I’m heartbroken. Dolly Parton has gone.
She was glamorous, hilarious, clever, ambitious, tough and kind. In every sense, she was a LOUD WOMAN.
I have grown up with Dolly. Her music soundtracked my childhood and gave me an early love of country music, storytelling and close harmonies. The older I’ve got, the more I’ve understood just how extraordinary she was – not simply as a performer, but as a songwriter, businesswoman and woman who insisted on living and working on her own terms.
She came from poverty in the Smoky Mountains and built an extraordinary life without ever being ashamed of where she came from. She succeeded spectacularly in a man’s world without allowing the men in it to define her. She took control of her songs, her publishing, her image and eventually her own businesses.
Dolly was punk as fuck.
The wigs, the make-up, the rhinestones and the jokes sometimes allowed people to underestimate what was happening underneath. Dolly knew exactly what she was doing. She understood the value of her work and fought to retain ownership of it. She created an image entirely of her own making and then turned it into one of the most recognisable brands on earth, without losing the humour or humanity that made people love her in the first place.
And what a life’s work she leaves behind.
Decades of songs about women, work, poverty, love, sex, jealousy, heartbreak, family, faith, survival and finding the courage to carry on. Songs that could make you laugh out loud and songs capable of absolutely destroying you. Her characters were complicated, funny, flawed people, and she wrote about them with enormous empathy.
Her legacy stretches far beyond music. She created jobs and prosperity in the Tennessee mountains she loved, put hundreds of millions of books into the hands of children through the Imagination Library, and repeatedly used her success to make other people’s lives better.
I’ve just come home from Tennessee, where I was writing about Dolly’s music only a few miles from the two-room cabin where she grew up with her parents and eleven siblings.
I drove along Dolly Parton Parkway. I stayed on Jolene Way. I rode every rollercoaster at Dollywood and ate the famous cinnamon bread in the name of serious research. Most importantly, I spent time looking out at those astonishing Smoky Mountains and understanding just a little more about the landscape that shaped her imagination.
What struck me most was how completely Dolly is woven into that place. The people we spoke to at Dollywood talked about her with an affection that felt personal rather than rehearsed. They were proud of her.
Had her health been better, there was a possibility I might have been able to meet her while I was there. I’m devastated that I didn’t.
But somehow, now, it feels enough to have been there at the end. To have breathed that warm mountain air, seen the places she wrote about and witnessed how deeply loved she was by the community she never stopped giving back to.
I went to Tennessee hoping to find Dolly.
I found her everywhere.
Thank you for the songs, the stories, the laughter, the generosity, the rhinestones and the example you set for generations of women who came after you.
We will always love you. ❤️
Cassie Fox
Founder, LOUD WOMEN
