INTRODUCTION

In 2016, Dolly Parton turned seventy years old. At an age by which many artists have long been retired, she shows no signs of slowing down. In fact, Dolly is still one of the busiest entertainers in show business. Having first gained recognition as a singer-songwriter, she became country music’s most honored female performer of all time, as well as a celebrated actress, bestselling author, Broadway composer, and humanitarian. Today, Dolly is a living legend, a national treasure, and still every bit the superstar that she was at any pinnacle in her illustrious career.

As a businesswoman, Dolly manages a multimillion-dollar empire reaching far beyond her musical roots. There’s Dollywood, the popular theme park near her hometown in the Great Smoky Mountains, as well as the Splash Country water park, DreamMore Resort, and several restaurant chains, including the Dixie Stampede and Lumberjack Adventure. But Dolly’s favorite of her many endeavors is the Imagination Library, a program providing free books to children all over the world.

NBC-TV’s telecast of Dolly Parton’s Coat of Many Colors on December 10, 2015, brought Dolly’s childhood story to the small screen in a very big way. It captured the attention of 15.9 million viewers, making it the most-watched film on broadcast or cable television in nearly seven years. The film was such a success that a sequel, Dolly Parton’s Christmas of Many Colors: Circle of Love, was ordered and began filming during the summer of 2016. Dolly made a cameo appearing as the trashy town trollop she says inspired her gaudy look.

Instead of relaxing and taking time off during her “golden years,” Dolly is full steam ahead into her next ventures. She announced in March 2016 that she would embark upon her biggest North American concert tour in more than twenty-five years. Before it’s over, the acoustic-style Pure & Simple tour will play more than sixty dates around the United States and Canada and usher in the release of Pure & Simple, her forty-third studio album. At the end of May, Dolly’s tour paused just long enough for her and husband Carl Dean to celebrate their golden anniversary with a private vow renewal ceremony. With her datebook bursting at the seams, retirement is nowhere in Dolly’s vocabulary. “Why would I ever do that?” she exclaimed in an August 2016 interview for Digital Spy. “That word doesn’t register with me. I cannot possibly imagine retiring. What would I retire to? [ . . . ] I’m going to be productive, positive and work as long as I can.”

“Nobody knows Dolly like Dolly.” By 1978, the country queen had crossed over to become a sensation in the pop music world when she sat with Star magazine’s John Latta to take verbal inventory of her new status as international superstar. “I’m still the same person,” she said, “but I’m happier now and I feel even more confident that I can accomplish the things I’ve dreamed of doing. . . . I’ve always planned to achieve total musical freedom for myself, and that’s where I’m headed.”

Dolly Parton had left The Porter Wagoner Show in 1974 after seven years of recording sessions, television tapings, and touring alongside Wagoner, who’d been her duet partner, mentor, and Svengali. “What I’ve always wanted [is] to be a singing star with my own show,” she told journalist Dave Hickey in Country Music magazine that same year. Hickey noticed a sparkle in her voice. “When Dolly says star it’s like you’ve never heard the word before,” he observed. “The idea has so much force for her, and its meaning is so obviously clear. . . . When she uses the word star, you know that, to her, it isn’t just a fantasy or a vague term denoting success. It’s what she’s going to be . . . will be . . . is.”

Dolly and Wagoner maintained an amicable business relationship for the next two years, but the two severed ties completely in 1976. That’s when she broke free and began to put into place an extensive revamp of her image and music, one that would reach broad and new audiences, far beyond the field of country music. Backlash from some unhappy country fans led Dolly to repeatedly have to explain her makeover. “I’m not leavin’ country music,” she’d say, “I’m takin’ it with me!”

It was a time of musical, physical, and spiritual metamorphosis for Dolly, who was a self-proclaimed butterfly in spirit. “Butterflies remind me of myself,” she told the press, explaining why she’d chosen them as her insignia. “They don’t bother anybody, they just go about their business, gentle but determined.” In 1975, a gentle Dolly had been easily upset by cruel and humiliating jokes about her voluptuous figure. “It embarrasses me and it hurts my feelings,” she said. But by 1977, a determined Dolly emerged. A new Dolly. One that seemed almost at ease bantering with Johnny Carson when he inquired about her “zaftig” on The Tonight Show:

 

Carson: What would they call that where you grew up in Tennessee?

 

Dolly: I can’t say!

 

Carson: Healthy?

 

Dolly: Healthy, I guess . . . bosomy. Well, I’ve always been pretty well blessed. People are always askin’ if they’re real and this and that.

 

Carson: Oh, I would never . . . I would never, you see!

 

Dolly: No, you don’t have to ask.

 

Carson: I would never.

 

Dolly: I’ll tell you what . . . these are mine.

