It was in late spring of 1964, just a day after graduating from high school, that a diminutive farm girl packed her belongings and bade farewell to the life she had known in the Smoky Mountains of rural Tennessee. Her destination? Nashville, the mecca of country music. She left behind the two-bedroom cottage where she had lived with her parents and eleven siblings, carrying little more than a dream and the audacious belief that she could make something of herself.
Like most people who dare to pursue improbable dreams, Dolly Parton wandered through a period of uncertainty, chasing fame and fortune while occasionally wondering whether she had made the right choice. Then, three years later, her fortunes changed dramatically. Country music star Porter Wagoner invited the twenty-one-year-old Dolly to become the “girl singer” on his immensely popular, nationally syndicated television program, The Porter Wagoner Show.
Wagoner recognized something in Dolly that others had not yet fully appreciated and gave the young singer what was, at that stage of her career, an invaluable gift: a national platform. Dolly repaid his confidence with exceptional songwriting, musicianship, charisma, and stage presence. Together, they became one of country music’s most memorable partnerships.
But Dolly was never destined to remain someone else’s “girl singer.” Before long, the protégé was emerging as a formidable artist in her own right. In 1974, after seven years on the program, she decided it was time to leave. To articulate what she was feeling, she wrote Porter a song: “I Will Always Love You.” What began as a deeply personal farewell would decades later become one of the most recognizable songs in popular music when Whitney Houston transformed it into a global phenomenon.
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Porter did not receive Dolly’s departure graciously. Their relationship soured, and he eventually sued her for breach of contract, seeking $3 million in damages. The dispute was ultimately settled out of court for $1 million, which Dolly paid in installments because she did not have the means to satisfy the obligation in a single payment.
Yet Dolly never allowed that painful episode to erase her gratitude. She understood that Porter had been instrumental in giving an obscure young woman from the Tennessee mountains her first major opportunity. She refused to allow one difficult chapter to obliterate all the chapters that had preceded it.
Some people become famous because they master the art of giving the world precisely what it wants. She gave the world Dolly, unfiltered and unapologetic, adorned in rhinestones, crowned with towering hair, and wrapped in extravagant femininity. Beneath all the glitter, millions of people recognized something far more enduring: authenticity.
She embraced towering hair, extravagant makeup, acrylic nails, plunging dresses, impossibly high heels, and rhinestones. She also openly acknowledged her cosmetic procedures. People mocked her appearance and questioned why any woman would deliberately cultivate such an exaggerated image. Dolly’s response was simple: She liked it. She famously quipped that it costs a fortune to look this cheap.
But of all the glitz, glamour, fame, and fortune associated with Dolly Parton, one quality elevated her above many of her contemporaries: her extraordinary humanity and almost inexhaustible instinct to find people in distress and do something meaningful to alleviate their suffering. In November 2016, devastating wildfires swept through Sevier County, Tennessee, the very region where Dolly had been born and raised. Fourteen people died, and thousands of structures were destroyed or damaged. Dolly did not merely issue a statement of sympathy. She acted.
Within forty-eight hours, Dolly and the Dollywood Foundation established the My People Fund. Families whose primary residences had been destroyed or rendered uninhabitable were promised $1,000 every month for six months. Ultimately, 921 families benefited.
Then there was the song. When Whitney Houston recorded “I Will Always Love You” for The Bodyguard in 1992, she transformed Dolly’s composition into something almost otherworldly. Because Dolly had retained her songwriting and publishing rights, Whitney’s extraordinary success generated enormous royalties for Dolly, reportedly about $10 million in the 1990s alone. What Dolly did with that fortune is one of the most touching footnotes in music history.
She purchased a substantial office and studio complex in a predominantly Black neighborhood in Nashville and gave the property a name that was both humorous and deeply affectionate: “The House That Whitney Built.” Dolly recognized that Whitney’s community was also her community.
That instinct to give rather than merely accumulate was evident again in her relationship with Porter Wagoner. Decades after their partnership had dissolved acrimoniously, Porter found himself in serious financial difficulty. The IRS was pursuing him for unpaid taxes, and he began selling his assets to address his debts. Among them was a publishing catalog containing songs he had accumulated over the years.
Dolly purchased the publishing company that owned Porter Wagoner’s songs, providing him with desperately needed financial relief. Then she did something extraordinary: She gave the company back to him. She understood how much those songs meant to Porter and wanted him, and ultimately his children, to have them. That is vintage Dolly Parton.
There are countless other examples of her generosity. Through her Imagination Library, she has promoted childhood literacy on an extraordinary scale, providing free, high-quality books to children from birth to age five regardless of their families’ financial circumstances.
When Dolly partnered with the Herschend family in 1986, the existing Silver Dollar City attraction in Pigeon Forge was transformed into Dollywood. Her motivation was not merely commercial. She wanted the world to discover the beauty of the Smoky Mountains she had loved since childhood while creating meaningful employment and economic opportunity for the people of her native community.
In more ways than one, Dolly’s story has always felt strangely familiar to me. I, too, grew up among eight siblings in a small village tucked away in the hinterland of Eastern Nigeria, where we lived largely from the harvest of the family farm. Like Dolly’s hometown, it was a place where dreams could sometimes appear impossibly distant, yet somehow remained within reach.
After coming to America, I spent considerable time working in the coal country of Appalachia, a rugged and beautiful part of the country that bears more than a passing resemblance to the Smoky Mountains where Dolly was born and raised. Perhaps that is why her story resonates so deeply with me.
Dolly Parton did not merely escape poverty. She transcended it without becoming ashamed of where she came from. She did not abandon her people when success arrived. She went back for them.
Success can make a person famous. Wealth can make a person powerful. But neither necessarily makes a person generous. Dolly Parton managed to become all three while remaining recognizably human.
We are forever grateful for the love, laughter, music, generosity, and humanity you shared with the world. Now that you have your wings, we wish you all the best as you join the rest of Heaven’s Angels. There will never be another Dolly Parton, and we will always love you.
Osmund Agbo is a pulmonary physician.
