Dolly Parton's Jolene

Lydia R. Hamessley is the John and Anne Fischer Professor in the Fine Arts in Music at Hamilton College (Clinton, NY) where she teaches courses in country music, medieval and Renaissance music, music in film, and world music. She received her Ph.D. in musicology from the University of Minnesota in 1989 and has won two teaching awards at Hamilton. She writes on old-time and bluegrass music, with an emphasis on women and Southern Appalachia. She is the author of Unlikely Angel: The Songs of Dolly Parton (2020), and she appeared in the BBC2 documentary Dolly Parton: Here I Am. She is also a clawhammer banjo player.