Hello, Dolly! The Country Legend Reflects On Faith, Family & The Power Of Song
Dolly Parton is a $500 million, one-woman empire with a heart of gold, the mind of a mogul and the ethereal voice of an angel. A funny, feisty and dazzlingly humble angel.
With 25 No. 1 hits on the Billboard country charts and record sales topping 100 million worldwide, plus eleven Grammys and countless other awards and accolades — including the National Medal of Arts and the Library of Congress’ Living Legend award — Dolly Parton has earned the right to rest on her laurels. And zero intention of doing so.
“I’ve just always been blessed with good people,” Parton says when asked to describe her thriving five-decade career. “God has been kind to me through the years to put a lot of great people in my pathway that know what they’re doing and make me look good.”
Born 79 years ago in the Great Smoky Mountains of Sevier County, Tenn. on Jan. 19, 1946, Dolly is the fourth of Robert Lee and Avie Lee Parton’s 12 children. The spirited girl could carry a tune before she could talk and believed from the get-go that she’d someday be a star. Dolly warbled on local radio shows, earned her high-school diploma, then took off to try her luck in Nashville. She met her lifelong love Carl Dean the same day she arrived.
Not long after the couple’s 1966 wedding, Parton caught the eye — and ear — of country superstar Porter Wagoner, who made her a regular part of his tour and the syndicated Porter Wagoner Show. It was a lucrative — and oft tumultuous — seven-year partnership.
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In 1974, Parton struck out on her own, bolstered by the success of the chart-topping heartbreaker “I Will Always Love You,” which she wrote to honor her time with Wagoner. The rest was entertainment history. Many of her best-loved hits also landed on the pop charts and soon the film industry came calling for the pretty, charismatic blonde. Parton augmented her resumé with well-received turns in Nine to Five, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas and Steel Magnolias, always keeping an eye out for the next good enterprise.
Still, Parton looks up, then back home to a little cabin in rural Sevier County, when you ask her the secret of her success.
“I got my spirituality and my positive attitude and my faith from my mother,” she explains. “But I’ve got my dad’s hard work ethic. I work all the time — and I always think of my daddy when I’m working. My mother’s people were all very creative — singers, musicians. Daddy’s people were just hard-thinking, hardworking people, and I really think I’m a good cross between the two.
“My mom was just one of those people that could tell you anything and make it sound good, cook anything and make it taste good and sell anything and make it look pretty good — because she didn’t have much to work with,” Parton continues. “She had a house full of kids and a love for my daddy that wouldn’t quit. They married when Mama was 15, and Daddy was 17, and they had nothing to work with except love and faith and one another — and my mama had enough faith to move a mountain. She just sensed when somebody needed something; whether it be neighbors or family or one of her own kids.”
Parton immortalized her mother’s love in the tender 1968 ballad “Coat of Many Colors” — a song that took on a life of its own, allowing Parton to demonstrate her own selfless nature.
“It is my favorite because it’s more than a song: It’s an attitude, it’s a philosophy,” says Parton, whose namesake Dollywood entertainment complex brings thousands of jobs and millions of tax dollars to her economically disadvantaged home county and provides a family-friendly vacation destination to her fans around the world. “It really talks about family and faith and just the positivity aspect. I love the fact that they teach this little ‘Coat of Many Colors’ story in so many schools now and use it as an anti-bullying song, and teach that we should celebrate the differences in each other. We’re not supposed to be alike.”
In December 2015, Parton and her longtime collaborator Sam Haskell brought Coat of Many Colors to the small screen as part of a multi-picture deal with NBC designed to adapt Parton’s most iconic songs for television. The film drew nearly 13 million viewers.
“You never know what’s going to be a hit — but I love writing stories,” Parton says of her 3,000-song catalog. “Every time I ever wrote a story I would always think, ‘This is such a good story. I wish I could make a movie or something out of this!’ So I got with Sam Haskell, the guy that was my agent for years, and we started a company together. Our next one is Jolene [based on her 1973 hit about a flame-haired temptress]; we’ll have another movie hopefully in the fall. If we do well, then I’m sure we’ll do more!”
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So whether you’re a baby boomer with fond memories of a beehived Dolly singing “The Last Thing on My Mind” with a Brylcreemed Porter, or a rural preschooler waiting for your next delivery from her Imagination Library the legendary Ms. Parton just hopes she makes you happy now and then.
“You never know how people are going to remember you,” Parton says softly. “When you start out, you hope you do well. And if you do well, then you hope that people appreciate you. You don’t know how it’s going to be.
“Now that I’m older, I reflect back on so many wonderful things and wonderful people that have helped shaped my career, and the songs and the stories that people attach themselves to,” she continues. “It’s a wonderful feeling to know that you’ve changed the course of somebody’s life, or been able to say something maybe people that don’t write couldn’t say. It touches me that my work has been able to touch people through the years like that.”
We will always love you, Dolly.
Remind 
Queens of Country
November 2019
Get your toes-tapping as we give a nod to the queens of classic country music.
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