sounds also. So I call this blue mountain music. It's like bluegrass and mountain music. So that kind of seems to sum up what the style is, I think.

GROSS: Now, you were born in 1946, in a one-room cabin in the Smoky Mountains of East Tennessee. What was the music you heard as a child?

PARTON: Well, a lot of the stuff that we heard was that old porch-picking music - old songs brought back from England and Ireland, that old Appalachian music and a lot of the stuff that people up in the mountains wrote. So my mother was - and all my mama's people used to always play and sing. Mama used to sing a lot. So we would sing, like, a lot of the old gospel songs. A lot of old gospel songs were written to sound old, like I say, by a lot of my own people.

GROSS: Who was most musical in your family?

PARTON: All of us. My mother was very musical. And my Grandpa Jake, I think - who was a preacher, a Pentecostal preacher that I wrote a song about many years ago called "Daddy Was An Old Time Preacher Man" - I think he was - he was a music teacher of sorts back there in the hills. I have - there's 12 of us kids - six girls and six boys - and we all sing and write and play. It's just that I think I've taken it farther. I don't know that I'm near as good as some of the others, but I've been more willing to sacrifice and work a little harder than some of the others might have been willing to - you know, to do, just 'cause they wanted to have a family and do other things. But there's a lot of talent in this family.

GROSS: Do you remember the first songs that really meant something to you?

PARTON: Yeah. The songs that I used to hear my folks sing back home and stuff Mama used to sing about. She used to tell stories from the Bible and sing a lot of those old-timey songs. But the stuff I used to hear was at church. One of my favorite songs of all time is "If We Never Meet Again (This Side of Heaven)," and my dad passed away a few weeks ago, and he always loved that song. And, of course, I was way too emotional...

GROSS: I'm very sorry.

PARTON: Thank you very much. But I was too emotional to sing at Daddy's funeral, so, like, later, I went up to the grave and just sung it for myself and for Daddy. So anyway, those are the kind of songs that I always loved. And I recorded "If We Never Meet Again" on a album once from Dollywood - a live album. That album was called "Heartsongs," and they are heart songs. So I grew up just loving all those old folk songs of tragedy, you know, like the two little orphans and all that sort of stuff. And someday I hope, and possibly even for my next album, to do an album of a lot of those old mountain, true folk songs.

GROSS: When did you start writing songs and realizing that you had an ear for that as well as for singing?

PARTON: Well, I started singing on radio and television when I was 10. years old. But I started playing guitar and writing serious songs when I was about 7. And my mother was always fascinated with the fact that I could rhyme so much stuff. So she used to keep stuff that I didn't remember I had written. And she has stuff in a trunk. And many years ago, she said, here's some stuff you might want to look at. This is stuff you used to write before you could write - before you could write it down. And she used to write it down. So actually, I've been doing it all my life, seriously and professionally since I was 10.

GROSS: Do you remember any of the songs you wrote as a girl?

PARTON: Oh, I used to write songs about cob dolls. I had this little cob doll - the first song I remember writing. Her name was Tasseltop. It was a little doll that Mama - Daddy had burned poker-hole eyes in to make eyes. And Mama had put the corn-silk hair back on her and made a little dress for her, and her name was Tasseltop. And I did - I think I was 5 or 6. You know, somewhere in there. Seven. And it was like...

(Singing) Little tiny Tasseltop. I love you an awful lot. Hope you never go away. I want you to stay.

And so on, and so on.

GROSS: (Laughter).

PARTON: So I just wrote all about her dress and all about her hair.

GROSS: (Laughter).

PARTON: So yeah. I just wrote about everything that - you know, that come to mind.

GROSS: Now, were you writing about tragic love and heartbreak by the time you were 10?

PARTON: Yes, I was, as a matter of fact. I wrote a song. I can't remember exactly how it goes, but it was about a boy getting killed in the war 'cause we used to hear all those stories back home. And if they weren't singing those sad-ass songs, they were telling stories about it, you know? And it's, like - and you - and that makes an impression on a little child. So we thought we - you know, I thought that you needed to write some, really, songs of tragedy. I thought you had to do that in order to be a mountain singer.

