W3 Book Club-“Dolly Parton, Songteller”, by Dolly Parton

by Teri E. Popp & Laura Chin, Tastemakers in Residence

It’s Dolly Parton’s 75th birthday this year and she’s taking the entire year to celebrate this momentous occasion!! First up, she ended last year on a super classy note by donating $1 million dollars to give a kick start to Moderna’s fundraising for their version of the Covid-19 vaccine to help end the pandemic now plaguing the world.

Then, she started this year out on a very high note by releasing her newest book, “Dolly Parton, Songteller: My Life in Lyrics.” In this lovely, lilting memoir, Dolly tells her life story using quite of few of the many songs she has written. She shares photos of songs—some written on napkins, others on notebook paper or the back of receipts—while explaining what was going on in her life at the time that particular song was written. Through her poetic written words, she brings to life the history of her beginnings with her family traveling through the south playing Gospel Hymns and Spirituals, some written just so she could perform at her Grandfather’s Church where he was pastor.

She tells of her years spent working with Porter Wagner where, together, they fashioned a large volume of top 10 country hits and platinum selling records. But, after a time, she knew she needed to move on with her career to deal with the other areas of creativity flowing through her veins.

Over time, Dolly moved to on write hundreds of songs—including classics such as “Jolene”, “Nine to Five” “Here You Come Again”, “Love Is Like a Butterfly” and the incomparable “I Will Always Love You” (which was actually written to honor Porter Wagner when she left his show, and was later sung by Whitney Houston to huge acclaim in “The Bodyguard”); thousands of pieces of poetry; act in “The Best Little Whore House in Texas”, “Nine to Five”, and “Steel Magnolias”; and perform in numerous stage and television shows.

And, in her spare time, she found time to build a namesake theme park—Dollywood—in the town of Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, located near her home town. The Dollywood Company owns many other business ventures across the United States in addition to the Dollywood Theme Park.

Dolly is truly a national treasure. So it seemed only fitting W3 Book Club would, of course, honor her the best way we know how—by hosting a Virtual Karaoke Party singing along to some of her songs, as well as songs performed by other singers. To get in the mood, we dressed up as some of our favorite performers. Some wore country western attire for ambience, others grooved out with a Joni Mitchell vibe, while Teri went for the full on Dolly Parton circa 1980’s look!

We used the Watch2Gether app for our Karaoke (lyrics and music), and met up with each other in a Zoom meeting on a second device. It took some doing, and we need a lot more practice at it if we decide to do it again in the future; but I can say we all had a great time!

For convenience, we’ll list our agenda and playlist below, in the even you decide to try this for yourself and your own book club, or even just to try it with your friends. Also, we’ll post resources for the Karaoke program we used as well as sites that contain directions on how to use the program. We hope ya’ll enjoyed reading about our very fun reminisce of one of our all time favorite singers! Not only is she a talented performer, business person, actor, singer and philanthropist, she’s just a good person with a heart of gold (and a “Coat of Many Colors”)!!

Agenda for W3 Karaoke Party

1. 6:30-7:00 Meet and greet (aka chat)

2. 7:00-7:20 sing along to 4 Karaoke songs

3. 7:20-7:40 Talk about Dolly and her book

4. 7:40-8:00 Sing along to 4 Karaoke songs

5. 8:00-9:00 Visit

Playlist not necessarily in this order

1. New York New York

2. Dancing Queen

3. Here You Come Again ( Dolly Parton)

4. Nine to Five (Dolly)

5. Gold Dust Woman performed by Mary

6. Jolene performed by Teri

7. Stop in the Name of Love

8. Baby Love

9. Billie Jean

10. We are the Champions

Simple directions for Karaoke party 

1. Accept link for Watch2Gether on your phone (or an iPad if you plan to use your big computer for the Zoom connection).

2. Accept link to Zoom call on your larger device (iPad or PC).

3. Use mute on the Zoom call when we aren’t singing.

4. Unmute yourself on the Zoom call when you want others to hear you sing.

For the Karaoke program we used, go to https://w2g.tv/ (Watch2Gether)

Directions for using Watch2Gether can be found at https://community.w2g.tv/t/how-to-use-watch2gether/736

This video explains how to use Watch2Gether with Zoom on the same computer screen (only do this if you have a really big screen as it would be hard to do on smaller screens): https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4sKc1wH0ds8