Is there anything Dolly Parton can’t do?
The country music icon, now 75, has announced she’s teamed up with bestselling author James Patterson to write her first novel. Sean O’Grady takes a look back at the remarkable career of the musician, superstar, businesswoman, and now novelist
In a television interview with Barbara Walters in 1977 – one legend in conversation with another, you might add – Dolly Parton explained why she spent 300 days a year on the road with her crew on her custom-built tour bus: “I love to go home, but if I’m home more than two weeks straight I get restless and bored and I wanna get back on the bus.” Now that she’s turned 75, Parton doesn’t tour quite so much, but that same restless energy remains, and she still wants to get out there, do new things, make a difference.
She’s recently been lauded for donating $1m of her considerable fortune to help fund the Moderna vaccine (her high-profile support also helping to boost acceptance of the jab among reluctant southerners), and now she’s writing a novel. Or co-writing one, more accurately, with James Patterson, a bestselling writer whose second-most-showbiz collaborator is Bill Clinton. It’ll be published by Penguin Random House next March. Dolly is still on the showbiz bus.
They say you should only write (or co-write) about things you know, and it seems Parton has taken the old adage seriously for her literary debut. Run, Rose, Run is the story of a young girl who goes to Nashville to pursue her dreams, and we can expect much that reflects Parton’s own struggles in life. Always restlessly innovative too, Parton will simultaneously release an album of songs to go with the book – which is more than Clinton managed. As Patterson says: “The mind-blowing thing about this project is that reading the novel is enhanced by listening to the album and vice versa. It’s a really unique experience.” And all very new and exciting for his co-author, too; as Parton herself says, in a characteristically folksy, cheeky quip: “I ain’t got time to be old.”
No doubt the Rose figure in the book will echo aspects of Parton’s own remarkable life, maybe even running from poverty to eventually achieve a net worth approaching $1bn. Parton’s life story has been well told, not least by Parton herself in a series of memoirs and indeed in her songwriting. She has written about nine out of 10 of her tracks herself, including the well-known catchy hits “Jolene”, “9 to 5”, and, most lucratively of all, “I Will Always Love You”. That song was one that Elvis Presley rather fancied for himself, but Parton told Presley’s manager, Colonel Tom Parker, that she couldn’t accept the King’s usual demand for 50 per cent of the rights. At the time she regretted it, but not so much after Whitney Houston turned it into a global mega-hit.
Maybe for that reason, and unlike other artists such as Bob Dylan and Shakira, Parton has retained full control of her back catalogue and the royalties that flow from it, rather than selling the rights to Wall Street. Royalties can often be enhanced by allowing the use of works in advertising, but Parton herself prefers to be in charge of such enterprises. She happily rewrote “9 to 5” as “working 5 to 9” for a Squarespace commercial celebrating the gig economy and unsocial hours, played during the Super Bowl – “It feels so fine, to build a business from your know-how.” Though controversial, it stands as a bit of an anthem to Parton’s own side-hustles, such as the books, a Parton fragrance (Scent from Above), the mixed bag of movies and TV shows, and a highly successful chain of “Dollywood” theme parks in Tennessee (what a way to make a living…)
Her parents found making a living a lot tougher. Dolly Rebecca Parton was born in the archetypal American dream log-cabin on 19 January 1946, on the banks of the Little Pigeon River, Pittman Center, Tennessee. You can’t get much more Country and Western than that. She was the fourth child to be born, out of an eventual 12, including a set of twins, all before her mum, Avie, reached 35. Nine survive to this day. Her father, Lee, was a small-scale farmer, a sharecropper, growing a little tobacco, who never learned to read or write. Her parents died about 20 years ago, so were able to see their daughter’s career success.
She says that she is “always there” if her family needs help, and there’s no suggestion otherwise. The cabin still stands, and a replica has been built in what amounts to a Parton shrine, at the original Dollywood site. In her own words, Parton was “dirt poor”, but rich in love. A cliche, for sure, but with something in it. The way that she was dressed in homemade clothes, created out of hand-me-downs or gifts, and duly felt a little embarrassed was captured in one of her earliest hits, “Coat of Many Colours”:
And oh I could not understand it, for I felt I was rich
And I told them of the love my momma sewed in every stitch
And I told ’em all the story Momma told me while she sewed
And how my coat of many colours was worth more than all their clothes …
Now I know we had no money, but I was rich as I could be
In fact, though, Parton very much wanted to be rich enough to be able to buy the things she liked (whether anyone else liked them or not) and she set about making her fortune. In an appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show – and Parton’s background, ambition, wealth and achievements mirror those of Winfrey – she said, “I always wanted to be a star,” and there’s no doubting that. “I like to be liked,” she added, and she does crave attention and an audience, which must also have driven her, and drives her still. At least in public she also affects humility: “If you don’t humble yourself, God will.”