GROSS: And I wonder how it sounded with you as a girl singing these tragic songs.

PARTON: About the same as it does now. My voice ain't changed a lot.

GROSS: (Laughter).

PARTON: Sometimes people say my voice sounds like a little girl singing all these Lord-awful songs. It's like this, like, "Little Sparrow" and the "Silver Dagger" from the other one, and, you know, "Tender Lie" from this one. It's, like, I love to sing all those sad songs.

GROSS: Well, you know, rare is the singer who can sing as much as you have and not have it roughen their voice.

PARTON: Well, my voice is of a high pitch. So I guess I don't, you know, think my voice will ever deepen or lower itself in any way. But it's - you know, it's one of those voices I hope that'll last a long time 'cause I hope to be singing even when I'm old. Hope to sit out on my own porch and sing those old folk songs and maybe put them down on tapes and sell them.

But anyhow, I just love - and a lot of the songs I write, like, for instance, on "My Blue Tears," a song that's on this album that I wrote many years ago - and we can play that if you want to after this. But I wrote this song. And it really uses a lot of the old English style, like, fly ye away from my window. Fly ye as far. It's, like, the yes and the yeas. It sounds old-timey. So I had recorded this song numerous times. But some of my songs I like so well, I think, well, they just seem to fit here and fit there. So it kind of lended itself to that Irish feel. So I - it's one of my favorites. Do you want to play that one?

GROSS: Absolutely. But before we do, tell us when you wrote it and where you were in your performing career at the time?

PARTON: Well, I wrote it about - oh, 25, 30 years ago, I guess. And I was sitting on a couch in a place where I lived over in Antioch, Tennessee, in one of the first houses that I had after I'd moved to Nashville and had gotten married. And I just remember wanting to write something old-timey 'cause I was probably homesick or thinking about the old days. And I just started, you know, just singing it. And I was at that time already a probably pretty big name with "The Porter Wagoner Show." And that's where I had started. So I was trying to write songs that would make good records. And when I first did this one, it was more up-tempo. But on this version of it, I slowed it down.

GROSS: Well, let's hear "My Blue Tears," written by Dolly Parton, as featured on her new CD, "Little Sparrow."

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "MY BLUE TEARS")

PARTON: (Singing) Fly ye away from my window, little bluebird. Fly ye as far as you can away from here. And let not your song fall upon my ear. Go spread your blue wings, and I'll shed my blue tears. For the one that I have loved...

GROSS: We're listening to the interview I recorded with Dolly Parton in 2001. We'll hear more of it after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF DOLLY PARTON SONG, "I DON'T BELIEVE YOU'VE MET MY BABY")

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. We're remembering Dolly Parton, who died yesterday at the age of 80. Let's get back to the interview we recorded in 2001.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)

GROSS: Dolly Parton, in your autobiography, you said that when you were young, you read everything you could get your hands on - the Bible, the Farmers' Almanac, fairy tales, the funeral home directory. Is that about all there was in the way of books?

PARTON: No. Well, there were books at school. But there were so many of us kids, we didn't dare take school books home because the kids'd just chew them up or pee on them or tear the...

GROSS: (Laughter).

PARTON: ...Pages out of them. So they'd always tell us not to bring books home 'cause Daddy'd have to pay for them. But I used to read everything I could get my hands on at school, and fairy tales I love. So I would - you know, anytime there was a break at school, and I could get my hands on a book, you know, on the desk or something, I would read that. I still love books. I'll - I read everything. I read all the - whatever the hip books are on the bestseller list. I try to read that. People give me gifts 'cause I'd rather read when I travel on the bus and when I fly. I'd rather read than to watch television when I'm home. So I just enjoy that.

GROSS: There were 12 kids in your family. Looking at your mother and the life that she was leading and the other women in the family, what did you think the life of an adult woman was going to be for you?

PARTON: Well, I knew it wasn't going to be that. I knew that I had to go. It wasn't that I wasn't proud of who I was and where I was from, but I had a dream. I just couldn't imagine myself - I was babysitting from the time - I have a sister and two brothers older. And there's eight children younger than me, so I had a house full of kids. 'Cause Mom was sick a lot - she had one on her and one in her for as long as I remember. So those of us that, you know, were home - we had to kind of - to do the chores.

