A handful of octogenarian songwriting legends are still with us: Joni Mitchell, 82; Barry Manilow, 83; Carole King and Paul McCartney, both 84; Bob Dylan, 85. Elton John will turn 80 next March.
But Dolly Parton, composer of “Coat of Many Colors,” “Jolene,” “I Will Always Love You,” “9 to 5” and three thousand others, died at age 80 on Tuesday, Aug. 25, at Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center in Nashville.
Like the Carter Family of Maces Spring, Virginia; Earl Scruggs of Flint Hill, North Carolina; Ronnie Milsap of Robbinsville, North Carolina; and “Coal Miner’s Daughter” Loretta Lynn of Butcher Hollow, Kentucky, Parton was born where those three states meet up with Tennessee. The isolated region’s devotion to Christian hymns and to the traditional ballads of England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland made it a wellspring of what was once called “hillbilly music.”
That Appalachian genre reached Nashville from the east and — after soaking up some Delta blues from Memphis and the lilt of Western Swing from Texas — became the multifaceted phenomenon of country and western (just “country” these days).
Born on Jan. 19, 1946, in Sevier County, Tennessee, the fourth of 12 children, Dolly Rebecca Parton performed at the Grand Ole Opry as a child and left for Nashville the day after she graduated from high school in 1964.
Starting out, Parton wrote songs with her uncle and recorded pop tunes. Her first country single, released in 1967, was “Dumb Blonde” by Curly Putman — writer of “Green, Green Grass of Home” — which appeared on her debut album, “Hello, I’m Dolly” (the Broadway musical “Hello, Dolly!” had opened in 1964).
Onstage, Parton became a sort of down-home, good-girl version of Mae West, as comically theatrical as Carol Channing playing Dolly Gallagher Levi. When asked if the expression “dumb blonde” offended her, she said it didn’t. “I know I’m not dumb,” Parton explained, “and I know I’m not blond.”
A major rise in Parton’s visibility came in 1967 when she joined “The Porter Wagoner Show,” a syndicated TV program starring the pompadoured country and gospel crooner. She left the show in 1974, after writing — supposedly on the same day in 1973 she wrote “Jolene” — “I Will Always Love You” about that painful separation. In 1979, Wagoner sued her for $3 million for breach of contract; they reached a settlement which she eventually paid off. He died in 2007, aged 80.
Parton’s husband for nearly 60 years, Carl Dean, who died last year, was her partner in managing the huge success as singer, songwriter, actress and entrepreneur that followed. Parton was tied with Reba McEntire for the most number-one singles on Billboard’s country music charts, 25; won 11 Grammy Awards; appeared with Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin in the 1980 film “9 to 5,” for which she wrote the score, and with Burt Reynolds in the 1982 film “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas; and was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame, the Songwriters Hall of Fame and, in 2022 — a nomination she hesitated to accept — the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Among her other business ventures, there’s Dollywood, a theme park near Gatlinburg, Tennessee, gateway to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, featuring a replica of the second family cabin — two rooms, not one — of Parton’s childhood. In the words of CADCAM, a commenter (and local booster, apparently) on the Washington Post obit: “She was the anchor investor that turned around a devastated coal region into a thriving entertainment powerhouse. Go to Pigeon Forge where she invested in Dollywood, and it has grown to be a several mile long strip of attractions that every kid would love to go for: rides, wax museum with giant gorilla hanging off the building, themed mini golf courses, Titanic Museum, gem mining, numerous video arcades including one with a giant dinosaur, jungle boat ride, Ripley’s, Christmas Village, numerous places to shop, and so much more.”
Many have become Parton fans not for her music but for her philanthropy. In 1995, with her father’s inability to read or write in mind, she launched Imagination Library, which, with community partners, mails free books to children from birth until they begin school, both in the U.S. and in other English-speaking countries. Two more examples: helping fund Moderna’s Covid vaccine and donating to Hurricane Helene relief in 2024 (a coincidence being widely shared: Dolly is the name on deck for the next Atlantic hurricane).
Parton received the National Medal of Arts in 2005 and a Kennedy Center Honor in 2006. Though publicly nonpartisan, she was known for taking sides on certain issues, as in the case of the vaccine debate.
In December of 2023, she told Hugh McIntyre, who interviewed her for the Washington, D.C., LGBTQ magazine Metro Weekly: “When they ask me all these questions I say, ‘Hey, look. I’ve got some of everybody in my own immediate family. I’ve got gays, and lesbians, and drag queens. I’ve got drunks and drug addicts. I’ve got some of every person in my circle of friends and employees. I just accept them all. I love them all. I know them all.’ So I just try to love and enjoy everybody for who and what they are.” McIntire then asked where Parton’s “unbelievable positivity and this energy” came from? The reply: “It comes from God.”
Parton’s D.C.-area appearances over the years included Ford’s Theatre in 1979, hosting the NBC special “The Seventies: An Explosion of Country Music”; Merriweather Post Pavilion in 1979 and 1989; Kings Dominion in 1989 ($6, plus park admission); the 9:30 Club in 2002; and Wolf Trap in 2011.
The Post’s Chris Richards was at that Wolf Trap show. In his review, he described Parton’s lead-in and singing of a bluegrass tune, “Little Sparrow”: “‘We got bugs bigger than a little sparrow here tonight,’ she joked, introducing the tune as gargantuan moths darted around her golden coif. She launched into the first verse a cappella and was soon joined by three backup singers and an army of insects chirping and buzzing in the surrounding wood.”
“Dolly Parton: Journey of a Seeker” runs through Wednesday, Sept. 30, at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. “Dolly: A True Original Musical,” co-produced by Parton, who co-wrote the book, will open on Broadway in December.
