When Dolly Parton was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2022, the night ended with Dolly joined by other musical royalty inside the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles for a group singalong of Parton’s beloved classic “Jolene.”
The Zac Brown Band backed Parton, giving the song the country roots from which it sprang. And as she swapped verses with singers that ranged from Pink and Brandi Carlile to Duran Duran’s Simon Le Bon and Eurythmics’ Annie Lennox, you could see the love her musical peers held for her, and she for them.
At one point, when Parton and Rob Halford, singer in the British heavy metal band Judas Priest and a gay man, stood next to each other in black leather outfits, it felt like a perfect example of the open-heartedness with which Dolly considered everyone.
Straight or gay, from the holler or the ‘hood, rich or poor, red state or blue, none of that mattered to Parton, who embraced the world with her music, her kindness, and an unstoppable spirit that will live on after her death at 80 on Tuesday, Aug. 25.
Here’s a story that shows a bit about how Parton put her celebrity to work for the common good. She was famously born in 1946 in a one-room cabin on the banks of the Little Pigeon River near the border of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
Almost 50 years later, she went home to Sevier County, Tennessee, to launch her Imagination Library in honor of her father, Robert Lee Parton Sr., who, in the hardscrabble circumstances of his life, growing up poor and rural, working hard to raise 12 kids, had never learned to read.
Today, Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library has expanded far beyond Sevier County, reaching across the United States and overseas. Each child enrolled in the program is mailed one book a month from birth to kindergarten – more than 270 million books to date.
How she rose from such modest circumstances to the fame and fortune she found offers a lesson of perseverance, hard work, and faith, both in God and in herself.
As a young singer-songwriter in the ’60s, Parton embraced a look – big hair, big cleavage, rhinestones everywhere – that matched her big dreams. But it wasn’t until the early ’70s, after working with country star Porter Wagoner on his popular TV show, that she started to get noticed more for her songwriting than her oft-caricatured style.
Here’s the story of the crazy circumstances around the birth of “Jolene” and “I Will Always Love You,” two of her most iconic songs. In early 1973, Parton got to feeling creative, and with her guitar and a cassette recorder, she started writing songs at home. As the legend goes, she wrote both “Jolene” and “I Will Always Love You” on the same day.
That’s what she said in a few interviews in the 2010s, and what a story it is! However, Dolly being Dolly, a few years later she undercut her own legend in order to be honest and accurate. In a 2022 interview, she said it might not have been the same day – she figured it was because they were one after another on the cassette she’d recorded them on.
But even if they were a day or two apart, as she clarified in that interview, how many songwriters can you think of who’d be able to do even that?
Parton was also a natural comedienne throughout her life. Late-night talk show hosts loved her because she was so quick on her feet with a quip or a story.
During an appearance on “Late Night With David Letterman,” she read a list of Top 10 Dolly Parton Pet Peeves, which included things such as “Accountants who don’t understand how much it costs to make me look this cheap” and “Nobody notices I’ve got a great ass, too.”
And while some of those ‘Tonight Show” appearances in the ’70s are cringeworthy today for the suggestive questions and comments from the men on the show, Parton never let it ruffle her, publicly at least.
“I’m not offended by all the dumb blonde jokes because I know I’m not dumb – and I’m not blonde either,” she often said. And besides, while the businessmen were ogling her, she was getting ahead in business.
“I look like a woman, but I think like a man,” she said in a 2021 interview, repeating an idea she’d said before and after that. “In this world of business, that has helped me a lot. Because by the time they think I don’t know what’s goin’ on, I then got the money and am gone.”
Her business savvy included Dollywood, the theme park she owned and operated from 1986 that attracts about 3 million visitors a year to Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. It includes an attraction called Tennessee Mountain Home, after the song of the same name, which replicates the cabin where she was born.
That kind of attitude also served her well when she made her movie debut in 1980 with Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda in “9 to 5,” in which the three women team up against their abusive boss played by Dabney Coleman. “I’ll tell you one thing: If you ever say another word about me or make another indecent proposal, I’m gonna get that gun of mine,” her character Doralee told Coleman’s Franklin. “And I’m gonna change you from a rooster to a hen with one shot!”
Parton remained close friends with Tomlin and Fonda for the rest of her life, guest-starring in the final episode of their TV series “Frankie and Grace.”
“And you know she doesn’t want y’all to mourn now,” Fonda wrote at the close of her moving tribute to Parton on Instagram. “Dress up and celebrate her spirit. But first, watch the final episode of Grace and Frankie where she’s an Angel, the head honcho working-class angel in Heaven.”
After “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas,” “Rhinestone,” and “Steel Magnolias” over the rest of the ’80s, her work on screen slowed as she focused more on meaningful musical projects including records made as a trio with Emmylou Harris and Linda Ronstadt and a series of bluegrass records inspired by her earliest years.
As the internet overflows with famous quotes from Parton today, some are funny, some sincere, and some speak to the things that motivated her throughout her remarkable life.
“You’ll never do a whole lot unless you’re brave enough to try,” she once said.
Dolly was brave enough to try, and we are better for what she brought into this world.