IN THIS ISSUE: Dolly Parton at Dollywood, Sam Smith's sanctuary on "Hazel Eyes," and my big brother at 75
Dear friends,
The news stunned everyone yesterday. Dolly Parton died at the age of 80 after a brief battle with cancer. One of the most meaningful moments of my career was spending the afternoon with her in Dollywood in 2024. I'm sharing some special memories from our conversation to start this week's newsletter.
In other news, I was so happy to have one of my favorite artists, Sam Smith, drop by the apartment for the latest episode of Alchemy. It’s my fourth conversation with Sam. We first met back in 2014, when their debut album, "In the Lonely Hour," was blowing up around the world. Sam is now 34 and has just released a fifth studio album, "Hazel Eyes."
Plus, just yesterday, we celebrated the birthday of my big brother Alex who also happens to be the business brains behind our little Alchemy project. My ode to him below.
If you're enjoying our newsletter, please forward it to a friend who might too - and if someone forwarded this to you, subscribe here to get Alchemy in your inbox. Thanks for reading.
- Anthony
"I Want the Story to End Really Well"
"When you see your life before you in the museum, you think, 'How in the world could anybody cover that much territory in a lifetime?'"
-Dolly Parton
Dolly Parton was sitting in a hotel lounge at Dollywood in East Tennessee, where she was about to open a new museum that would showcase her life, The Dolly Parton Experience. That's why I was there. It was May of 2024, Dolly was 78 and still very busy with the new exhibits, a recent album, and a Broadway musical in the works.
But she was also talking about legacy and last chapters. Time was on her mind, I could tell. I thought about that a lot yesterday when I got the news that Dolly died. It floored me. I'd heard she had "health issues" but made the mistake of believing that if anyone could go on forever, Dolly could. The sheer volume of love in the world for this woman was enough to keep her alive. A constant presence in our culture for six decades, Dolly always seemed to have another project lined up.
I interviewed her three times over the years. She'd be promoting an album, a book, or a charity, but would say "ask me anything." Dolly had given us a tour of the new exhibit on that day two years ago. The rhinestones on her white jacket glittered under our lights. She seemed celestial, but so down to earth.
As one of 12 children, growing up in poverty in a one-room cabin in the Great Smoky Mountains, she was constantly battling for attention. "You had to fight for every minute," she said.
Songwriting is what set her apart.
"I just always thought I had something special," Dolly said. "I was always writing these songs, stuff I'd never lived. And mom was fascinated with the fact that I could do that. So anybody that would come to our house, mama would say, 'Run and get your guitar.' And then she'd say, 'I want you to hear what this little young'un wrote.'"
At 18, Dolly boarded a bus to Nashville. "You went there to be a singer," I clarified, "not just a songwriter?"
She was emphatic: "No. I went to be a star."
Nashville didn't see it at first. She pitched all the labels along Music Row. Every one turned her down as a vocalist. "But I never gave up," she said.
I admired her persistence. "Why?"
"Well, because giving up ain't in me. I never once thought about it. I told my mom and dad when I left that I wouldn't be home till I had something to show for it."
In 1968, Porter Wagoner, then a huge country star, invited her to join his television show. This chapter of Dolly's life has long fascinated me. Wagoner both lifted her up and held her back. They'd have 14 top 10 country hits together. But after seven years, Dolly felt she was outgrowing the show. Wagoner wouldn't let her leave.
Dolly wrote "I Will Always Love You" as a farewell song. Wagoner said if he could produce it, then she could go. Around that time, Elvis sent word that he wanted to record the song. But his manager, Colonel Tom Parker, had a caveat: Elvis had to get half the publishing royalties. Dolly refused.
In that pivotal period, you saw everything that would define Dolly Parton. She had not only proven her songwriting talent, but she'd rebuffed two giants of country music — both men. She wouldn't bend. What had she learned from all that, I wondered?
"I learned to stand up for myself," Dolly told me. "I learned to stand on my own. I learned to really use my talent as my strength and my power."
Years later, she and Wagoner became friends again, and she was with him when he was dying. It will all be in the musical, she said. Dolly was a month away from casting the show when we talked (it's due to finally reach Broadway next year). She was writing both the book for the musical and new songs.
I was curious about her approach to songwriting, and whether she had a process.
"I don't even think about that," she said. "I'll be walking through the house, going to do something else and I'll have a basket of laundry or something. And I'll see my guitar sitting there and all of a sudden I'll set the basket down, go get my guitar and sit down for a minute. And I may get back to the laundry, I may not."
The image of Dolly with the laundry basket has stayed with me, although she probably wasn't wearing a wig and rhinestones.
She wrote one of her favorite songs, "Coat of Many Colors," on the back of a dry cleaning receipt that she took from Porter Wagoner. "I just grabbed the tag off his clothes."
"Do you get excited when you get a good lyric?"
"YES!" Dolly's eyes went wide. They were smiling. So was she. I will always remember that moment — her joy felt so genuine. "Like my line of, 'Tumble out of bed and I stumble to the kitchen, pour myself a cup of ambition.' That just rolled right out. I hadn't even thought about that. I went, wow, that's as good as this cup of coffee's going to be."