So I had kids. I had a house full of kids, and I just knew that I wanted to do something with my music. And I knew that I was going to leave when I was 18 years old. And I graduated from high school on a Friday night, and I left for Nashville the next Saturday morning. I was ready to go.

And then I met my husband the first day I got there. We've been married for 34 years and been together 36 years. I met him 36 years ago. And unfortunately, we never were able to have children of our own, but that's OK too because after I moved to Nashville, I brought five of my younger brothers and sisters to Nashville that lived with me. We sent them to school. Now they have kids, and those kids call me Aunt Granny and my husband Uncle Peepaw, so we're really like grandparents to them. So I've still been saddled with a bunch of kids with no kids of my own (laughter).

GROSS: Now, you've said that your grandfather was a preacher. Your mother was devout. What was church like when you were young?

PARTON: Oh. Well, we were one of those shouting, healing, Holy Roller churches, you know? And it was high-powered, which was great. I really learned to sing in church, I think, really with the emotion. And we were free - you know, it was a free-spirited church. And if you'd wrote a song - a gospel song, of course - you could get up and sing it and play your guitar and whatever.

So it was really - there was a lot of that hellfire, brimstone and scaring you to death if you go out unprepared, which, you know, is true. But I used to think, well, there's got to be more to that. They had me so scared of God I was afraid to talk to him. I was afraid he'd talk back, and I was afraid he'd punish me somehow, you know, with stuff. And I really, through the years, found my own place with God.

GROSS: Now, when you were young and singing in church, did you sing about God in church and then sing about sinning at home?

PARTON: Well, I used to sin at church and sin at home. And I'd talk about it with (laughter) - and I used to always sit in church looking out the windows at the boys, wondering if I could, like, make an excuse to go out and, you know, go to the bathroom 'cause all of the outdoor toilets. But anyhow, I was only going out to see the boys. But anyhow, I had a deep faith in God. And - but I also, you know, was a - was high-spirited and fun-loving. And I, of course, was led to believe that everything you did, you know, was a sin, but I don't believe that now. I think it's a sin if you believe it to be, and if it hurts somebody else, it's a sin.

But I'm very deep in my faith. In fact, there's not an album that I do that I don't do something that is spiritual. In fact, a song I used to sing in church years ago that we did up-tempo - one of the songs we sang every time we went to church - was a song called "In The Sweet By And By."

GROSS: That's on your...

PARTON: And that's...

GROSS: ...New CD too.

PARTON: Yes. It is, and that's what I was going to say. And I - when I - I wanted to do one of those gospel songs on this album, so I slowed this down. And it lended itself real nice to some more of that Irish feel. So at some point, if you want to play that one, I think that would be a good choice.

GROSS: Well, why don't we play that now?

PARTON: OK. Let's do it.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "IN THE SWEET BY AND BY")

PARTON: (Singing) There's a land that is fairer than day, and by faith we can see it afar. For the Father waits over the way to prepare us a dwelling place there. In the sweet by-and-by, we shall meet on that beautiful shore. In the sweet by-and-by, we shall meet on that beautiful shore. We shall sing on that beautiful...

GROSS: That's "In The Sweet By And By" from Dolly Parton's new CD, "Little Sparrow."

Now, when you were young, you sang on the radio, and then you sang on TV. And it was before your family even owned a TV.

PARTON: (Laughter).

GROSS: Did it make it any more or less momentous to be on TV, knowing that your family - and probably a lot of the other people you knew as well - didn't even own one to watch you on?

PARTON: Well, I don't think a lot of that registered on me at that time. I - my purpose was to go sing. I - you know, I was singing on the radio. To me, it was the same as singing on the radio. I didn't even know really what all it meant about singing on television. I just knew it was another place to go sing. They had microphones, and it was a show, so I was going to do the show.

And so I don't think I thought about whether or not - that somebody couldn't watch me. But after I did start being, like, a regular and bought our TV, I wanted my folks to watch it. But - I bought the TV, but it didn't last long in the house because nobody around our area had a television. So everybody would come down and sit in our floor and sit on our couch, watch "Gunsmoke" and "Wagon Train" and "Woody Woodpecker"...

