There are some people who become so woven into American culture that it is difficult to remember when you were first introduced to them. Dolly Parton was one of those people.
For me, Dolly came through my parents. They both loved her, although for different reasons, and somewhere along the way I fell in love with that unmistakable singing voice. Over the years, though, I came to understand that the voice was only part of what made Dolly extraordinary. She could make us laugh, break our hearts, tell a story in three minutes, and build a business empire without ever seeming to lose sight of the little girl who grew up in the Smoky Mountains.
Now, following her death at 80, it is difficult to imagine an America without Dolly Parton.
The Power Behind “Jolene”
Earlier this year, for National Kiss a Ginger Day, I wrote about perhaps the most famous redhead who never actually existed: Jolene.
Dolly created a woman so compelling that generations of listeners have pictured her. The red-haired temptress with flaming locks of auburn hair, ivory skin, and emerald-green eyes was powerful enough that even Dolly Parton was begging her not to take her man. Yet the woman who gave us one of music’s most famous stories about romantic insecurity had something remarkably stable waiting beyond the stage: Carl Dean.
Dolly had an extraordinary number of professional identities during her lifetime: singer, songwriter, actress, producer, author, entrepreneur, philanthropist and founder. But she had one husband. She and Carl married in 1966 and remained together until his death in March 2025, just shy of their 60th wedding anniversary.
Carl famously preferred life outside the spotlight, and perhaps that was part of what made their marriage work. Dolly could belong, in some small way, to millions of us while still maintaining a part of herself that didn’t. There is something rather beautiful about that now.
More Than the Woman With the Big Hair
Dolly also understood something about image long before we started using phrases like personal branding. The hair was big, the clothes sparkled, and the personality could fill a room. She was also in on the joke.
What sometimes got overlooked beneath the rhinestones was just how savvy the woman wearing them actually was.
Her performance in 9 to 5 could be delightfully over-the-top, but the movie itself had something meaningful to say about women, work, and power. Dolly later appeared as Truvy Jones in Steel Magnolias, joining an ensemble of strong female characters navigating friendship, grief, family and resilience. Meanwhile, behind the camera and recording studio, Dolly was building something much larger.
She co-founded the production company Sandollar Productions, which would become associated with projects including Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Father of the Bride. In 1986, she became involved with a Tennessee theme park called Silver Dollar City and transformed it into something unmistakably hers: Dollywood.
That decision didn’t simply create another celebrity-branded attraction. It invested in the place that created Dolly. Dollywood became part of the economic and cultural fabric of Pigeon Forge and the Smoky Mountains, while Dolly’s own story remained inseparable from Tennessee.
There may be an important lesson for founders in that. Success doesn’t always require running away from where you came from. Sometimes you can become successful enough to reach back and help where you came from flourish too.
The Song That Became Someone Else’s Signature
Then there is I Will Always Love You.
Many people who grew up in the 1990s associate the song immediately with Whitney Houston and The Bodyguard. Whitney’s rendition became a phenomenon, but Dolly had written and recorded the song nearly two decades earlier as a farewell to Porter Wagoner when she decided it was time to leave their professional partnership.
When Whitney transformed it into one of the most recognizable vocal performances in popular music, Dolly didn’t need to compete with her. She owned the song, both creatively and quite literally.
Instead of viewing another woman’s success with her creation as something that diminished her, Dolly could appreciate what Whitney had done while also recognizing the value of her own creation. Whitney’s recording ultimately became the bestselling single by a woman, while Dolly’s songwriting remained central to her work.
Two extraordinary women gave us two completely different interpretations of one remarkable song. Perhaps it is also a fitting example of something Dolly seemed to understand instinctively: another woman’s light doesn’t have to extinguish yours.
The Dolly Who Came Into My Home
For all of the music, movies, rhinestones and business ventures, however, one part of Dolly’s legacy is much more personal to me.
She sent my children books.
When they were young, Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library provided them with a free book every month. Those little packages arriving in the mail may not have looked as glamorous as a stage at the Grand Ole Opry, but they represented something enormously important about the woman behind the celebrity. Dolly understood what access to books could change.
The Imagination Library began in 1995 in her home county in East Tennessee, inspired in part by her father, who could not read or write. What began as a local effort eventually grew into an international effort. By its 30th anniversary in 2025, the program had delivered more than 270 million free books to children.
Millions of those children never met Dolly Parton. Their parents may never have purchased one of her albums or visited Dollywood, but Dolly entered their homes anyway, one book at a time. My home was one of them.
Celebrity philanthropy can sometimes feel abstract because the numbers become too large to comprehend. A million dollars donated here, millions of people helped there. A children’s book with your child’s name on the package isn’t abstract. You hold it in your hands.
Building Something That Outlives You
That is why reducing Dolly Parton to a country music legend has always felt inadequate. She was certainly that, but she was also a remarkable example of what can happen when creativity, ownership, entrepreneurship, and generosity coexist.
She built intellectual property. She retained ownership where it mattered. She turned her personal identity into an extraordinarily recognizable brand without allowing it to completely consume the private woman beneath it. She created businesses, jobs and destinations, then used part of what she built to invest in literacy, medical research, disaster relief and her home community.
Her philanthropy extended far beyond the Imagination Library, including assistance following the devastating 2016 Smoky Mountain wildfires and a $1 million contribution to Vanderbilt University Medical Center to support COVID-19 research related to the Moderna vaccine.
Dolly proved that commercial success and generosity aren’t opposites. You can build the empire and still remember the people outside its gates.
Islands in the Stream
There is one image I can’t quite shake now. Kenny Rogers died in 2020. Carl Dean followed in 2025. And now Dolly is gone too.
I like to imagine somewhere beyond what we can see, Kenny hears that familiar Tennessee voice again and the two old friends find their harmony in Islands in the Stream. Perhaps Carl is somewhere nearby, amused that his wife is once again commanding the room.
It is sentimental, certainly, but Dolly gave us permission to be sentimental. She built an entire career around understanding that ordinary human emotions — love, heartbreak, ambition, jealousy, homesickness, humor, and hope — were worthy of becoming stories, and she made those stories unforgettable.
Dolly Parton will continue to exist in recordings and movies, in products bearing her name and likeness, in the businesses she helped create and in the mountains of East Tennessee where her story began. She will be there every time someone sings Jolene, every time Whitney’s opening notes of I Will Always Love You begin to play, every time another family walks through the gates at Dollywood and, perhaps most importantly, every time a little child opens the mailbox and discovers that someone sent them a book.
There will never really be another Dolly, and maybe there shouldn’t be. She spent a lifetime showing us that the goal wasn’t to become someone else anyway. It was to figure out exactly who you are, own it completely, use whatever gifts you’ve been given and, if you’re fortunate enough to make it to the top, remember to send something good back down the mountain.
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