One of Dolly Parton’s greatest creations was herself
“I’ve always been misunderstood because of how I look; don’t judge me by the cover ’cause I’m a real good book.”
— Dolly Parton
In November 2023, I borrowed the audiobook of Songteller: My Life in Lyrics from a library, and came to appreciate the work of Dolly Parton far more deeply. She wrote an amazing 3,000 songs during her life, and some of them will live on as standards.
Parton, who died Tuesday at 80 after a brief battle with cancer, was famous during most of my life, first as a country star, then as an actor, all-round entertainer, philanthropist and advocate. Her recognition as a songwriter took a while to emerge, and it’s clear that the success of owning all that copyright allowed her to spend her fortune as she wished. It is so remarkable that she focused on literacy. Her Imagination Library, founded in honour of her father, who lacked basic literacy skills, has distributed more than 300 million books free of charge to preschool children over the last three decades.
Parton carefully threaded a needle of expressing some opinions (she was pro-gay rights and accepted that it cost her support from evangelical Christians) while famously guarding her political views. The gambit worked. This BBC headline kind of says it all: Dolly Parton was the one thing most Americans could agree on.
The lyrics quoted above come from the song Backwoods Barbie, which Parton recorded herself in a 2008 album of the same name, and which also appears in Parton’s musical version of 9 to 5. I’ve never seen that stage adaptation of the 1980 feminist movie that starred Parton, Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda, but the song fits the Doralee character that Parton effectively created.
One of Dolly Parton’s greatest creations was herself. She had more than 350 wigs and enough costumes to fill 50,000 square feet (another of her books is subtitled My Life in Rhinestones), and arguably she used them and the “too much makeup” mentioned in Backwoods Barbie to allow herself to hide in plain sight. Fascinating woman, and a remarkable life.
One of Parton’s best-known songs is Jolene, which she famously wrote the very same day she also wrote I Will Always Love You. This morning, I saw that Vanity Fair shared Parton’s 2012 answers to the magazine’s monthly Proust Questionnaire. This one made me chuckle: it’s a small example of how her sense of humour won everyone over.
My friend and former colleague Amy Joy had a photocopied meme like the one below by her desk, reflecting our shared love of coffee.
There are so many other Dolly moments. At some point over Christmas, I play Emmylou Harris’s Light of the Stable, which features vocals from future Trio collaborators Parton and Linda Ronstadt, plus the unmistakeable Neil Young. There will be an extra goosebump this December when it comes over the speaker.
Parton took Jolene and so many other songs around the world, and the world loved her back. Here is her performance of the song at the Glastonbury festival in 2014.