NPR Music - Dolly Parton in her own words

Episode Date: August 26, 2026

Dolly Parton was more than just a country music superstar. She was a songwriter for others, a philanthropist, a businesswoman, an actress and more. As a pop icon across seven decades, Parton sat down with a number of NPR hosts to tell the stories of her life and art. In this episode, NPR Music’s Ann Powers takes listeners through a number of those interviews to hear Parton tell her story, in her own words.Want more Dolly? Head to the NPR app’s music tab for a Dolly Parton playlist from our archives. Download the app at npr.org/gettheapp. And read Ann Powers’ remembrance of Dolly Parton here.Support public media with NPR+ and enjoy perks for over 25 podcasts like this one. This show’s perks include bonus episodes and sponsor-free listening. Learn more at plus.npr.org.This episode was produced by Otis Hart, Suraya Mohamed and Noah Caldwell. It was edited by Hazel Cills. Sonali Mehta is the executive director of NPR Music.Image courtesy of the Michael Ochs Archives.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

Until her passing on Tuesday, Dolly Parton may have been the only living person truly worthy of that old-fashioned designation, America's sweetheart. Her huge musical talent guaranteed her top-tier standing and country music and propelled her into a level of mainstream success that only a handful of her peers would match. Her charm, depth, beauty, sense of humor, and radiant goodness made her a star across seven turbulent decades. I'm Anne Powers, NPR Music's critic and correspondent. I live in Nashville. I've been to Dollywood. I've eaten a foot-high piece of Dolly's Pie, and I'm going to miss her something terrible. The tributes are flowing in from all over the world, but in this podcast episode, we wanted to remember Dolly with her own words. NPR is a beautiful. big archive of tape. Many of our news hosts have interviewed Dolly over the years, and we thought

we'd offer a few of the good ones. Just Dolly, telling her stories, in her own voice. Dolly Parton began writing songs when she was just a little girl. In 2001, she spoke with NPR's Scott Simon about how she was basically a singer from birth. When did you first know you could sing? I don't ever remember not singing. I started, my mother's people were very, very musical. and my grandfather was a preacher and a music teacher and a singer of sorts, Pentecostal preacher. So I grew up singing in the church, and I don't remember music not being part of my life. I started to write serious songs when I was seven years old playing the guitar,

started on radio and television at 10. So my mother says that I was always singing. I guess I'm trying to figure out. When did you first know that people were interested in hearing you sing? When I was about seven years old, when I would write all these very serious songs for a seven-year-old kid, and people would take notice. But it was when I was 10 years old and sang on a show up in Knoxville, Tennessee, which was the nearest big town to where I was brought up in the Smokies.

It was called The Caz Walker Show, and they featured a lot of blue grass, a lot of mountain and country music. And the first time I ever went down to sing, my uncle, Bill Owens, my mother's brother, had taken me down there to sing. and I had to sing the song over and over and over. And I was 10 at that time, and I thought, well, I'm just going to be real good at this. And I thought I was going to be a star. Little did I know it was not because I was good, but because I was little. But I believed it, so I kept going.

I just kept going with it. So I was 10 when I really, it dawned on me that this was what I was going to do for the rest of my life. Sitting on the front porch on a summer after. Dolly grew up in Tennessee's Smoky Mountains in a one-room cabin, a location that would inform many of her greatest songs. I loved the Smoky Mountains, and it's a beautiful part of the world. I loved my childhood there. We had hard times. We were very poor people, but there was nothing more beautiful than the mountains and all the things that, you know, just the beauty, just being surrounded by that.

And anytime I can go back when we're doing, you know, Dollywood, I spend as much time as I can, Even when I'm in other places of the world, all I have to do is just close my eyes, and I'm back in the smokies because the smokies are in my heart and on my mind. She grew up as one of 12 kids and very poor, as she described in a 2012 interview. Yeah, I did. But, you know, anywhere you go, people said, well, ain't you afraid you'll starve today? I think you're afraid you're going to go hungry. I said, well, I couldn't be any poor than we've been here.

