77-year-old star, Dolly Parton, talked about her story, and her past, about the time when she suffered for her dressing choices.
She was born in 1946, in Locust Ridge, Tennessee. She had 11 other siblings, so she didn’t grew up in a wealthy family.
But she grew up with music, where her mother had played songs with guitar for her children, and she also performed in churches.
“Music was such a large part of our whole family,”
“I like to think that I got the best of my dad and my mom.”
“All of my mama’s people were musical. They all played some sort of musical instrument. Of course, I took my music really seriously, and I was always plucking along on somebody’s instrument — whatever they would leave lying around or whenever my family would come. But I always loved the guitar.”
With the help of her uncles, she had her career started. They bought her a guitar, and later started to write her own music.
When she was 10 years old, she starred in some local TV shows, and performed in local radio stations, in Knoxville, Tennessee. At the age of 13, she had a job in station, Grand Ole Opry.
“I had two uncles who played — Uncle Bill, who helped me get into the business, and Uncle Lewis, who was also a great guitar player,”
“He had this little Martin guitar that I loved, so when he saw how serious I was about my music, he gave me his little Martin guitar. It was my treasure.”
She also had a thing for fashion too, and her interest brought some trouble to her, when her grandfather didn’t like her clothes.
She had a neighbor, whom inspired her for cloth chosing. That woman was called, “town tramp,”, and she was wearing tight skirts, high heels and makeup.
“She was flamboyant, she had bright red lipstick, long red fingernails. She had high-heeled shoes, little floating plastic goldfish in the heels of them, short skirts, low-cut tops, and I just thought she was beautiful. When people would say, ‘She ain’t nothing but trash,’ I would always say, ‘Well, that’s what I’m gonna be when I grow up,’” she said about her source of inspiration, in terms of fashion.
Some people were against her fashion choosing, like her father, grandfather. While her father just said that he doesn’t likes it, her grandfather took some actions towards her.
“I was willing to pay for it,”
“I’m very sensitive, I didn’t like being disciplined – it hurt my feelings so bad to be scolded or whipped or whatever. But sometimes there’s just that part of you that’s willing, if you want something bad enough, to go for it.”
In 2021, she had released her song, The Sacrifice, which she told her story when she got abused by her grandfather.
“It kind of sums it up,” she says about the song she wrote.
“I was gonna be rich no matter how much it cost / And I was going to win no matter how much I lost / Down through the years I’ve kept my eye on the prize / And you ask if it’s worth the sacrifice.’ I think it is, for me.”
“I’ve always been true to myself,” she said in an interview with The Guardian.
“That was what my mama always used to say: to thine own self be true. I put a lot of stock in that. Everything I do, whether it’s my personality, how I conduct myself and business, or whatever, if I do it my way, according to what I understand and believe, there’s a strength in that. You can think, ‘I can stand by this, I can live by this.’”
She stated that she had listened others, but added that she, “never cared so much that it keeps me from being me.”
“I had a dream,” Dolly had stated.
“And I had a talent, I thought. And I really believed it was going to happen.”
She had wrote more than 3,000 songs. With her iconic songs like, I Will Always Love You, The Seeker, Love Is Like a Butterfly, and All I Can Do, she had won many awards.
“I’ve been writing since I was seven years old. I’ve always got something around to write on—chewing gum, papers, napkins in a restaurant—I never know when an idea is going to hit me…”
In 1977, she had received her first Grammy with, Here You Come Again.
With her move into the movie industry, she had raised her fame in the 80s.
She had written 3,000 or more songs in her career, had sold more than 100 million albums, and hit the top of the country chart 25 times, had won eight Grammy’s.
“Almost every day I come up with a few song titles or a sweet melody,”
“I’m 16 in some ways. I’m still a hopeless romantic. But I’m 35 in my spirit and in my mind. When I was 35, it was a pinnacle, a great time in my life – success and happiness and all that. And so I just decided ‘I’m gonna claim that number and always be that in my state of mind.’”
She met with Carl Dean, in Nashville, Tennessee, at the outside of Wishy Washy Laundromat. She was 18, and Carl was 21.
“My first thought was, ‘I’m gonna marry that girl,’” Carl Dean had said to Entertainment Tonight.
“My second thought was, ‘Lord she’s good lookin.’’’ And that was the day my life began. I wouldn’t trade the last 50 years for nothing on this earth.”
At first, she had declined him, and later invited him to her nephew’s house, while she was babysitting.
They had married in 1966, in a private ceremony where it held in Ringgold, Georgia.
“After the dinner, we walked back out, and they brought us our car — I don’t even remember what we were driving then — and we got in it and headed for home,” she said.
“Carl turned to me and said, ‘Dolly, I want you to have everything you want, and I’m happy for you, but don’t you ever ask me to go to another one of them dang things again!’”
“That was sweet,” she said about the time when they had renewed their wedding vows, for their 59th anniversary.
“There was no pressure at all. We had our own little ceremony in a little chapel on our property, then we went in our little RV down to Ringgold, Georgia, and spent the night where we had married 50 years before. We took some beautiful pictures and got all dressed up. It was fun really.”
“We’ve always been good buddies. We have a lot of fun and a lot of respect for one another. It was his first marriage and mine and we never thought we’d ever want to do that again. Why bother?”
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