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Picture this: it's early July and you're in an old record store basement trying to escape the summer heat. While perusing the aisles you happen upon a vintage Dolly Parton album. You gasp, grab the record, and without thinking, you go up to the register and buy it. Then… you realize you don’t even have a record player.
Well, this happy accident was enough to lead to one of my new favorite collections, my vinyl collection, when I had this exact event occur this summer. I think it is evidence enough to argue that all roads lead to Dolly.
Listening to music has never been a hobby of mine. Sure, I’ve followed a couple of artists over the years, and no one can deny that I can boogie down to some 70’s music like there's no tomorrow - but music has never been a big part of my life. I’m the girl that makes my friends sit through Spotify ads in my car because I don’t listen to music enough for Spotify Premium to be justifiable. Collecting vinyl seemed silly. I always thought that records were just bulky pieces of plastic too expensive just to have a couple of songs on them.
But, as any loyal Dolly fan would, I asked for a record player for my birthday so I could listen to the dulcet tunes of Dolly’s self-titled album “Dolly”, which I happened upon that fateful day in early July. Lo and behold, I fell in love with the sound; the crackle, the distortion, the pops every now and then. It was perfectly imperfect.
From then on, I caught the vinyl bug. I asked my family if they had any old records I could take off their hands and let me tell you, they delivered. My grandparents brought me a stack of records they had sitting in their basement. There was a little bit of everything. It had some Elvis, Loretta Lynn, and Hank Williams Jr. It had some of my nostalgic favorites like the Beach Boys and Chuck Berry. We even got into the 1980’s with Michael Jackson’s Thriller (which I happen to be listening to as I write this). Altogether, I was set.
Yet even though I love the crackle and the rasp that records give, that's not what allures me. When I listen to old records, I feel closer to everything. I feel closer to the music because I’m listening to it in the way the artist designed - I can’t shuffle the album or add other songs to the cue; it's set in stone, or rather vinyl. But mostly, I feel closer to the last person who owned the vinyl.
Listening to my dad’s old records instantly makes me connect with him on a different level. Listening to the same record he listened to when he was my age, I can envision him trying to moonwalk to Billie Jean or do the narration over Thriller. Listening to my grandpa’s Beach Boys album makes me feel the exact same way (although trying to imagine my grandpa moonwalking is a little harder). It's comforting to know that they were teenagers once - having similar anxieties, fears, and experiences, but they made it through.
I hope I can give these records to my kids one day so they can serve as a way for them to be close to me (and their grandparents and their great-grandparents). I’m thankful to realize that music allows you to connect with people in unexplainable ways - but not at all surprised that it was Dolly that led me there.
Mallory Slucher, of Louisville, KY, is a member of the McConnell Scholar Class of 2025 at the University of Louisville where she studies Political Science, Arabic, and Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies.