Dolly Parton sings her family’s story on ‘Smoky Mountain DNA’

By MARIA SHERMAN, Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — Dolly Parton’s musical story starts further back than most might expect — to the British Isles of the 1600s. That’s where her ancestors hail from, eventually landing in the hollers of East Tennessee and its familiar mountain ranges, bringing their songs with them. A new album out Friday, “Smoky Mountain DNA: Family, Faith & Fables” credited to Dolly Parton and Family, explores the great legacy of the Partons and the Owens, her maternal family, as she performs alongside five generations of family members.

“My grandpa used to say when I got famous, he said, ‘Well, she came out crying in the key of D,’” she told The Associated Press. “I think we all did.”

“Smoky Mountain DNA” was an inevitable labor of love, one that taught Parton more about her family line.

“We’re kind of like the Carter family. We go back generations,” Parton said. (The Carters are widely considered the first family of country music.)

“I would imagine this will be my favorite album,” Parton said. “This really involves, you know, my grandmas and my grandpas, my uncles and my aunts and all the people going all the way back that had the biggest influence on my life. The ones that I remember from being little, and it even goes on farther back from there.”

Richie Owens — Parton’s cousin, who she describes as “the family historian” — produced “Smoky Mountain DNA.” He says that the family has long been archivists, but the idea to curate a record started around 2010 and 2011, delayed by a few deaths. Then, right before the pandemic, Parton approached Owens and said, “we need to get together and start trying to get all this information (and) material together,” he recalls. Because Owens had already been working on a family story, specifically tied to his grandfather’s fiddle, they teamed up for what is now “Smoky Mountain DNA.”

For some of the new songs, Owens utilized digital technology — what he compares to the AI-assist on the last new Beatles song, “Now and Then,” used to extract John Lennon’s voice from an old demo for a new composition — for “restoration work.”

“With the technology that’s been available, we were able to achieve wonderful, miraculous situations where we were able to go in and build new music tracks” from previous vocal recordings of deceased family members, he says. It was about cleaning up the crackles and noise — not about creating doctored recordings.

“I got very, very emotional many times when I was singing, especially with the ones that have already passed and just remembering their voices, hearing them,” Parton says. “It just kind of threw me in to a deep emotional place, just like I had them back again. So, the whole thing was very heart wrenching. But it was really amazing and very restoring. It had so many colors of emotions in it.”

Parton and Owens started curating the album by finding songs that she had co-written with deceased family members — or those of deceased family members that she had recorded previously. Others were hits and integral to the story of their heritage, and the songs recorded with younger members of the family — including those born in the 21st century — included more Parton co-writes, but with styles that felt true to each person.

That’s one of the many reasons the album, which is centered in country, folk, hymns and bluegrass, spans a wide swath of genres, including a kind of soulful R&B performance (like on “Not Bad” with Shelley Rená), swamp pop (“I Just Stopped By” with Parton’s late uncle Robert “John Henry” Owens), various rock genres (“Where Will We Live Tomorrow” with Rebecca Seaver and “Crazy in Love with You” with Richie Owens’ daughter Estelle).

The album revisits Parton’s own career, too: There is a delightful cover of “Puppy Love,” originally recorded when she was 13, now sang with some of the youngest members of her family.

“Some of the little ones,” she says, “remind me so much of myself when I was young and playing the guitar.”