GROSS: (Laughter).

PARTON: ...And all the shows that were on. And Daddy couldn't get them out of the house to get ready to go to work, so he said, this damn television's out of here. So that didn't last long. So it didn't matter if I was on television or not. You know, it's, like, me and Woody Woodpecker had to go (laughter).

GROSS: That's funny.

We're listening to the interview I recorded with Dolly Parton in January of 2001. She died yesterday at the age of 80. We'll hear more of the interview after a break. I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "9 to 5")

PARTON: (Singing) Working 9 to 5, what a way to make a living. Barely getting by, it's all taking and no giving. They just use your mind, and they never give you credit. It's enough to drive you crazy if you let it.

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. Let's get back to our remembrance of Dolly Parton. She died yesterday at the age of 80. Here's more of the interview we recorded in 2001.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)

GROSS: Your first record - it was a 45. One side was "Puppy Love," and the other side was "Girl Left Alone." How old were you when this came out?

PARTON: I was about 10 or 11, I think, when I cut that. And that came out on Goldband Records probably a - several months, a year or so after that. That was my very first record, and that was a very exciting thing for me. The first time I ever heard that played on the radio, it was on a local radio show back home. They never did do anything other than just that it was the first, but it did play locally, and I about killed myself.

I was sitting on a cabinet, sitting up on the sink cabinet with my - I was - and my aunt was cooking in the kitchen. And the radio was on, and my song came on. And I jumped off of the thing and slid slid on the floor, slid on the rug and fell, and trying to get to where I could turn the radio up. So I almost killed myself trying to get to hear my first record. Yeah. But it was fun. It was - I'll never forget the thrill of hearing myself the first time on the radio. I thought, well, I've made it now.

GROSS: Could you sing...

PARTON: 'Course, I hadn't.

GROSS: Could you sing a few bars of one of those songs - the...

PARTON: Oh.

GROSS: ...A-side...

PARTON: I could sing...

GROSS: ...Or the B-side?

PARTON: ..."Puppy Love." Yeah.

(Singing) Puppy love, puppy love. They all call it puppy love. I'm old enough now to kiss and hug, and I like it. It's puppy love.

It's - well, it's got - one of those silly songs, you know?

(Singing) You pull my pigtails. You make me mad. Then you kiss me, make me glad. Sometimes you even make me sad. Still, you're the sweetest sweetheart I ever had. Oh, puppy love, puppy love.

And I was trying to get all those little bebop '50s kind of sounds in there, too. But anyhow, needless to say, it didn't it didn't sell much. But it was a start.

GROSS: Now, these were songs you co-wrote, I think, with your uncle?

PARTON: Mm-hmm. My aunt Dorothy Jo co-wrote the other side, the "Girl Left Alone." Oh, yeah. That's - when you was talking earlier about singing those sad songs, I was 10 years old singing...

(Singing) I'm a girl left alone. There's no hope for me. I'm tossed to and fro like a ship on a sea. I made my mistakes, and now I must pay.

Now, how many mistakes could I make at 10 years old?

GROSS: (Laughter).

PARTON: (Singing) Now I can see that there's no hope for me.

But anyway, it's, like, at 10 years old. So I wrote - my Uncle Bill, who was also my manager at the time that also produced that record, the A- and the B-side - we wrote "Puppy Love" together. So those were just - you know, like I say, you got to start somewhere. And then my first record after that I wrote with another uncle of mine. It was - I was 15 years old and got on a major label, which was Mercury. And I had a song called "It May Not Kill Me, But It's Sure Gonna Hurt."

(LAUGHTER)

GROSS: How did that go?

PARTON: Oh, it's that. That's about it.

(Singing) It may not kill me, but it's sure going to hurt.

And then it goes into fast tempo. And it's just about, like, losing somebody. It's, like, you're going to walk away, and I'm going to stay. And - you know, and I don't like it. And it may not kill me, but it's sure going to hurt.

GROSS: So when you were 18 and you took a bus to Nashville, left home, were you hoping to be a performer, a songwriter, both?

