What Would Dolly Do? by Lauren Marino

Author:Lauren Marino
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2018-04-24T04:00:00+00:00

Stiletto Through the Glass Ceiling

Work hard at staying relevant in a world that is constantly changing. Dolly has noticed that other careers in music have not proved as lasting as her own, “and people are bitter about it. But you’ll find they stopped.” What does she mean by that? She means that they have stopped caring, stopped learning and evolving, stopped being creative, or stopped going out on the road and doing the day-to-day hard work of promoting a record and giving back to your audience. Dolly is constantly moving on to the next thing and learning new things and as a result her professional portfolio runs deep and wide.

When she left The Porter Wagoner Show in 1974 to pursue a solo career, she hired Hollywood super-manager Sandy Gallin to help her cross over into the mainstream and to start a film career. She received a ton of criticism and faced a lot of skepticism. The country music world in Nashville was resentful that she was leaving them and wanted her to fail. They thought she had “gone Hollywood.” Tex Lively, a DJ at KPIK in Colorado Springs, said he wouldn’t play her on the radio anymore and was quoted as saying, “all of us feel like she deserted the country folks.” The country folks, in turn, deserted her.

Despite the criticism, which surely hurt her, she pushed on and reinvented herself as a film actress and pop artist and as a result gained more creative and financial freedom. Any time you make a move or set your ambitions high, you are going to make some people uncomfortable. Ignore them. Don’t take their criticism personally and just keep moving forward with your plans.

Her biggest hit up until that point was “Jolene,” which despite being a number one country hit sold only 60,000 copies. She knew if she could cross over, she could sell closer to a million copies—or more—of a record. It was simple economics and she needed to make more money after paying Porter in order to get off his show. He took all of her money in the settlement and put her underwater financially for several years. She had the confidence and talent, and together with her team came up with a strategy to get out from under and grow. It worked.

Many years later she complained that she couldn’t get a record played on the radio because she was considered “old country.” At the time she bemoaned, “The music business is not what it used to be. After you reach a certain age, they think you’re over. Well, I will never be over. I’ll be making records if I have to sell them out of the trunk of my car. I’ve done that in the past, and I’d do it again.” The music industry isn’t the only one that has this kind of ageism. The only way to deal with it is to keep momentum going and keep trying new things to stay relevant.

If success is what you want, you have to be willing to step out of your comfort zone.

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