And I would get that old droning sound, and it made a really good sound, and I would just make up melodies with that.” She also remembers “rigging up an old mandolin that the neck was gone. I had wrapped a rag around it to soften the blow, and I would beat on those strings in that old piano. Dolly recalled: “I found an old wooden mallet in the smokehouse. When she was about six, she would play around with a dilapidated piano in an old church. In addition to rhymes, Dolly loved creating musical sounds, and she was inventive about making instruments to inspire and accompany her melodies. “Little Tiny Tassletop” was about her doll made from a corn cob, dressed in corn husks with corn silk for hair, with two brown eyes burned into the cob with a hot poker: I don’t know what some of this sounded like to my family, but in my head it was beautiful music.ĭolly wrote her first song when she was around five.

I would latch on to the rhythm my mother made snapping beans, and before I knew it, I’d be tapping on a pot with a spoon and singing. I would take the two notes of a bobwhite in the darkness and make that the start of a song. I could catch on to anything that had a rhythm and make a song to go with it. Since I have been able to form words, I have been able to rhyme them. Her father recalled “she was writing songs before she knew how to hold a pencil.” Dolly described her childhood fascination with rhyme, rhythm, and the everyday sounds she made into music: Songwriting always came easily to Dolly Parton. I can capture all those memories in my songs and keep those memories alive.” That’s why I’m so thankful I can write songs. “All of those little pieces of your past, they’re all important.

The thrill lyrics by cob