PARTON: Yeah. I was going to be all of that. I was going to be everything I could be, but definitely, I was going to be a songwriter and a singer. And that was what I headed out to be, was to be a star. And I vowed that I wouldn't go home until I had something to show for it, and I didn't, but I was very, very homesick. And it was a - oh, I actually got real lucky. But it was about a year before I really had enough to show for it to think I could go home.

And then I got lucky, too. I had a Top 10 record on a song called "Dumb Blonde." Like, just because I'm blonde, don't think I'm dumb 'cause this dumb blonde ain't nobody's fool. That was my first Top 10 record. And I was - I guess that was in about '66. No. It was in about '65, I guess. Somewhere in there.

So I just knew that that's what I had to do, and that was my destiny. I know now how lucky I was 'cause I know a lot of people that got there about the same time I did and had twice the talent still ain't made it. So I know how lucky I've been, and I'm grateful for it every day 'cause I love what I do.

GROSS: Now, another thing you did early on is that you sent songs to Buddy Killen, the head of Tree Publishing, which is a big country music publisher. And did you get other people to record your songs?

PARTON: Well, I wrote a song with my uncle Bill Owens, the same uncle that I was talking about. We had the song of the year, the BMI song of the year in 1966. And Bill Phillips had a song called "Put It Off Until Tomorrow. You've Hurt Me Enough Today." And a lot of people through the years have recorded that song. So yeah. So I had a - different songs recorded by different artists, that being the biggest at that time. And I did write for Tree for a while. Buddy Killen was very good to me.

And then Buddy - I mean Fred Foster, who owned Monument Records, took me over. And I started to write for Combine Music and record for Monument Records. And that's where I had "Dumb Blonde" and "Something Fishy." Had a - I had two or three Top 10 records before I started with "The Porter Wagoner Show" in 1967.

GROSS: Well, since you mentioned Porter Wagoner, let me play a recording that you made with him in 1968. And then we'll talk about that period of your life. And the song is "Just Between You And Me." Who wrote the song? Did you write this?

PARTON: No. I didn't write that. And come to think of it, I don't know who wrote that off the top of my head. That's been a few years.

GROSS: OK. So this is Dolly Parton with Porter Wagoner, recorded in 1968.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "JUST BETWEEN YOU AND ME")

PARTON: (Singing) So I feel so blue, sometimes I want to die. And so I've got a broken heart. So what?

PORTER WAGONER: (Singing) They say that time will heal all wounds in mice and men. And I know that someday I'll forget and love again.

DOLLY PARTON AND PORTER WAGONER: (Singing) Just between you and me, I've got my doubts about it. Just between you and me, you're too much too forget.

GROSS: That's Dolly Parton with Porter Wagoner.

You performed on his popular TV show for a while and, you know, made several recordings with him. How did you start working with him?

PARTON: Well, Porter had the No. 1 syndicated country television show in the country at that time. He had a girl on there for many years named Norma Jean, who had become a very big country star in her own right. And she got married - was getting married and moving back to Oklahoma City - and left the show.

And that left a spot, so Porter was looking for a girl singer. And I'd had - people had been talking about me in town - you know, the new girl in town and that I had "Something Fishy," "Dumb Blonde" and a couple of other songs. And so Porter had just - had got wind of that, and he just called me down to his office for an interview. And so I sat down with my guitar and started singing songs that I'd written. And he was very impressed, and I got the job. And that's how that happened. Then we started doing duets together, which - we were very successful. I was with the show for seven years.

GROSS: What did you learn about performing doing a weekly TV show?

PARTON: Well, you have to learn a lot of things - not just the weekly TV show, but we also went out on the road together, did stage shows. I learned a lot from Porter, watching professional people work like that as far as how to talk to an audience and how to be comfortable in front of a camera. And it's - and I had done TV back home when I was a kid. I had grown up singing on radio and TV back in Knoxville, Tennessee. But you have to learn how to not do silly things 'cause the camera's on you - not pick your nose and stuff like that (laughter), or not to scratch your head or nothing - no other parts of your body. So you have to kind of just learn how to be aware that you're on because people are aware of you.

