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Very few among us have earned the honor of being known worldwide by a single name. But then again, very few are so monumentally monolithic as “Dolly.”
Beloved not only as a country superstar but also a trailblazer for the disenfranchised, Dolly Parton has a legacy that transcends entertainment, and she has defied gender stereotypes from the start. Although she hasn’t always identified as a feminist, she’s spent more than five decades marching fearlessly against the grain, standing up for herself, and speaking truth to power for those without a voice. And whether it’s proving you can’t judge a book by its cover or challenging conceptions about the LGBTQ+ community, she’s almost always come out on top.
Born on a sleepy mountainside in East Tennessee, Dolly’s drive to live on her own terms started early, and she had a special set of tools at her disposal. Just one in a family of 12 children, she learned about music and strong womanhood from her mother, while her father was a hard-working sharecropper with a knack for earning cash on the side. Dolly took those influences and moved to Nashville the day after she finished high school in 1964, arriving as a self-possessed force-of-nature from the start—but she could also see the writing on the wall.
Music City was not famous for progressive ideals, and Dolly avoided positioning herself in opposition, helping disarm critics when she tore up the playbook later on. Dolly first found work as a songwriter, and initially had no choice but to make her way in a “man’s world.” She wrote a few hits for male artists but was prevented from singing country by her record label until 1967, when she joined superstar Porter Wagoner’s TV show and released her first country single, groaningly titled “Dumb Blonde.” That would be the last time anyone associated Dolly with those words.
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Fans obviously loved her and her songs full of homespun wit and wisdom, and Wagoner resented Dolly’s wishes to start a solo career. True to form, though, Dolly insisted that striking out on her own—and leaving Porter’s show—wasn’t out of malice. They had a good thing going, but she had already begun fashioning her own larger-than-life persona, and she was bold enough to recognize her worth.Dolly ended her partnership with Wagoner in 1974, placing a big bet on herself but avoiding being ostracized by the industry establishment. And to prove there was no bad blood, she wrote and released a song titled “I Will Always Love You,” a gorgeous, soul-searching tribute to a relationship that had simply run its course. It was a hit for Dolly but also drew attention from a much bigger name, and that would prove an even bigger test of her conviction. Dolly was approached by Colonel Tom Parker—the famously intimidating manager of Elvis Presley—who told her The King wanted to record “I Will Always Love You.” She was elated at first, until Parker informed her that in order for Presley to do so, she would have to sign over 50 percent of her song’s potentially lucrative publishing rights to them.
“Nobody said no to Elvis,” she’s recalled since.
But Dolly did. She stood her ground and refused to be bullied—and by letting Parker walk away from the deal, made perhaps the smartest move of her career. The song would become an iconic classic anyway (finding a second life after Whitney Houston’s 1992 cover from the film The Bodyguard) and has since brought Dolly millions in royalties she would have otherwise handed over to Elvis. It established her as more than a talented artist. She was a canny businessperson, too.That reputation has only grown, even as Dolly’s outlandish exterior has been perfected to invite the opposite assumption. It’s a self-made brand of which she is in complete control, and she wields the clichés like a sword.
Expanding into film, she again embodied female empowerment in 9 to 5, a movie made at the height of the male-dominant workplace, which found her both costarring onscreen and composing the film’s still-celebrated theme song. She went on to score a Golden Globe nomination for The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (portraying another underestimated female protagonist), and continues to inspire women more than 30 years later with TV movies based on her life, a hit Netflix series based on her songs, countless books, her Dollywood theme park and a new deal to license her deceptively sharp lyrics to American Greetings—helping you find the perfect way to say “I will always love you” on Valentine’s Day.
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The Tennessean
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The Tennessean
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The Tennessean
All told, she’s reportedly worth around $500 million, and in the 2019 WNYC podcast Dolly Parton’s America, she finally came around to her feminist-icon credentials. But she still downplays her glass-ceiling shattering achievements, and in fact, may one day be known best for philanthropy—a unique kind of progressive activism that basically amounts to “just being Dolly.”
She’s donated heavily to Nashville’s Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt, started a fund to give wildfire victims in the Smokies $1,000 per month until it was no longer needed, and gave $1 million to Vanderbilt University Medical Center for COVID-19 research. Plus, there’s that little organization called the Imagination Library, which has sent more than 100 million free books to children in five countries since 1995. She’s also stood up publicly time and time again for the LGBTQ+ community, supporting gay marriage, writing songs like “Travelin’ Thru” to help outsiders better understand transgender people, or calling on fellow Christians to practice the tolerance they preach.
Who better to represent Tennessee than Dolly Parton herself? She's a native who has overcome every obstacle in her path, led by gracious example, given back to her home state time and time again, and changed hearts along the way.