In interviews and in public performances, Dolly Parton presented a public persona that was always upbeat, positive and bubbly. But the below surface was a songwriter with deep empathy for the struggles of poor women and children. From that empathy emerged some very sad songs.

In the song “Down from Dover,” for example, she writes about a young woman who has been abandoned by her lover and is facing the shame of being an unwed mother.  She's been kicked out of her home by her parents. She struggles to hold on to the hope that the father will come back. But, alas, she gives birth to a stillborn baby, and he never returns. 

In “The Bridge,” a young woman stands on a bridge and contemplates suicide. On that bridge, she was kissed for the first time by her boyfriend.

Tonight I stand alone

Tonight while standing on the bridge

My heart is beating wild

To think that you could leave me here

With our unborn child

As the song closes, her feet are moving slowly to the edge…

In “A Gamble Either Way,” a teenage girl tells her life story. She was raised an orphan, and then when she turned thirteen, “Strangers passed me back and forth, men just took me as they pleased.” She regrets being born and sees how the deck is stacked against her; her life is “a gamble either way.”

In “Mountain Angel,” a woman lives like a wild animal in the mountains. She's been abandoned by her lover, her baby has died, and now she roams the hills, making wailing, mournful sounds that can be heard for miles. People think she's crazy, but Dolly sees her as a “mountain angel.”

In “Daddy Come and Get Me,” a woman pleads for her daddy to rescue her from a mental hospital. She has been involuntarily committed to an institution by her husband, who got rid of her so he could run off with another woman. 

In “Evening Shade,” a child describes the abuse she and other kids receive while being locked up in a home for juvenile deliquents. 

Little Susan Bradley, one night had wet her bed

Mrs. Bailey took a razor strap, and beat her half to death.

The children make an escape plan, and burn the house to the ground. 

These songs are just some of many written by Dolly about the poverty, violence and abandonment often experienced by women and children.

In reviewing so many Dolly songs, I have to say I was surprised by the absence of any anger expressed toward the bad men in the stories. Many of today's hits by Taylor Swift, Olivia Rodrigo, Kelly Clarkson and others are what I think of as “bad boyfriend songs." In these songs, the narrator often lashes out at the selfishness and cruelty of men (understandably so... )

Then there's also a whole genre of revenge songs, in which the female singer fantasizes about punishing the man for the wrongs done to her. “Kerosene” by Miranda Lambert comes to mind.

But Dolly does none of this. She writes of loneliness, grief and the feeling of betrayal, but she does not express anger. 

In her book, Dolly Parton: SongTeller, she writes of how songwriting is her primary spiritual practice:

“I just go into my ”God space"… I feel like I'm closest to God when I write… A great line will come to me and I'll go, “thank You Lord. I know I didn't think of that.”.

Growing up with Bible stories, Dolly undoubtedly was immersed in the psalms, prophets and gospel stories about the plight of widows and orphans and the call to care for them. She taps this deep well in her storytelling.  

Her empathy and her spirituality were the foundation of her songwriting. She sought to show the God-given dignity in all people, and didn't put energy into tearing others down.

Rest in peace, Dolly Rebecca Parton. 

When I first listened to Paul Simon's most recent album, Seven Psalms, I was struck by its prayerful tone, imagery and themes. It is a deeply spiritual piece of music. 

The Lord is my engineer

The Lord is the earth I ride on

The Lord is the face in the atmosphere

The path I slip and slide on

Wow, I thought. Where did this come from?

I've been a lifelong fan of Paul Simon but Seven Psalms caused me to revisit his music catalog to see if this album represented something new, or if it were an evolution of themes he had been developing for years. 

So I went back to the early Simon and Garfunkel albums. Their first record, Wednesday Morning, 3 AM, included the megahit, “The Sound of Silence.”

Hello darkness my old friend

I've come to talk with you again.

Paul confronts the void. This song reminded me of St. John of the Cross's dark night of the soul. 

And the people bowed and prayed to the neon god they made…

And the sign said the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls, tenement halls.

And whispered in the sounds of silence.

To experience truth, we must confront the void and see what is false around us. Paul sees the illusions others hold on to, and looks for truth on the margins, in the graffiti on a subway wall. In a world of noise and distraction, silence is a spiritual practice.  The song reminded me of the soul's need to enter liminal space.  

Then I came across “Blessed” on his next album. In this song, Paul riffs on themes from the Beatitudes (Matthew 5: 3-10). 

Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit…

He repeats this powerful line from Psalm 22, Mark 15:34, and Matthew 27:46:

O Lord, why have you forsaken me?