So it's amazing how you - really, I'm just like a sponge. I just gather up everything. You don't really realize what all you're learning just by watching professional people work. 'Cause a lot of the artists and stars that would come on Porter's show all the time, every week, you learn something from everybody.

GROSS: Well, I thought we could hear your original version of "I Will Always Love You," which was used again in the movie "The Bodyguard" and was a huge hit for Whitney Houston. Do you remember writing this song and what you were thinking of when you wrote it?

PARTON: Oh, absolutely, I remember that one. That one was about when I was leaving Porter Wagoner. Because I had been with him seven years. I had told him - 'cause, see, I had plans to have a solo career of my own. I hadn't planned to get caught up with another group, but Porter's show was very successful and it was the thing to do. And when I had told him I would stay, I told him I would stay for five years because I wanted to go on, but I stayed two years longer. But I kept staying and staying, and I kept wanting to go 'cause I felt like I really needed to go out on my own if I was ever really going to have a solo career, and Porter was dead against it. He wouldn't hear of it, and he had a fit. We fought a lot. There was a lot of problems going on, and no matter how I would try to talk to him to make - I could not make him understand.

And I thought, well, why don't you just write a song about him to say you appreciate him and you appreciate everything he does and that you'll always love him for everything he's done and that you'll always love him, period? So I just - out of a broken heart of not being heard or anything, knowing I had to make major decisions that would ultimately change my life forever - and his, for that matter - I wrote that song one night out of great grief and depth and just trying to say the right things to say goodbye.

GROSS: Well, why don't we hear your version - your original version - of "I Will Always Love You."

PARTON: OK.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "I WILL ALWAYS LOVE YOU")

PARTON: (Singing) If I should stay I would only be in your way. So I'll go, but I know I'll think of you each step of the way. And I will always love you. I will always love you.

GROSS: That's Dolly Parton recorded in 1974. So do you know how this song ended up being used in "The Bodyguard"?

PARTON: Well, they had told me that when Kevin Costner and Whitney Houston were doing this movie - Kevin also, I think, produced this movie and put all this stuff together - they - there was a song they had wanted to use, that they had planned to use as the theme song instead of "I Will Always Love You." And then they come to find out, like, a few weeks before, that they had - I don't know what the song was, but a few weeks before, the song they had planned to use, someone else recorded it and put it out.

So they were in desperate need of a song to say basically what "I Will Always Love You" said. And from what I understand, Kevin Costner's secretary said, did you ever hear a song that Dolly Parton - that country star, you know, the one with the big boobs and the big hair? The - (laughter) seriously, she said, Dolly Parton, that country star, she said, she had a song called "I Will Always Love You" and I think it'd be perfect. And she brought it in to him, and they said he loved it, and so they chose it.

GROSS: We're listening to the interview I recorded with Dolly Parton in 2001. We'll hear more of it after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "TRAIN, TRAIN")

PARTON: (Singing) Train...

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to the interview I recorded with Dolly Parton in January of 2001.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)

GROSS: Now, you've said that when you were young, you knew you wanted to be a big star. Why did you want to be a star?

PARTON: 'Cause I wanted to be rich. I wanted to travel. I wanted to be famous. I wanted to do stuff. I wanted to be seen, I guess. I need a lot of attention. Being brought up in a family of 12, you don't get much attention unless you're in trouble. You know (laughter), it's like - so I think it was just - I just had a very outgoing personality and I wanted to be outgoing all the time.

GROSS: Now, you've joked that if you were a man, you would have been a drag queen.

(LAUGHTER)

PARTON: I always say that it's a good thing I was a woman 'cause if I'd have been a man, I would have been a drag queen just 'cause I'm so damn gaudy. 'Cause I like all the flash and the glitter and - you know, I just love, you know, just - I love playing in my clothes. I love playing, you know, in all - in my life. It's, like, I love makeup, I love clothes, and I got the kind of personality can pull it off. And I just love, you know, what I do. I'm comfortable being myself. Even if I make other people uncomfortable with the way I look, if I'm comfortable with it, then it - you know, it's OK with me.

GROSS: How did you first start dressing in that - what's the word I'm looking for? - almost oversized...

PARTON: Gaud (laughter).