 

Carson: I have certain guidelines on my show . . . but I would give about a year’s pay to peek under there!

 

“It used to kind of embarrass me because I didn’t know quite how to take it,” she told biographer Alanna Nash, “but anymore I just kinda play along with it myself, and come up with some funny things. There’s no way to hide it, you know. That’s something you’re gonna have to accept.”

With this newfound, carefree confidence, an image was born . . . a character . . . a façade . . . a persona. Even Dolly has compared herself to a cartoon. “I look one way and am another,” she told Cliff Jahr in Ladies’ Home Journal (an article that appears within this book). “It makes for a good combination. I always think of ‘her,’ the Dolly image, like a ventriloquist does his dummy. I have fun with it. I think, what will I do with her this year to surprise people? What’ll she wear? What’ll she say?”

Harry Wasserman, a writer for High Times, shared his comical take (or was he serious?) on the “Dolly” image in the August 1977 issue:

Dolly Parton is a Deep South truck driver’s dream. Her snapshot is taped to his windshield and her songs are on his radio. She’s his daughter, her little-girl voice singing of her dirt-poor childhood in the mountains of Tennessee. She’s his mother, her voluminous breasts overflowing with the milk of human kindness. She’s his wife, singing songs of everlasting devotion to her one and only man. She’s his mistress and his whore, all dolled up in a cascading platinum wig, flirtatious false eyelashes and come-hither painted lips, waiting breathlessly for a wild night on the town. But most of all she’s his truck. When he tools down the highway and pops his clutch he’s dreaming of Dolly’s big rig, her chassis, her headlights and her chrome. Her voice can purr softer than his engine or blare as honkie as his horn.

It’s no wonder that the image became such a burden for Dolly at times that she considered abandoning it altogether for a different guise. “I might throw the wigs away tomorrow, next month, next year,” she told Star. “Maybe never. If I feel the need to, I might do something drastic when I’m ready to shock the people again. . . . It’s unfair to keep a person bound to an image. It’s time to look inside the hour-and-a-half-glass figure and the hair, to look at the music and the talent. I deliberately chose this appearance so that the image could sell the talent, and the talent would sell the image. But the talent was always more important and should take over now.”

It’s safe to say that Dolly never threw out her wigs. In fact, when she’s asked how many wigs she owns now, the answer is always the same: “Oh, I have at least 365 . . . one for each day of the year!” Instead of shedding the image, or even toning it down some, Dolly embraced it and nurtured it until it became a full-fledged character. “A character never grows old,” she told Alanna Nash. “A character lives forever, just like Mae West, like Zsa Zsa Gabor. Liberace. I guess I am a character only because I’m just totally what I am. I’m not afraid to be that and say what I want to, and just do what I want to.”

Not only did she keep the wigs, Dolly has worked meticulously and tirelessly to hone and refine just about every aspect of her character and public image. In fact, her strict control over visual image is rivaled only by her strict control over how she’s portrayed in the media. Since the late 1970s, Dolly has been a favorite cover girl for women’s interest magazines, country music weeklies, and, of course, the tabloids. She even refers to herself the “queen of the tabloids,” and has joked that she once considered suing them for printing lies about her in the middle of the magazine instead of on the cover. “Let’s put it this way,” she told journalist Joel McNally in 1994, “I’d just as soon never be in [the tabloids], but I am in ’em, and it doesn’t bother me. Like I say, I kinda like bein’ the queen of pretty much anything. But I am one of those white trash kind of people. I’m fun to write about. So I leave myself kinda open for that particular kind of reader.”

To follow the course of Dolly’s evolution in the press is to witness a slow and steady development of media manipulation, all masterminded by her and her associates. In some of her earliest conversations with the press, Dolly came across as a bit naïve and unsophisticated. Before Porter Wagoner, she was reserved and serious when answering questions for reporters, seldom elaborating or making jokes. Following Wagoner’s lead, Dolly grew more comfortable with the interview process.

Once on her own, Dolly was more talkative than ever. Her self-awareness and self-deprecation came into play, and she quickly became a more detailed and dynamic storyteller. But there was also an air of mystery about her. And she wanted to keep it that way. “I guess I am mysterious, because there are so many things that I don’t tell,” she said to Alanna Nash. “But I don’t want to. I mean, I’m sure everybody has lots of things that they do that they don’t want people to know they do, or things they feel that they wouldn’t want to say for fear somebody’d think they’re perverted or crazy or somethin’. But you still feel ’em just the same.”

