Book Review: Tell It Sister Tell It

Title: Tell It Sister Tell It 

Author: Stella Parton

Date: 2011

Publisher: StellaParton.com

ISBN: 0615443141

Length: 222 pages

Illustrations: black-and-white photographs

Quote: "Stella, why not write an inspirational book about your own life?"

As might have been expected, the title of this book has two meanings. It's a line from a gospel song, and Stella Parton's autobiography is a Christian book. It's also a book about being a sister.

Stella Parton's peculiar mix of advantages and disadvantages in life included, most conspicuously, being Dolly Parton's sister. Did that boost her singing career? As she explains in the book, actually, in some ways, it hurt. Even beyond the predictable "They only invited her to sing because she's Dolly Parton's sister so you know her show won't be worth watching." At one point the family worried about having two singers competing against each other, and tried to steer Stella back to waiting tables so she wouldn't compete with Dolly. 

They did grow up singing together--Stella fantasizing about performing with Dolly and another sister as "The Parton Sisters." And they didn't distract attention from their similarities, as John Michael Talbot and Terry Talbot or Loretta Lynn and Crystal Gayle did, by performing in different genres that required different costumes and hairstyles. Life didn't even hand them, as it did Joan Baez and Mimi Farina, all that different vocal qualities. You can tell which Parton sister is singing if you've listened to both of them for a while. Newbies can be excused for mixing them up. Relatives could even be excused for thinking Stella's competition could have hurt Dolly's career.

Well, this is Stella Parton...

https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=MMABXrhw0Ho&list=RDAMVMMMABXrhw0Ho

...and this is Dolly:

https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=LQjMCKq87N0&list=RDAMVMLQjMCKq87N0

Now you know, if you didn't. The sisters look about as much alike as they sound. As a musician's memoir, Tell It Sister Tell It really ought to have a soundtrack, and it does, but the album is sold separately. Just to give people a full range of recording formats, of course.

In addition to lyrics or partial lyrics for the songs, the book contains some reminiscences about the music industry, about Stella Parton's career, about her childhood, and about her son. You expected those. It also contains some plain language about the moral and religious teaching that kept Parton's career ticking steadily along in Dolly Parton's shadow, and some appeals for the causes Parton supports, which would probably have been cut if the book had been published by a conventional press.

In 2012 I didn't go to Parton's book party at the Roberts Family Bakery Cafe. The Roberts Family had not yet invited me to be the scruffy writer in residence so I heard about the party, from someone who had probably stumbled into it at the last minute perself, in a reproachful "A real local interest blogger ought to have gone to that party and bought a book" sort of tone. It took repeated invitations to get me into the cafe: from what I heard, the cafe didn't always have that "free refills on coffee, cream, and sugar" policy. That came after the place had become profitable. Knowing that I'm a slow writer, I didn't feel that Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, is all that local. Still, I do like both Partons' music, so I borrowed a copy and then, finding it a livelier read than the usual celebrity-memoir soap opera, dug up the money to buy one. 

If you think of celebrity memoirs as fluff, you too may be surprised by this one. Publishers urge celebrities to tell all about their dysfunctional relationships, because sex (and violence, if the celebrity can remember any) supposedly sells. Then they urge celebrities not to say anything of any consequence (or interest) about their beliefs or concerns, because that might be too controversial for the celebrity's audience. Never mind the share of the audience who are disgusted by the divorce dramas and might be more interested in the memoirs of celebrities who ever confessed having a serious thought in their heads. 

As a result of this publishing tradition, a lot of celebrity memoirs read as if they'd all been written by one hack writer, which some of them really were. Not this one. There are some expressions of sibling rivalry but the younger sister really starts "telling it" when she discusses sexual predators in the music industry, domestic violence, how it's possible for a Christian to reconcile her faith with singing in nightclubs, disability issues, jealous envy, funerals, miracles, and other things the conventional publishers wouldn't have wanted her to tell us about. 

If you're not going to be shocked to find out that Stella Parton claims homosexual friends, and you don't already have this book, you should get it. Local readers may buy a physical copy from me at the usual discount rates. Others can buy both book and record from Amazon, since they're still "in print" as "new" items, which means Parton gets her share of the profits.