GROSS: ...Gaudy, oversized kind of way, where if your hair was big it was going to be real big? (Laughter) And, you know...

PARTON: Well, I think a lot of that came, though, from a very serious place. That's - that was a country girl's idea of what glamour was. And when I - you know, I didn't have any money to have stuff. And I have often joked about it, but it's the real truth that I patterned myself after what they considered the trash in our hometown. There was this one woman - I thought she was beautiful - and, you know, she had the peroxide hair, and she, you know, had it all piled up on her head and had red fingernails and red lipstick and, you know, wore her powder, and I just thought she was the prettiest thing I'd ever seen. And Mama said, oh, quit looking at her. She ain't nothing but trash. And I thought, ooh, that's what I want to be when I grow up - trash.

(LAUGHTER)

PARTON: So that's where kind of my look came from. And then how the glamour girls and the movie stars and all that, you know, it was really like that. But it was still, you know - I mean, I enjoy it. I still like doing it. And I've always just - it's, like, when they say less is more, that's not my motto. Mine is more is more. And the more I can get, the more I want of life and of everything.

And it's, like - but in addition to me being all that gaudy and all, I take my music and my writing very, very serious, and hopefully people know that my heart is true. And I've always believed that a part of my magic - if there was any - was the fact that I look so artificial but I am so totally real. And I think when you hear these kinds of songs, I think you know that has to come from the heart.

GROSS: We're talking about this really oversized image that you've created, but your new CD and the CD before that are really kind of scaled down. You know, they're traditional songs and bluegrass songs sung, you know, with a really good band behind you, but they're very unshowbizzy (ph). Do you almost feel like you need to change how you look on stage when you're singing these kinds of songs with the kind of band that you have behind you?

PARTON: No. No, I don't think so because I think people have come to know me as I am. And some people will never accept the fact that I'm a serious writer and a serious singer, and the ones that do accept it, they know it for a fact and they overlook the image, which I've enjoyed playing in the image. So the only change I would make - only just from a show business fashion statement - I would - I may wear some things that may be cut a little bit more country western, you know, like if I - but it'll still be beaded. It'll still have shine and glitter on it.

So it's not that - I don't think I have to wear overalls in order to sing about a farmer. I don't think I have to - you know, I don't think I have to. I think people would really be more disappointed if I dressed down 'cause they're so used to seeing me be the way that I am. I think that that would bother them more. They'd think, well, I wish she'd have worn one of them rhinestone dresses instead of that old, corny-looking thing. So if I dressed down as plain and as real as some of this music is, I'd - I would definitely look like a farmer's daughter.

GROSS: Dolly Parton, a pleasure to talk with you. Thank you so much.

PARTON: Well, thank you.

GROSS: My interview with Dolly Parton was recorded in January 2001. She died yesterday at the age of 80. She's gone, but we'll always have her music. One of her most famous songs was "Jolene." Beyoncé introduced even more people to it when she recorded it on her country music album, "Cowboy Carter." Here's Dolly Parton's 1973 recording of "Jolene."

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "JOLENE")

PARTON: (Singing) Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, I'm begging of you, please don't take my man. Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, please don't take him just because you can. Your beauty is beyond compare, with flaming locks of auburn hair, with ivory skin and eyes of emerald green. Your smile is like a breath of spring, your voice is soft like summer rain, and I cannot compete with you, Jolene. He talks about you in his sleep and there's nothing I can do...

GROSS: Coming up, jazz critic Martin Johnson reviews the new album by singer Cecile McLorin Salvant. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF RAY CHARLES' "HARD TIMES")

TERRY GROSS, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. Our jazz critic Martin Johnson says all 20th-century jazz greats have cast long shadows that their 21st-century proteges must escape, but few musicians have a harder task than vocalists. Evading the extraordinary ground set by first-name legends like Ella, Billie and Sarah and establishing a distinctive style of her own is a daunting task, yet, he says, Cecile McLorin Salvant has accomplished just that. Amid a remarkable series of recordings and live shows, she's created a unique vocal style and curatorial skills that make each new recording an event. Her latest recording, "With Every Breath I Take," is her most daring yet - a traditional recording with an orchestra and a program of ballads, yet Martin says that although rooted in the classics, Salvant always sounds in the moment.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SOPHISTICATED LADY")

CECILE MCLORIN SALVANT: (Singing) They say into your early life romance came and in this heart of yours burned a flame, a flame that flickered one day and died away.

