Dolly Parton Belonged to Everyone

This one's tough.

There are celebrities we admire. There are musicians whose songs become part of our lives. And then, every once in a while, there is someone who somehow becomes part of the culture itself.

Dolly Parton was one of those people.

Country music can certainly claim her. Nashville can claim her. But so can pop music. And Hollywood. And Broadway. And, eventually, even rock and roll.

Children who received their first books through Dolly Parton's Imagination Library can claim her, too.

So can generations of women who watched a very smart woman with very big hair spend decades making sure nobody mistook one for the other.

That's the extraordinary thing about Dolly.

She belonged to everyone.

Dolly Parton died Tuesday at the age of 80, leaving behind the kind of résumé that could fill several articles by itself: songwriter, singer, actress, entrepreneur, philanthropist, author, theme-park mogul and one of the most recognizable human beings on the planet.

But today, listing everything Dolly Parton accomplished almost seems to miss the point.

Because plenty of people become enormously accomplished.

Very few become universally loved.

HOW DO YOU GET EVERYBODY TO LOVE YOU?

Maybe that's the more interesting question.

Because Dolly managed something that seems nearly impossible in modern celebrity.

She could walk into almost any room and somehow belong there.

Put her onstage at the Grand Ole Opry and, of course, that's Dolly's room.

Put her in a movie with Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin and suddenly she's a movie star.

Put her beside Kenny Rogers and you get one of pop culture's most enduring musical partnerships.

Let Whitney Houston turn a song Dolly wrote into one of the biggest recordings in history and Dolly seemed genuinely delighted that someone else had taken her song somewhere she never could.

And then there was rock and roll.

When Dolly was nominated for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2022, she initially tried to bow out because she didn't believe she'd earned the right to be there.

Rock and roll essentially responded:

Oh yes, you have.

She was inducted anyway.

So Dolly did what Dolly tended to do.

She embraced the invitation, made a rock album and invited some of rock music's biggest names along for the ride.

Because apparently the answer to “Does Dolly Parton belong in rock and roll?” was eventually:

Dolly Parton belongs wherever she damn well pleases.

SHE WAS IN ON THE JOKE

Perhaps part of the secret was that Dolly understood exactly what people saw when they looked at her.

The hair.

The rhinestones.

The nails.

The heels.

The unmistakable silhouette.

She didn't merely tolerate the jokes about her appearance. She frequently got to them first.

The joke was never actually on Dolly.

She was usually the one telling it.

There was an intelligence underneath the Dolly Parton persona that became increasingly apparent the longer you watched her. The woman who could make fun of her own wig was also writing songs, negotiating business deals, owning her publishing, building Dollywood and quietly creating a literacy program that would eventually send hundreds of millions of books to children.

Her Imagination Library grew from a program inspired by her father's inability to read and write into an international literacy effort distributing books to children across the United States and beyond.

SOMEHOW, SHE NEVER BECAME TOO FAMOUS FOR US

Maybe this is the part that's hardest to fathom.

Dolly Parton became extraordinarily wealthy and extraordinarily famous.

And yet she somehow retained the accessibility of somebody you'd expect to sit beside at the kitchen table.

She talked about growing up poor in Tennessee.

She talked about her family.

She talked about faith.

She talked about her husband, Carl Dean, whom she married in 1966 and largely kept outside the glare of her extraordinary public life. His death last year, after nearly six decades of marriage, left her adjusting to life without the man she had called her “anchor.” 

And she talked about herself with an almost disarming lack of self-importance.

Perhaps that's why so many different kinds of people could find their own Dolly.

For some, she was Jolene.

For others, 9 to 5.

For another generation, Whitney Houston introduced them to I Will Always Love You before they ever discovered who wrote it.

Some knew her from movies.

Some from Dollywood.

Some from country music.

Some from rock.

And there are children who may someday realize that the lady whose name was printed on the books arriving at their house was one of the most successful songwriters of the twentieth century.

FOUR DAYS AGO, SHE WAS STILL MAKING PLANS

This may be the detail that hits hardest today.

Just days before her death, Dolly was still talking about what came next.

She had been dealing with health problems and had scaled back some appearances. But in an interview published only days ago, she was discussing projects still ahead of her—including a Nashville museum devoted to her life and career. 

She had already written songs people will probably still be singing long after the rest of us are gone.

She had made movies, built businesses, won awards, given away books, helped communities and created an entire physical destination bearing her name.

And apparently Dolly Parton still wasn't finished.

There is something wonderfully Dolly about that.

DOLLY LOVE IS REAL

Over the next several days, the tributes will come from everywhere.

Country singers will talk about what she meant to Nashville.

Rock musicians will talk about her songwriting.

Actors will remember working with her.

Other artists will talk about her influence.

Parents will talk about the books their children received.

And millions of ordinary people who never met Dolly Parton will feel strangely as though somebody they knew is gone.

Maybe that's the real measure of what she built.

Not the records sold.

Not the awards.

Not even the songs.

Somewhere along the way, Dolly Parton stopped belonging exclusively to country music.

Then she stopped belonging exclusively to entertainment.

She became ours.

And today, virtually everyone lost a little something.

Dolly once said, "If you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain."

Today, it's raining cats and dogs here at Jeneral Commenary.

And we're wishing Dolly her rainbow.

Photo: RCA Records, 1977 / Public Domain / Wikimedia Commons