This baffled and confused many of the writers assigned to follow Dolly around and somehow get to the bottom of the mystery. Following a four-hour interview in Hollywood, journalist Martha Hume said, “I’m not sure I know much more about Dolly Parton than I did before I met her. Such an air of fantasy surrounds this shimmery-voiced singer that I still find myself wondering whether Dolly herself is a fantasy.” But as Dolly unabashedly told Hume, “Nobody could ever know all of me. I don’t. I’m even fascinatin’ to myself. I’m mysterious to myself because I often do things that I wouldn’t have thought the day before I would do. But that’s good—I don’t get bored with myself. . . . I just have my own rooms in my mind where I don’t want nobody else to go. . . . I go there to find peace of mind even in a crowd. Most people want to tell it all. I don’t want to tell it all ’cause if you know it all, then I wouldn’t be fascinatin’ at all to you. There would be no mystery about me. All those crazy stories that you hear—that my husband don’t really exist, that that’s just a cover for an unnatural relationship with somebody else—that’s just because I don’t share my private life. There’s just so much you should share.”

Noel Coppage of Stereo Review instructed his readers to learn to read between the lines if they wanted to get any insight into Dolly’s “carefully controlled interviews.” He went on to explain: “She can seem to answer a question without really answering and end up with God on her side and the interviewer backing off.” Others agreed: “The woman could charm the pants off a barnyard hog!” exclaimed Michael Musto of the Village Voice. “But go into unwanted territory and she’ll smilingly brush you off and invite you to get in touch with her again, anytime! (Or try to.)”

By the end of the 1970s, Dolly had joined forces with manager Sandy Gallin and the image factory was working overtime, almost to the point of oversaturation. “I think you can overdo it, especially somebody as weird as me and, you know, outrageous and all,” she told radio personality Chuck Brinkman in 1977. “You’ve seen me once, you’ve seen me. I’m like Brylcreem . . . a little dab’ll do ya! But I don’t like to be overexposed. I think exposure is good, I just think you have to choose the things you do as far as publicity . . . your articles, your cover stories of magazines, and TV. And I think my management is real smart. At the time that people are just about to get sick of me, they take me off the market for a little while. So I leave that up to them.”

It didn’t take long for the press to notice a pattern emerging in Dolly’s interviews. The anecdotes and wisecracks that garnered the most laughs from audiences or reporters were frequently retold and oftentimes embellished to make for an even grander story the next go-round. She told the same stories so many times that a number of journalists became aggravated when their “exclusive” with Dolly turned out to read just like that of a colleague’s. “She’s got like 20 lines that she just keeps trotting out every so often, and it’s very calculated,” Dave Hirshey of the New York Daily News explained in 1978. “Occasionally she’ll slip and give you something different, but rarely. Like Rodney Dangerfield has 100 rehearsed bits. She even has a rehearsed giggle. Everything is recycled. But she didn’t give me the same anecdotes that she gave The New York Times. She knows the market.”

With this phenomenon came the birth of the Dollyism. Dollyisms are clever and cutesy one-liners or witty phrases and quotes that Dolly has practiced and perfected for more than four decades now. Topics range from her career, diet tips, and love life, to makeup, wigs, and her famous womanly assets. Dollyisms have been the basis for numerous articles, a commonly used social media hashtag, and even entire books, namely The Quotable Dolly and Pocket Dolly Wisdom. Here are a few:

Dolly used her Dollyisms sparingly in the early years. They were simply fun ornamentations to her conversations with the press. Over time, though, they grew to become the foundations for many conversations with her, and in recent years (with a few rare exceptions), most of Dolly’s interviews have been “Best Of” collections of Dollyisms. Employing these go-to phrases seems to have made it easier for Dolly to control her interviews, especially when it comes to tough questions. A well-placed Dollyism has been known to divert a conversation and sometimes get her out of a jam. In fact, interviewers can be so delightfully distracted that they’re unaware of a sidestep.

Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business, the autobiography, was published in 1994 to much acclaim and spent more than two months of the New York Times bestseller list. Writing it took more than three years, but Dolly was never fully invested in the project, admitting she only did it for the money. “How can you write your own story when you ain’t lived it?” she said on a 1998 episode of CMT Showcase. “But it’s there. Just like all this other cheap stuff. I did it for money! Are you happy now? [ . . . ] I’ve almost, in many ways, regretted that I wrote this book, to be honest. I’ve never said that before, but it’s almost like once people know that much about [me], I’d rather tell it and live it and show it, and do it like we do in interviews and have people really hear it come from me.”

Dolly on Dolly: Interviews and Encounters with Dolly Parton collects and presents some of her most important interviews from the past five decades. Selections appear in chronological order and are arranged into six sections: part I opens with a new transcription of an extraordinarily rare 1967 Music City News interview, then covers the Porter Wagoner years; part II includes material from Dolly’s crossover period (1977–1979) and features landmark interviews for Rolling Stone and Playboy; part III includes the 1980 Rolling Stone cover story and embraces Dolly’s work in the films 9 to 5 and The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas; part IV contains material from the mid- to late-1980s, including an interview conducted by pop artist Andy Warhol, as well as coverage of the launch of her Dollywood theme park; part V begins with a piece on the making of the film Steel Magnolias and continues through the end of the 1990s; and part VI incorporates varied pieces from 2002 through 2015.

