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Backwoods Barbie

Dolly Parton is an American icon. Her skills as a singer, songwriter, musician, actress, performer and businesswoman are legendary. She brings her rhinestone-studded road show to The Durham Performing Arts Center tonight, so we're taking some time today to sing her praises. Host Frank Stasio is joined by Cecelia Tichi, the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of English at Vanderbilt University. She’s the author of the books “Reading Country Music: Steel Guitars, Opry Stars, and Honky-Tonk Bars" (Duke University Press, 1998) and “High Lonesome: The American Culture of Country Music,” (The University of North Carolina Press,1994.); Also joining us will be Daniel Boner, Director of Bluegrass, Old Time, and Country Music Studies at East Tennessee State University.

Longtime NPR correspondent Frank Stasio was named permanent host of The State of Things in June 2006. A native of Buffalo, Frank has been in radio since the age of 19. He began his public radio career at WOI in Ames, Iowa, where he was a magazine show anchor and the station's News Director.