And I'm not a bad-looking girl. I'm sure I could find a boyfriend to take me to some drive-in restaurant to get to cheeseburger and then probably talking me and getting me one to go. So I figured I wasn't going to go hungry, even if I just had to, we'll date for food, you know, one of those kind of things. And I used to walk through the halls of like the Holiday Inn and a few little hotels around there, and I'd get the food, you know, the people that sit outside their doors, you know, because there's a lot of good food that people throw out, you know, There's nothing wrong with picking up a French fry, even if it's a little cold and soggy, they

touch that. But you do what you got to do. So I may do. I take a bottle of ketchup, make it last forever, make tomato soup and water, mustard soup and water. So I went the whole bit with all that in the early days, but I wouldn't take nothing for it. I wouldn't change it. One of Dolly's biggest hits and a sentimental favorite of mine, the 1971 song, Code of Many Colors, is a compassionate plea that poor people's dignity be respected.

She talked about it with Bob Edwards in the 2002 interview. Even now when I'm up there, I think about how life was then, because I remember time we didn't have electricity in the early days, and I was thinking how far I've come, from no electricity to now to living in this high-tech world that's selling my records as they are in all these. But back then, a lot of people were poor, and you didn't think about it. We just, we made it, we barely made it, but we did make it.

And, you know, we had a lot of stuff that money can't buy anyhow, as I often talk about, things like love and kindness and understand. And we have music. My mother's people were very musical. So that really got us through a lot of hard times. And the fact that on both sides of my family, the Partons and the Owens family, had a great sense of humor. So I think if you have a faith in God, a great sense of humor, and if you've got music, how hard can it be?

So coat of many colors is... Code of Many Colors is a true story. That actually happened. and that happens to be my favorite song. My coat of many colors that my mama made for me. Made only from breaks, but I wore it so proudly. Although we had no money, while as rich as I could be,

in my coat of many colors, my mama made for me. There's just something about that song. takes me back to home. It reminds me of the kind of parents I had and just that country way. And it's got the spirituality and it's got the family in it. And so that's very personal to me. That's all. Like so many Americans, Dolly Harbored dreams of being a performer when she was just a kid, pretending at an early age to be the country superstar she would end up becoming. Here she is telling Neil Conan her childhood dreams on Talk of the Nation. You describe yourself as a young girl, on, I guess, your first stage, your front porch.

Is that where your dream began? Yes. I think it was because as I talked early on in the book about it being a dream that dressed me up when I was ragged and a dream that filled me up when I was hungry. And it's been a dream that, you know, that's carried me all the way through. But I've worked it. But, yes, when I was little, I used to put a tin can on a tobacco stalk, stick it down in the cracks on the front porch.

That was my stage and all the little bitty kids and the animals out in the yard were my, that was my audience. But, you know, to me, I was pretending I was singing, you know, on the grand old opera or just singing, you know, I didn't really even know what all I was doing, except that I felt like I was entertaining because music was a big part of my family, my mother's people especially. But I was dreaming, I was planning, and I was thinking about all of those things. I carried that all way through my life and was dead serious about it by seventh and eighth grade knowing that I was already prepping to go to Nashville and that when I graduated in 1964, that's where I was heading and that's where I went. Dolly started making her dreams real, very young. Her first record was of 45.

On one side was puppy love and the other side was girl left alone, as she told Fresh Air's Terry Gross in 2010. I was about 10 or 11, I think, when I cut that. And that came out on Gold Band Records probably several months or so after that. That was my very first record. And that was a very exciting thing for me the first time I ever heard that played on the radio. It was on a local radio show back home. It never did do anything other than just that it was the first. But it did play locally.

But it was fun. I'll never forget the thrill of hearing myself the first time. on the radio. I thought, well, I've made it now. Of course I hadn't. Could you sing a few bars of one of those songs? Oh, I could sing, puppy love, yeah. Puppie love, puppy love. They all call it puppy love.

I'm old enough now to kiss and hug, and I like it. It's puppy love. It's way it's got one of those silly songs, you know, you pull my pigtails, you make me mad, then you kiss me, make me glad. Sometimes you even make me sad. Still, you're the sweetest sweetheart I ever had. Oh, puppy love, puppy love.

