To the world at large, Dolly Parton was the kind of enigmatic entertainment royalty who never seemed to fall out of favor. A once-in-a-lifetime talent, she seemed able to accomplish everything she attempted with a perfection and ease that her peers admired and her fans cherished.
Dolly is so deeply entrenched in our lives because she had the uncanny ability to take the hardships and tragedies we all experience and create something emotionally relevant, deeply satisfying, and uniquely timeless. She exuded warmth and a genuine sense of humanity from a life guided by kindness, and no matter what avenue of entertainment she communicated through, it always hit the heart.
From the outside, Dolly was always the picture of showbiz glamour with her big blonde hair and megawatt, movie star smile. But behind the colorful, glossy exterior was a life chock full of hard lessons that produced some of the best country and pop music in history.
And what about those hard lessons?
Growing up the daughter of a sharecropper, Dolly shared a tiny cabin in Locust Ridge, Tennessee with her parents and eleven brothers and sisters. They were “dirt poor,” she said, and that kind of poverty came with a lot of ridicule from children who were lucky to maybe have just a bit more. Her mother made a coat for her made of rags, which inspired the autobiographical hit “Coat of Many Colors,” a song about where we place value and what wealth really means.
In the late ’60s, she was invited to join The Porter Wagoner Show by Wagoner himself and they both enjoyed massive success. Her decision to leave and focus on her solo career in the mid-1970s created a wedge between them that led to a three-million-dollar lawsuit and a lot of hard feelings. Still grateful to Wagoner, she wrote a song to express her appreciation to him for giving her such a large platform on his weekly show. The song was called “I Will Always Love You,” and reached the top of the Billboard Hot Country Songs twice. The song, also famously covered by Whitney Houston, was born out of a need to express the idea that knowing the importance of forging your future and being grateful to your past aren’t mutually exclusive.
She was and still is an icon, and even though she found her fame in country music, she also bucked a lot of its modern-day ideology. And though it was never brought to the concert stage, Dolly openly expressed support for the LGBTQ+ community, transgender rights, and the Black Lives Matter movement. As an entrepreneur, she kept ownership of her master recordings and even turned down Elvis Presley recording “I Will Always Love You,” when Colonel Tom Parker wanted half of the publishing rights. Learning from her business-savvy father, she built a brand that included food, cookware, lifestyle products, and of course, the award-winning Dollywood theme park. It wasn’t just about making money, though. She put it to work. Dolly became as well known for her philanthropy as she was for her music when she created the Dollywood Foundation, an organization that sends free books to children around the world to promote literacy. She also helped fund COVID-19 vaccine research and contributed money to victims of natural disasters from floods to wildfires.
She was a multi-hyphenate that conquered film, music, and the business world. Perhaps most importantly, she was a force of nature who conquered our hearts by shining her light of kindness, love, and equality to chase away all the darkness it could reach. She was the shining example of what we need to be for each other, and she left us with the idea that we all deserve respect and equality. May her artistry live on forever and may her life of empathy never be forgotten. | Jim Ousley