"I take myself more serious as a songwriter than anything else," she said. "And if I had to give up every other part of the business, I would choose to be a writer. Because that's my therapist. My guitar is my friend."
Towards the end of our conversation, Dolly mentioned that she didn't tour any more because she worried about her husband Carl's health. Something could happen to him while she was away. (Carl Dean died last year at 82.) "I'll do some more things," she said, "but I'm on my last chapter, because of my age. I want the story to end really well."
We were wrapping up our little tour of the exhibition of Dolly's life when I asked what music had meant to her.
"Everything," Dolly said. She looked around the museum at her rhinestones, her costumes, her wigs. "If it had not been for a song, none of this would be here.
"Everything began with a song for me. And that's how it'll end up, I bet."
- Click here to see our full conversation for CBS Mornings
This Week on Alchemy: Sam Smith
“The album that I just made gave me sanctuary,” Sam Smith says on the new episode of Alchemy.
"Hazel Eyes" is a romantic record. But Sam, who recently became engaged to British designer Christian Cowan, understands it’s also a political one.
“I am a political artist whether I want to be or whether I don't," Sam says. "It's just from being myself.”
As a singer with 16 platinum singles and some 84 billion streams, everything Sam says or does is scrutinized. In 2019, Sam changed pronouns to they/them. Some folks sadly will never forgive them for it.
“I think to live openly as a nonbinary person, as a queer person,” Sam says, “it takes guts right now.”
"I am larger than life, and I'm always described as too much, which I now wear as a badge of honor."
-Sam Smith on Alchemy
Sam was out at age 10, and as they recall on Alchemy, school was a struggle: “I would just go for walks for hours in the countryside to recover. And nature became a medicine and an antidote to the difficulties of life.”
A dozen years ago, on assignment for CBS Sunday Morning, I visited Sam’s hometown of Great Chishill about half an hour from Cambridge and an hour outside London. We walked those country roads and Sam, only 22 at the time, led me to a field that was then their sanctuary.
“This is my spot,” Sam said as we sat on a small wooden bench. Before us: rolling hills, a farm field in the foreground, a white windmill at the end of it, and another field rising beyond. It was a gorgeous landscape and Sam spent hours in that spot as a kid listening to music in their headphones and singing with only nature as their audience.
“How’d you happen to pick this spot?” I asked.
“It’s just something about listening to music and looking at that,” Sam said, gesturing towards the skyline. “It made the music sound sweeter.”
“I feel like music saved me as a kid,” Sam recalled when we talked again a few years ago, catching up over afternoon tea and cheese toasties at the Baccarat Hotel in New York City. “It’s a form of magic to me.”
Sam is a New Yorker now. They moved here four years ago to be with Christian, who coincidentally grew up in the next village over from Great Chishill. Success has taken them all around the world. But Sam often thinks about that farm field we visited.
“I return there all the time,” Sam says on Alchemy, pointing a finger at their temple. “Hardest moments. Death. Grief. That is where I sat with you. That was the first place that I felt connected to myself and my body and my life and music. So I try and bring that now into everything I do.”
In the episode Sam also talks about the songs they no longer like to sing, their love affair with food, and a letter they once received from Tom Petty.
- Click here to see Episode 9 of Alchemy with Sam Smith
- "Hazel Eyes" is out now, wherever you listen to your music
Alchemy's Birthday Boy
One of Alchemy’s executive producers celebrated a landmark birthday yesterday. Alexander Taylor Mason turned 75 - notable also because he is my big brother and my only sibling. Now, to be honest, it’s a little alarming to see that number associated with your older brother. Alex neither looks nor acts like someone with that kind of mileage on him.
He certainly didn’t need this job. Basically, Alex is the brains keeping his little brother from driving this show into a financial ditch. (He got our father’s business acumen, I got our mother’s creative genes.)
Luckily for me, in his long and distinguished career as a banker, Alex has brokered major media deals and run a couple of finance companies, which makes him the most overqualified business manager of a podcast company you’ll ever meet.
We’ve had our differences over the years. I confessed long ago to stealing a dollar from his dresser in 1966, so I could buy my first ever vinyl album, "The Monkees." I was caught and forced to make restitution. To be fair, Alex conned his naive little brother into trading away some of his best baseball cards (and then laughed about it). So I consider us even.
But my bro has helped steer me through some rocky moments in both my life and my career. We waited til our seventies to work together, but I would not have had the courage to launch this little venture if he hadn’t agreed to come along.
Yo Bro! Thank you and Happy Birthday!
Thanks to our founding sponsor, The FLAG Art Foundation, whose generous support has made Alchemy with Anthony Mason a reality. The FLAG Art Foundation supports artists and makes contemporary art accessible to all. Click here for more information about FLAG's latest exhibits in New York City.
*If you're interested in sponsoring Alchemy with Anthony Mason, reach out to us at partnerships@collective.media