And I was trying to get all those little bebob 50s kind of sounds in there, too. But anyhow, needless to say, it didn't sell much, but it was a start. As a teen, Dolly made the three-hour trip from her small Tennessee hauler to Nashville and fully dedicated herself to her career, not just as a performer, but as a songwriter. So when you were 18 and you took a bus to Nashville, left home, were you hoping to be a performer, a songwriter, both? Yeah, I was going to be all of that. I was going to be everything I could be, but definitely I was going to be a songwriter and a singer.

And that was what I headed out to be, was to be a star. And I vowed that I wouldn't go home until I had something to show for it, and I didn't. But I was very, very homesick. And it was a, well, I actually got real lucky, but it was about a year before I really had enough to show for it to think I could go home. And then I got lucky, too. I had a top ten record on a song called Dumb Blonde, like just because I'm, I'm blonde, don't think I'm dumb, because this dumb blonde ain't nobody's fool. That was my first top 10 record, and I was, I guess that was in about 65, I guess, somewhere in there.

Just because I'm blonde, don't think I'm blonde. So I just knew that that's what I had to do, and that was my destiny. I know now how lucky I was, because I know a lot of people that got there about the same time I did, had twice the talent, still ain't made it. So I know how lucky I've been, and I'm grateful for it every day because I love what I do. We're going to take a little break, and when we come back, we'll hear more of Dolly in her own words. And we're back. The world quickly fell in love with Dolly's sparkly energy and her deep, complex creativity.

She had many hits in the 70s, including the ultimate song about sexual jealousy, Jolene. Here's Dolly talking to Tom Vitale in 2008. One night, I was on stage, and there was this beautiful little girl. He was probably eight years old at the time. And she had this beautiful red hair, this beautiful skin and beautiful green eyes, and she was looking up at me holding for an autograph. And I said, well, you're just the prettiest little thing I've ever seen. I said, what is your name?

And she said, Jolene. And I said, well, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene. I said, that is pretty. I said, that sounds like a song. I wouldn't write a song about that. Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolies, don't take my... Jolene, Jolene is beyond compare. Emerald Green.

Your smile is like a breath of spring. Your voice is soft like summer rain. Jolene. Parton says she got the story for her song from another redhead in her life at the time, a bank teller who was giving Dolly's new husband a little more interest than he had coming. She got this terrible crush on my husband,

and he just loved going to the bank because she paid him so much attention. It was kind of like a running job. between us when I was saying, hell, you're spending a lot of time at the bank. I don't believe we've got that kind of money. So it's really an innocent song all around, but sounds like a dreadful one. Within a few days of writing, Jolene, Dolly also penned what many think is the greatest ballad of the 70s and maybe even the entire 20th century.

I will always love you, came to her after she parted ways with her long, time business partner and mentor Porter Wagner. In a 2010 interview with Fresh Air, she spoke of the song's origins. Well, Porter had the number one syndicated country television show in the country at that time. He had a girl on there for many years named Norma Jean, who had become a very big country star in her own right. And she got married, was getting married, and moving back to Oklahoma City and left the show. And that left the spot.

So Porter was looking for a girl singer. And I had people have been talking about me in town, you know, the new girl in town, and that I had something fishy, dumb blonde, and a couple of other songs. And so Porter had just got way into that, and he'd just called me down to his office for an interview. And so I sat down with my guitar and started singing songs that I'd written. And he was very impressed, and I got the job. And that's how that happened. And then we started doing duets together, which we were very successful.