I know they make fun of me. But all these years I know exactly what I’m doing … I am sure of my talent. I can afford to diddle around
Like the hero of her novel, Dolly moved to Nashville while still in her teens, and got some excellent early breaks, teaming with a major star of the time, Porter Wagoner, on his Country TV show. Her first album, Hello, I’m Dolly, went out in 1967 – the start of 100 million global record sales worldwide (David Bowie scored 140 million, for comparison), 44 top-10 Country albums, 11 Grammy awards, and much more.
It was all, quite simply, built on an extraordinary talent, both musical and entrepreneurial. She’s composed about 3,000 songs. Her first, she says, was when she was about five, about her homemade corn dolly, and she can still sing it:
Little tiny tessel top
I love you an awful lot
Hope you never go away
I want you to stay
She has, as she says, always had “the gift of rhyme”, but also a sense of what it takes to be a star, even a superstar. Her aim was nothing less than to be “known everywhere”, and subconsciously or otherwise, she’s achieved a trademark Parton look. It is something she obviously enjoys, and she still dresses to accentuate her famous wasp-waisted, curvy profile. The big wigs, the tottering high heels and the tight-fitting loud outfits are at least partly inspired by a local “street walker” she recalls from her youth, the “town tramp”, who was “what I’m gonna be”. Perhaps that’s also why she ended up starring as a madam in a film called The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (1982).
Like other “big” personality stars – Elvis, Liberace, Michael Jackson – she has used outrageous props and a colourful back-story to create an outsized cultish image, instantly identifiable and good for business. She once explained that she knew full well people joked about her as a nouveau-riche hillbilly: “I know they make fun of me. But all these years I know exactly what I’m doing … I am sure of my talent. I can afford to diddle around.” The title of an album released in 2008, Backwoods Barbie, sums it up.
She “likes to be a superstar” and has no regrets about shifting her appeal in the late 1970s towards pop, with hits like “9 to 5”, and to Hollywood, because to be a superstar she feels she has to maximise her audience. That, no doubt, is why she turned up at Glastonbury a few years ago, where she made such an impact. She has a key role in her business affairs that is less visible but no less part of the Parton phenomenon. When she became successful in her own right she ditched her old duets with Porter Wagoner and switched management. She fired her financial advisers again in the 1980s when they told her Dollywood would be a flop – and she was vindicated, as the group employs 4,000 Tennesseeans in places jobs aren’t easy to come by.
She keeps good relations with a younger generation of stars who have revived Country music, and she is godmother to Miley Cyrus. Above all, in the era of Trump, identity politics and culture wars, she is also shrewd enough to avoid politics. She’s a proud southerner, for sure, but a very “inclusive” personality, with no horror stories about her private views on things. The sponsorship of the Moderna jab suggests that she is no anti-vaxxer, though. It was nice to see her repurposing “Jolene” for the drive:
Vaccine, vaccine, vaccine, vaccine
I’m begging of you please don’t hesitate
’Cos once you’re dead, then that’s a bit too late
One area where the showwomanship is less obvious is her private life. Her husband of 55 years, Carl Thomas Dean, is a retired road-surfacing contractor. She met him at a laundrette and he asked her out to dinner, which turned out to be a trip to a McDonald’s drive-through in his pick-up truck – undeniably country, if not romantic. He is rarely seen or heard, having attended one awards dinner in around 1968 and vowing “never again”. They have many bases, including a little holiday estate in Hawaii, but for many years have maintained principal houses in Los Angeles (mainly Dolly, because Carl dislikes the place), and Nashville (which they both call home).
Sometimes there is a hint about them leading different lives, and not knowing what the other is doing. Parton has even suggested that the hit “Jolene” was based on a real red-haired temptress. It’s maybe a bit embellished, and at other times she says the song was because she met a little auburn-haired autograph-hunter with what she thought was the loveliest name. But at any rate, for much of their marriage the pair have spent relatively little time together. Now, as usual ready with a witty line, Parton has a different attitude to Carl and “Jolene”: “Every time I look at him sleeping there in his La-Z-Boy, snoring, that hair turning grey at the temples, I wonder if Jolene is still around. I’ll call her up and say ‘You come and get him now.’” They have no children, because of what Parton calls “female” medical issues and surgery.
So there she is, then. Dolly Parton: musician, superstar, businesswoman, near billionaire, homespun philosopher, poet, icon, philanthropist, actor, novelist… not bad for a girl from rural Tennessee.
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