Dolly Parton has existed in almost ever era of music, being around since the ’50s. She was just 10 in her first musical appearance on the Cas Walker radio show in 1956.

According to Dolly, she was backstage at the show when she walked right up to him and said “she wanted to work for him“. Walker couldn’t say no to her.

Trying to stay fit on the road isn’t easy, especially for Dolly who has “tight-ass clothes” to fit into for her shows. She admits to staying low-carb while on the road:

“I have to stay on a low-carb diet when I’m on the road because my show clothes are so tight and I can’t afford to gain like I used to in the past. I just cheat on holidays and special days and then eat the things I really love.”

There is a story going around regarding the song, but Parton never worried about someone stealing her man. The popular “Jolene” was inspired by a girl with the same name who asked for Parton’s autograph.

When Parton asked for her name, a lightbulb went off:

I said, “Well that’s just about the prettiest name I ever heard. I’m gonna write a song about you and if you ever hear it, you’ll know it was about you.”

Dolly isn’t always on her max level when she’s not on tour. She actually likes to recharge and shut down for a little while:

“I have this other side to me that’s very quiet. Sometimes I can go a whole day without saying anything. But I’m not a different person – I’m just a little quieter.”

Since Dolly’s been performing for so many years, it’s only natural that she has tons of costumes, and especially wigs. Vogue even asked for the exact number, and Parton couldn’t even count:

“Oh, heavens, I have no idea. I can’t really count them all. I always make a joke and say, “I wear one almost every day, so I must have at least 365!”

Billy Ray Cyrus and his “Achy Breaky Heart” reached star status thanks to Parton. According to Cyrus, Dolly was the one person in Nashville who believed in him:

“I probably wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing without her. Keep in mind, she was there in 1992 when I went from living in my Chevy Beretta to recording my first album. Pretty soon after that, I was opening her shows!”

Dolly gives back to the community by heading an organization that mails out a book to kids ages 5 and under every month. The books are chosen by Parton, and anyone who signs up can receive one regardless of income level.

The organization is called the Imagination Library. She discussed the organization with Forbes, saying:

“Even if you’re not able to afford to go to college, if you can read, you can find out about any subject that you’re interested in. And if a book is comin’ to the mailbox every month and it’s got your name on it, then you’re gonna find someone to help you read it to you.”

There are many stories of Dolly’s collections. Beauty products and personal mementos, tales of an underground bunker fpr her dresses, and even stories of a personal tour bus bathtub abound. Which is sort of true.

During a European tour, a reporter from The Guardian saw Dolly’s bath thanks to her manager. On the bus tour, the manager showed a “ceramic hollow in the floor, two feet deep, not much larger than a washing-up bowl.”

Before going on tour, Dolly cooks a lot of food at her house. She puts them in freezer bags then brings it on her bus. Parton eats home-cooked meals as much as possible:

“I do cook for a week before I go on tour. So I put stuff in the freezer, so we’ll have great country food if we don’t have what I want in all the places we stop.”

Dolly, for all her success throughout the decades, is still very much in touch with modern artists. In an interview with Digital Spy, she shared that her song “Head Over High Heels” is all about Adele. She says:

“I love her, love her, love her! I would love to do something with her. Maybe write a song? Maybe do a duet? So pass that word along!”

Parton also wants to work with Justin Timberlake.

Dolly has had a long connection with Billy Ray, so it was only right that she was named the godmother of country-turned-pop star Miley Cyrus. Parton once called Cyrus “a little Elvis.”

When Parton hit it big in country music, she bought a truck for her dad and a Cadillac for her mom. And she still has the Cadillac:

“I bought my mama a Cadillac. That went back to me when Mama passed on. I wouldn’t take nothing for it. My husband drives it a lot. Because it was Mama’s car, and I still drive it some, I call it the ‘Dolly-Mama.’ Everybody knows not to mess with the Dolly-Mama, because that was such a precious thing. I was always so proud that I could do for my family when I started making some money.”

Dolly’s father banned his daughters from wearing lipstick, so they thought of ways around the rule. Dolly and her sisters rubbed Mercurochrome, an antiseptic, on their lips.

“I’d paint my lips and see there wasn’t nothing Daddy could do. He couldn’t rub that off. It stained your lips and those little bitty bottles [were] just perfect to go around your lip line. Then I would do that and I would blot it off and Daddy, he’d say, ‘Come here get that lipstick off you!’ I’d say, real calm, ‘It’s my natural color, Daddy.'”