I was with the show for seven years. Do you remember writing this song and what you were thinking of when you wrote it? Oh, absolutely. I remember that one. That one was about when I was leaving Porter Wagner because I had been with him seven years. I had told him, because, see, I had plans to have a solo career of my own. I hadn't planned to get caught up with another group. But Porter Show was very successful, and it was a thing to do. And when I had told him I would stay, I told him I would stay for a family.

five years because I wanted to go on. But I stayed two years longer, but I kept staying and staying, and I kept wanting to go because I felt like I really needed to go out on my own if I was ever really going to have a solo career. And Porter was dead against it. He wouldn't hear of it, and he had a fit. We fought a lot. There was a lot of problems going on. And no matter how I would try to talk to him to make, I could not make him understand. And I thought, well, why don't you just write a song about him? Just say you appreciate him and you appreciate everything he does and that you'll always love him for everything he's done, that you'll always love him, period. So, I just, out of a broken heart of not being heard or anything,

knowing I had to make major decisions that would ultimately change my life forever and his, for that matter, I wrote that song one night out of great grief and depth and just trying to say the right things to say goodbye. And the song almost gave the young queen of country music her moment with the king of rock and roll, as she told Michelle Martin in 2009. There's a time when you talk about telling people where to put it. There's this famous story about how Elvis wanted to cover, I will always love you. If I should stay, I would only be in you where.

So I'll go. But I know I'll think of you each step of the way. But he wanted you to sign over half the rights, and you refused to do that. Is that story true? That's a true story. My songs are my children, as I say, and I expect them to support me when I'm old. And, you know, it's like my publishing and my songs is what I'm going to leave for my family. And to me, I was building a company that I'd already recorded that song, and I already had it published.

I had 100% of the publishing. And for Colonel Tom to ask me to give up half of a song. They waited, though, till the last day when they were recording, then to spring that one on me, after I'd told everybody Elvis was going to record my song. And I cried. I cried all night about that. And it was such a disappointment. But I thought, no, I'm not giving you people half of my song.

Must have been sweet vindication, though, when Whitney Houston, they covered it years later. It was. I wanted to kiss her. It became another monster hit. I know. It's like when, well, I had the record of it, but it was when, you know, Whitney made it like a world known song. As her superstardom grew, Dolly became known as the nicest woman in show business. But as great hits like 9 to 5 also proved,

she was the ultimate modern woman, too, dedicated to family, friends, and her own success. Her cup of ambition overflowed. Tumble out of bed and he stumbled to the kitchen Pour myself a cup of ambition And yawn and stretch And try to come to life How do you make time to write still

With all that you have going on At the stage of your life? I mean, you've got all these projects And how do you, do you find a quiet place every day to write? I don't just sit down and write songs every day But every day a song comes to my mind And I can be cooking, I can be taking a bath, I can be putting on my makeup,

I always keep a tape recorder so I don't lose a melody that comes to me, or I'll keep a notepad where I'll write down a great idea, a great title. And then when I do get a chance, I, you know, sit down and finish it up. But so many times when I write stuff just comes to me. I have no choice in the matter. It's a way of life with me. It's how I express my feelings. I hope this doesn't come off the wrong way, but you have the reputation of being one of the nicest people

in one of the ugliest businesses there is. And I just wonder how that's possible. Well, you can be decent and you can be successful. That's not to say that people don't get on your nerves. You know, I'm one of those kind of people. I'm, you know, I've got my own thoughts and on my, you know, in my own mind. And I'm definitely one of those people that can tell you where to put it if I don't like where you got it. Like I say, the reason it's never gone to my head is because this is a way of life with me.

This is who I am. This is what I do. I mean, I'm not a star to me. I'm a working girl. And I want to make the money because I want to be able to be there. I want to do the job, first of all, because I love that. But I, of course, want the money, and I'll spend plenty of it on myself, but I want to be able to have the money to if somebody I love or if my family needs me,

that I'll have things for them. Dolly's personal style was as iconic as her music. She fashioned herself as a backwoods Barbie. That's her term. She was decked out in wigs, makeup, and everything. every accessory under the sun. If people were going to objectify her, she would do it first. You've joked that if you were a man, you would have been a drag queen. I always say that it's a good thing. I was a woman, because if I'd have been a man, I would

have been a drag queen, just because I'm so damn gaudy, because I like all the flash and the glitter, and, you know, I just love, you know, just, I love playing in my clothes. I love playing, you know, in my life. It's like I love makeup, I love clothes, and I've got the kind of personality they can pull it off. And I just love what I do. I'm comfortable being myself. Even if I make other people uncomfortable with the way I look, if I'm comfortable with it, then it's okay with me.