On “7 O'Clock News/Silent Night,” from Parsley, Sage Rosemary and Thyme, Paul and Art sing Silent Night, a song about Jesus's birth. In the background, we can hear a TV reporter sharing the news of the day, including the escalating war in Vietnam, and the murder of eight student nurses in Chicago by a mass murderer. Their beatific voices contrast with the horrors of the evening news.

By this point, it occurred to me that Paul Simon is truly a spiritual seeker, someone eager to look for meaning  beyond his own life experience.  Paul grew up in a Jewish household, but in his songs, he draws from a variety of cultures and religious traditions, including Christianity. 

After the breakup of Simon and Garfunkel, in his solo career, Paul became less direct and more oblique, a master of wordplay and double meanings. Rather than address a subject straight on, as he did in “Blessed” or “Sounds of Silence,” he gives us a glance, or a hint. For example, in his megahit “Graceland,” he travels with his son to visit Elvis's mansion, Graceland. He is searching for healing after heartbreak. Graceland means something greater than an old building outside of Memphis. He sings:

But I've reason to believe

That will all will be received 

In Graceland

In Paul's later albums, from Surprise to Seven Psalms, I find spiritual themes to be very present and the language to be more direct.  In “Wartime Prayers” from Surprise, he sings:

But everybody knows, all about hard times, 

The thing is what are you gonna do?

Well, you cry and try to muscle through,

And try to rearrange your stuff,

But when the wounds are deep enough

And it's all that we can bear

We wrap ourselves in prayer. 

In 2012, the Christian Century took note of the overt spirituality in his next album, So Beautiful or So What. The author mentions an Irish blogger who considered the record to be “the best Christian album of 2011.” 

In the three albums of original songs leading up to Seven Psalms, I found numerous songs that reference spiritual themes . Many express wonder and gratitude for the beauty that surround us, and trust in God's abiding love. Several express empathy and shared humanity for people who are homeless and displaced.  

These songs are filled with evocative language and striking images,  too many to include in this short blog.  So let me wrap up by sharing a few more lines from the closing song of Seven Psalms. 

The Lord is a virgin forest

The Lord is a forest ranger

The Lord is a meal for the poorest

A welcome door to the stranger….

Life is a meteor

Let your eyes roam

Heaven is beautiful

It's almost like home

Children! Get ready

It's time to come home. 

This summer I've been diving into the life and music of Mozart. What has struck me is that Mozart's life as a musician wasn't that different from today's musicians. In his childhood, he, his sister and his father spent most of their time on the road, traveling from city to city, doing shows. Even as he became well known, he still spent a lot of time bumping along dirt roads, in all kinds of weather. It may sound romantic, to travel from one great European city to the next, but historians say that, in that era, cities were filthy and disease-ridden. 

Mozart's life reminded me of the “On the Road Again” life of Willie Nelson. At age 93, Willie is still on the road, playing outdoors in the summer heat. Like Johnny Cash, he has spent most of his life on a tour bus. Mozart lived that life in the 1700's; Willie is living that life today, some 300 years later. 

Mozart made a living mostly from performances. Sometimes he was decently paid, but for most of his life, he struggled to get by. It was a life of hustle and hard work. Both he and Willie, once successful, overspent and got into financial trouble. In 1990, federal agents raided Willie's properties and seized his belongings, which were then auctioned to pay off a $16 million debt to the IRS. Fortunately, Willie managed to hide his famous, beat-up guitar, Trigger, from the agents. 

Mozart, a child prodigy, started his life as a traveling musician at the young age of 5. Willie started as an adult.  Willie had his first hit solo album, at age 40. Mozart died at the young age of 35.  Even though his life was cut short, he somehow managed to compose over 600 works. 

Before I play music in a restaurant or winery, I try to pause and pay tribute to the songwriters whose tunes I play. I think of Willie, Johnny Cash, and Lucinda Williams, and how many smelly bars they've played, and the countless hours spent on a bus, in hotel rooms and roadside diners.

As a young person learning classical guitar, I became quite familiar with Bach, as numerous Bach compositions have been transcribed for guitar. I didn't become attracted to Mozart until I heard my son's children's choir perform Laudate Dominum (from Vesperae solennes de confessore K 339) with a professional soprano. It was unforgettable.  Click here for a performance of Laudate Dominum on YouTube. 

For a great Willie tune, try his version of Townes Van Zandt's Marie. I love a sad country song about someone who is truly down and out.