MARTIN JOHNSON, BYLINE: Duke Ellington's "Sophisticated Lady" has been a classic for so long that it's often referred to as a warhorse. Yet when Cecile McLorin Salvant sings it, she imbues it with curiosity. She's convinced that there are new aspects in the song to redeem and highlight. Her singing is a quest to find and celebrate them.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SOPHISTICATED LADY")

MCLORIN SALVANT: (Singing) Smoking, drinking, never thinking of tomorrow. Nonchalant, diamonds shining, dancing, dining with some man in a restaurant. Is that all you really want? No.

JOHNSON: That spirit of inquiry is what makes McLorin Salvant special and without peer, even in an era of great, young jazz vocalists like Samara Joy, Veronica Swift and Somi. Cecile - yes, she's on a first-name basis with the jazz community - has amazing range and astonishing technique, but she employs them purely in the investigation of a song.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SEND IN THE CLOWNS")

MCLORIN SALVANT: (Singing) Isn't it rich? Are we a pair? Me here at last on the ground. You in mid-air.

JOHNSON: "Send In The Clowns" is already a slow number, but Cecile decelerates it to communicate all of the longing, hope and dismay in the lyrics. The emotions of a song are Cecile's focus. On previous recordings, she's made songs by Stevie Wonder and Kate Bush her own with this style. But on her new recording, she tackles 10 great American songbook standards with similar aplomb. Here's her take on the Buddy Johnson classic "Ever Since The One I Love's Been Gone."

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "EVER SINCE THE ONE I LOVE'S BEEN GONE")

MCLORIN SALVANT: (Singing) Answered the phone, but the phone didn't ring. I'm all confused about every little thing.

JOHNSON: Cecile records with the Dutch Metropole Orkest under the direction of Jules Buckley. The arrangements are by Canadian big band leader Darcy James Argue, with whom she created an oratorio called "Ogresse" that is being made into a film. One of the most remarkable aspects of the recording demonstrated there on "Ever Since The One I Love's Been Gone" is how Cecile, who often records in just duo or even solo settings, makes an orchestral recording sound intimate, as if more than a dozen musicians comfortably squeezed into your living room.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LUSH LIFE")

MCLORIN SALVANT: (Singing) I used to visit all the very gay places, those come-what-may places, where one relaxes on the axis of the wheel of life, to get the feel of life from jazz and cocktails.

JOHNSON: Cecile's spirit of inquiry and formidable technique make her music contemporary, and her talent as a storyteller makes it affecting. Billy Strayhorn's "Lush Life" has been in the canon of American songs for many decades. Yet McLorin Salvant's take feels new and fresh and makes the wistful reflections of the song much more potent. It's music with an extraordinary past and an amazing present.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LUSH LIFE")

MCLORIN SALVANT: (Singing) Life is lonely again. And only last year everything seemed so sure. Now life is awful again, a troughful of hearts could only be a bore.

GROSS: Martin Johnson writes for The Wall Street Journal and DownBeat. He reviewed "With Every Breath I Take" by Cecile McLorin Salvant.

Tomorrow on FRESH AIR we'll feature Tonya's interview with Riz Ahmed. He's nominated for an Emmy for his performance in the Prime Video series "Bait." He plays a British Pakistani actor auditioning to be the next James Bond. Ahmed is also a writer and creator of the series. He starred in a film adaptation of Shakespeare's "Hamlet," and he'll explain why he believes the most famous speech in the English language has been misunderstood for centuries. I hope you'll join us.

To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram - @nprfreshair.

FRESH AIR's executive producer is Sam Briger. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our engineer today is Adam Staniszewski. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Ann Marie Baldonado, Lauren Krenzel, Therese Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Nyakundi, Anna Bauman and Nico Gonzalez-Wisler. Our digital media producer is Molly Seavy-Nesper. Roberta Shorrock directs the show. Our cohost is Tonya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONNY ROLLINS' "HERE YOU COME AGAIN")

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