Before she was a global icon wrapped in rhinestones and towering blonde wigs, Dolly Parton was a girl from the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee who wore the clothes her mother patched together with little more than love. She sang in “Coat of Many Colors” — one of her early career country hits — that a coat forged with love held a wealth not found in gold, but in acceptance, resilience and compassion.
She spent the next seven decades of her unmatched career in American entertainment taking that lesson with her, touching countless hearts with the humble tolerance usually expected of figures like saints and doctors. She wore her humanity much like that famous coat, embracing every hue of the human experience.
While millions mourn the loss of the glittering star, Parton’s true legacy exists beneath the ubiquity of her celebrity. Behind the self-deprecating jokes and record breaking sales, Parton consistently leveraged her immense power to make the right, human choices. Choices that lifted the scorned into the embrace of generosity and forbearance that her many-colored coat taught her in the beginning.
Not to mention her outsized impact across American life and culture, Parton has been recognized with innumerable awards and nominations. They include 10 Grammy Awards from 55 nominations, an Academy Award from 2 nominations, Kennedy Center Honors and inductions into the Country Music Hall of Fame and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
She’s been honored by the state of California with Senate Bill 931, passed September 2, recognizing September 25 as Dolly Parton Day. The date “9/25” playing on the sparkling Appalachian songbird’s famous single “9 to 5” from the film of the same name.
Beyond her musical talent, Parton was an accomplished philanthropist, businesswoman, actor and author.
Following the success of her ventures across American and global entertainment, Parton created the nonprofit Dollywood Foundation in 1988, which operates scholarships, awards programs and provides support to numerous other nonprofit organizations.
The organization is best known for the Imagination Library, a program that sends a free book to a registered child every month until they turn 5. The program, as with much of her philanthropic endeavors, was a project born from her humble Appalachian roots.
“That came from my own daddy, who couldn’t read and write … I can get out and work endlessly on that charity that I love because it’s personal to me,” Parton said.
That homegrown compassion scaled globally, never losing its community-forward focus. The program provides books to registered families in Alameda County in cooperation with the Housing Authority of the County of Alameda. More than 182,000 children are registered in California.
In an entertainment industry often dictated by public relations optics and the fear of conservative backlash, Parton’s loyalty to her employees and friends was unwavering.
For over three decades, Parton was chauffeured and assisted by Jason Pirro. In the 1980s, Pirro underwent gender-affirming surgery, transitioning to a man. Parton knew about his identity and treated him with warmth and respect. In July 1990, the tabloid Star attempted to manufacture a scandal, splashing an exploitative “sex change shocker” headline across its cover to out Pirro.
In an era of zero transgender visibility, associating with a trans person could’ve been career suicide for a mainstream country star. Parton didn’t flinch, instead of distancing herself to protect her brand, she held her ground, refusing to fire him.
Pirro himself remained unbothered, telling the tabloid, “Dolly has been good to me … Dolly knows all about me and is a very nice lady.” Transgender community publications at the time, like Lou Sullivan’s FTM Newsletter, quickly reclaimed the story, preserving it as rare proof of a major star’s acceptance.
Decades later, Parton continued to recognize Pirro publicly, thanking him for his love and attention to detail in the liner notes of her 2016 album “Pure & Simple” and her 2023 book “Behind the Seams.” She joked in her memoir that everything she knew about sex-change operations, she learned from “my friend Jason.”
When anti-trans legislation swept her home state of Tennessee, Parton’s ethos remained consistent.
“I try to get into the human element of it,” she told The Hollywood Reporter in 2023. “I have some of everybody in my own immediate family and in my circle of employees. I’ve got transgender people. I’ve got gays. I’ve got lesbians. I’ve got drunks. I’ve got drug addicts … I know and love them all, and I do not judge”.
“I Will Always Love You”, “Jolene” and “9 to 5” are a few of the many jewels of songwriting and performance that Parton imparted to the world. Parton was a self-described “songwriter first,” and once said, “I actually take my songwriting more serious than anything else I do.”
After Whitney Houston recorded her version of “I Will Always Love You” in 1992, the record went on to achieve a Diamond certification from the Recording Industry Association of America, representing 10 million sales in the United States.
As the sole writer on the song, Parton reportedly earned upwards of $10 million in royalties from Houston’s transcendent record.
Rather than hoarding the royalties, Parton made a conscious choice about where that capital should go. She took the millions generated by a Black pop icon and reinvested them into Nashville’s Black community.
Parton purchased an office complex in a historically majority-Black neighborhood in Nashville, Tenn., aiming to support the surrounding local community and stimulate the area’s economy. Those offices reportedly house part of her Nashville-based business empire.
She referred to the property as “the house that Whitney built,” turning her astute business sense into a lasting economic footprint for a historically marginalized neighborhood. It was an act of wealth redistribution long before that became a buzzword, rooted in deep respect for the woman who had elevated her song to the stratosphere.
Her first single to chart was 1966’s “Dumb Blonde,” where she croons “Just because I’m blonde don’t think I’m dumb, ‘Cause this dumb blonde ain’t nobody’s fool.” She spent the rest of her long career proving those words.
No one learned that lesson more acutely than Porter Wagoner, the fellow rhinestone-clad country star who recruited Parton for The Porter Wagoner Show in 1967, providing her the platform that helped launch her career.
Their iconic partnership ultimately suffocated Parton, who yearned for creative control. When she left his show in 1974 to focus on her solo career — writing “I Will Always Love You” originally as a goodbye piece to him — the professional breakup was bitter.
Wagoner, who owned nearly half of her publishing company Owepar and held a massive financial stake in her career, retaliated in 1979 with a $3 million breach of contract lawsuit, seeking a permanent cut of her life’s earnings. The legal battle estranged them for years.
However, time and financial ruin eventually caught up to Wagoner. Years after his show went off the air, Wagoner faced severe financial difficulties, including crippling IRS debt, which forced him to sell off his music catalog to survive.
Parton, who’d by then conquered the pop charts and Hollywood, purchased the catalog. The woman he’d sued for millions now owned his life’s work. In a decision representative of the grace that defined her character, she did not keep it. Parton gifted his entire music catalog back to him, free of charge. The act of forgiveness ensured that her former mentor, and his family, retained control over his musical legacy and financial security. Parton reportedly visited Wagoner’s deathbed near the end of his life.
It was the manifestation of her most famous lyric. She didn’t just sing “I Will Always Love You,” she embodied it through her radical acts of empathy — whether aimed at marginalized communities who needed it most, or her longtime adversary to whom she owed nothing. Parton’s deep well of love never ran dry. Her rainbow coat of tolerant kindness eternally beneath the rhinestones.
Dolly Parton was married to her seldom-seen late husband, Carl Dean, for 59 years, and is remembered by her family in the video that announced her death as their “Sis, Sister, Aunt Granny and Gigi.” Bryan Seaver, Parton’s nephew and the spokesperson for the Parton and Owens family in that video, said that she “opened doors for her entire family to reach the potential we didn’t even know was possible.”
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TOP PHOTO: Dolly Parton performing at the Grand Ole Opry on Sept. 24, 2011. Parton has performed at the venue more than 100 times. (Photo by Timothy Wildey)
Daniel High is the managing editor for The Express. Follow him on Instagram @danielhigh05.