How did you first start dressing in that? What's the word I'm looking for? Almost oversized, go-a-over-sized kind of way where if your hair was big, it was going to be real big. Well, I think a lot of that came, from a very serious place. That was a country girl's idea of what glamour was. And when I, you know, I didn't have any money to have stuff,

and I've often joked about it, but it's the real truth that I patterned myself after what they considered the trash in our hometown. There was this one woman I thought she was beautiful. And, you know, she had the peroxide hair, and she, you know, had it all piled up on her head and had red fingernails and red lipstick and, you know, wore her powder. And I just thought she was the prettiest thing I'd ever seen.

And Mama said, I would quit looking at her, she ain't nothing but trash. And I thought, ooh, that's what I want to be when I grow up fresh. So that's where kind of my look came from. And then how the glamour girls and the movie stars and all that, you know, it was really like that. But it was still, you know, I mean, I enjoy it. I still like doing it. And I've always just, it's like when they say less is more, that's not my motto.

Mine is more is more. And the more I can get, the more I want of life and of everything. And it's like, but in addition to me, me being all that God in all. I take my music and my writing very, very serious. And hopefully, people know that my heart is true. And I've always believed that a part of my magic, if there was any, it was the fact that I looked so artificial, but I am so totally real.

And I think when you hear these kinds of songs, I think you know that has to come from the heart. Dolly also had an enormous impact as a philanthropist, starting the imagination library in 1995. I'm going to talk for a minute about what brought you to Washington. and you came to talk about your imagination library. It's a program you created to promote literacy. How did that get to be such a passion of yours? Well, this actually started several years ago because of the kids in my own hometown in Severe County.

Actually, we were just having a local program there to give children a book a month from the time they're born until they started kindergarten. And I actually came up with the idea because of my own family being brought up, as you mentioned, from such a poor family. A lot of my people didn't get an education. And I just saw how crippling that was to so many of my relatives

thinking what great minds they had, but they didn't have the chance to do a lot of things. They would have had they had an education. It was a project inspired by her father, as she told Melissa Block in 2023. My dad was country and the schools were far away. They lived back in the mountains. They had to work in the fields.

They had to work a home. They had to do the stuff to help feed the family and keep that together, and my dad didn't get a chance to read or write. And that bothered him, and that bothered me that it bothered him. So I got this idea to start the program where we give books to children, and so it just grew so fast. What did he tell you about that program, what it meant to him? He just told me he was very proud of me,

and that he felt like I was doing something special. And true, sorry. Hoo, got a little emotional. But anyway, I was proud that he got to be part of something great, and he could feel better about himself. Yeah. Do you want to take a minute? I think I'm okay.

Just get on something else. Yeah, yeah. I open up my door to greet the early morning sun, closing it behind me and away I do run. Dali was our favorite aunt. Our imaginary president, she was a believer in Jesus, in her family, and in her music, but most of all, in the love that can unite us, no matter where we live or who we are. Talking in 2001 to Scott Simon about her father's death, she expressed her faith in musical terms.

You know, I got to tell you, I listen to you singing in the sweet by and by. the line we shall meet on that beautiful shore. Oh, yeah. And I thought about you and your father. Well, thank you. In fact, that's always a song I love. My daddy loved that song. He would always say,

you don't need to be a singing them songs of them old drums and guitars. Your little voice don't need to have to out-sang all that stuff. So he used to love to hear me singing, so I dedicated that to Daddy, and I definitely know that I will meet him on that beautiful shore in the sweet by-and-bye. In the sweet and by.

If you, like us, can't get enough of Dolly. Head to the NPR app's music tab for a Dolly Parton playlist from our archives. Download the app at npr.org slash get the app. This episode was produced by Otis Hart, Saraya Mohammed, and Noah Caldwell, and it was edited by Hazel Sills. Sonali Meta is the executive director of NPR music. I'm Anne Powers. Thank you so much for listening, and thank you, Dolly.

We will always love you.