With rare exception, I have chosen to keep these articles and interviews complete, intact, and uninterrupted. Interview transcriptions new to this volume were personally transcribed with only minor editing for clarity. It was also important for me to see that Dolly’s voice was kept alive on the printed page, so I have made no attempt to “clean up” or correct any of her grammar gaffes. In my opinion, those touches are an integral part of her spoken charm. In an effort to more smoothly adapt spoken word into print, I have omitted excessive uses of “um” and “uh,” repeated words, and similarly unnecessary utterings by Dolly and those who interviewed her. More substantial omissions are indicated with ellipses in brackets, while ellipses without brackets indicate hesitations or pauses. Intentional stylized capitalization, creative wordplay, and other trendy literary devices used by various authors remain intact. Simple misspellings (especially names of well-known individuals, titles of films and songs, etc.) have been silently corrected, while other editor’s notes within a piece are indicated with brackets. The brief “Dolly Diamonds” excerpts presented in-between entries have been selected from interesting and important pieces not included here in their entirety.

I would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge a number of individuals who provided support at various stages throughout this project. Thanks to Amy Aboumoussa, Laura Adam, Mark Bego, Cindy Breeding, Chuck Brinkman, Walter Briski, Jr., Amie Cleaver, Peter Dawe, Bill DeMain, Ralph Emery, Diana Falheim, Bonnie Franz, Doyle Gilliam, Kyle Grainger, Allan Hall, Landon Harless, Sam Irvin, Richard Tyler Jordan, Andrew Justice, Jeremy Kinser, Gary Lane, Larry Lane, Harry Langdon, Beverly Lee, Mark McCarty, Chris Middleton, Michael Musto, Patric Parkey, Stella Parton, Bobby Rivers, Tom Santopietro, Dennis Shears, Joe Skelly, Barry Tamburin, J. Randy Taraborelli, Chris Tassin, Annelle Tubb, Chuck Weiss, Solomon Willis, and Chip Yeomans. An extra special thanks to Gregory Kulhanjian for generously supplying a number of articles and interviews for my consideration, but most of all for his encouragement and expertise. Additionally, Mr. Kulhanjian wishes to acknowledge the late Ileane Balakirsky for her friendship and invaluable contribution to his personal collection.

My appreciation also goes out to the following libraries, institutions, and organizations, and especially the librarians and representatives who offered such valuable assistance: Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Margaret Herrick Library; The Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum (Becky Miley); Dolly Parton Productions (Ted Miller); The Dollywood Foundation (David Dotson); Middle Tennessee State University, Center for Popular Music—Everett Corbin Collection (Martin Fisher, Rachel K. Morris); Nashville Public Library, Special Collections Division; Sevier County Public Library System; Sony Pictures Television (Ed Zimmerman); Tennessee Archive of Moving Image and Sound; University of North Texas—Willis Library; and Vanderbilt University, Special Collections—Jack Hurst Collection (Kathy Smith). Additionally, I extend thanks to the various online communities of Dolly fans who have been so generous and supportive.

For their continued encouragement of my passion for exploration, research, and writing, I wish to recognize my family. First, thanks to my parents for that Dolly Parton doll when I was three, and to my sister for trading her record player for my horse when I was eight. And to those who’ve endured the past two years living in our very own Dollywoodland: Jaime, my patient and reassuring husband, who spent many late nights reading aloud to me for this project, and daughters Camryn and Kaylee, who’ve let me talk and talk and talk about everything Dolly. I also wish to acknowledge my Grandma Margie, to whose memory this book is dedicated. Not only did she introduce me to Dolly’s music, she instilled in me a love of all music from a very young age. I can hardly remember a time she wasn’t humming, singing, whistling, or yodeling around the house. To her I say, “Here I come a-writin’ at ya!”

Finally, my utmost thanks to Dolly Parton. As silly as it sounds, I cannot recall a time in my life without her. One of my earliest memories is of standing in front of Grandma Margie’s giant Zenith TV and witnessing an angelic creature descending on a swing from the heavens. She stepped down and walked directly toward me. Flashing a warmhearted smile, she began to sing “Love Is Like a Butterfly.” I was mesmerized by the giant wigs, the glitzy clothing, that curvaceous figure . . . everything. But above all this, I was captivated by her storytelling. Dolly sang in such a conversational and intimate manner that I was convinced that she was singing only to me.