Parton says she couldn’t have spent six decades writing, recording, and performing hit music if she had children. The guilt of being absent would make her give up her dream. But she does think about what could have been:

“My husband and I, when we first got married, we thought about if we had kids, what would they look like? Would they be tall – because he’s tall? Or would they be little squats like me? If we’d had a girl, she was gonna be called Carla… Anyway, we talked about it, and we dreamed it, but it wasn’t meant to be. Now that we’re older? We’re glad.”

Parton married once, and 50 years later, she’s still happy with her husband, Carl Dean. Dean stays out of the limelight. He didn’t care that she didn’t change her stage name:

“You know what, my passport is Dolly Parton Dean. I sign a lot of my contracts Dean. I didn’t change names [publicly] because I already had a record deal. It made no sense. He never asked me to.”

Parton wanted country music stardom at a young age, so she skipped college and went straight to Nashville, not even waiting until her diploma was on the wall to leave.

Parton’s first day in Nashville was like something out of a movie:

“I just couldn’t believe the day I got here. I thought, “I’m here. I’m really here. I’m really here forever. I’m here to live and to be part of it.”

After her song “Travelin’ Thru” was released on the soundtrack for Transamerica, Parton received threats from angry “fans.”

Dolly’s hit “I Will Always Love You” had Elvis himself ask if he could cover the song. It would have been huge for Parton, but it came with the condition that Elvis would be eligible to receive 50% of the royalties, in perpetuity.

Ever confident and a tad bit suspicious, Dolly rejected the request and made more money a couple of decades later when Whitney Houston took a shot at the song.

It first seemed like Dollywood was created as an excuse to celebrate the Church of Dolly. The theme park and museum in Pigeon Forge, TN, actually provided jobs to the low-income area of Tennessee. The area where Parton was raised.

Parton’s keen business sense turned Dollywood into the largest employer in Sevier County.

Many of Dolly’s songs speak of her childhood poverty. She allegedly grew up “dirt poor” in the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee. Dolly was one of 12 children in a one-room cabin which had no electricity or running water.

It was a poor community so her father reportedly paid the doctor who delivered her with a bag of oatmeal.

The secret to their 50 year marriage is time apart. Rumors of affairs have circulated for decades, pairing Parton with everyone from Burt Reynolds to Sylvester Stallone but she insists that she’s just a flirt:

“I love to flirt, and I’ve never met a man I didn’t like… Men are my weakness. Short, fat, bald or skinny – I’ve had crushes on some very unusual men but Carl knows I’ll always come home and I’m not having affairs with these people – I’m just flirtin’ and having fun.”

The couple have a stable, loving marriage considering she spends half the year away on tour. Carl stays home managing his farm and his paving business in Tennessee.

They met when Dolly was only 18, and she says, “I think Carl will always see me the way he did when we first met, just as I do him. We’ll never be old to each other.”

A Playboy interview from 1978 had Parton sharing the fact that she had to share a bed with her brothers and sisters when she was growing up. And that she woke up every day to one of them wetting the bed:

“The kids peed on me every night. There were so many of us. We slept three and four in the bed. I would wash every night, and as soon as I go to bed, the kids would wet on me and I’d have to get up in the morning and do the same thing. [But] that was the only warm thing we knew in the winter time. That was almost a pleasure – to get peed on – because it was so cold. Lord. It was as cold in the room as it was outside.”

Dolly donated $1 million to Vanderbilt University in Tennessee in April 2020 for coronavirus research. “I felt like this was the time for me to open my heart and my hand, and try to help,” she said.

Pharmaceutical company Moderna announced promising results in its trial for a COVID-19 vaccine in November 2020. Parton’s donation helped support development, with the preliminary report for the vaccine published in The New England Journal of Medicine saying, “the Dolly Parton COVID-19 Research Fund (Vanderbilt University Medical Center)” as a supporter of the study.

The rumors of Dolly entering a look-a-like contest and losing have been around for a long time, but to hear it from her makes it even more amusing:

“They had a bunch of Chers and Dollys that year, so I just over-exaggerated – made my beauty mark bigger, the eyes bigger, the hair bigger, everything. All these beautiful drag queens had worked for weeks and months getting their clothes. So I just got in the line and I just walked across, and they just thought I was some little short gay guy. I got the least applause.”

Rumors of Dolly being covered in tattoos under her long-sleeved gowns is sort of true. She does have tattoos, mostly dedicated to her husband, but they served to hide unsightly scarring from her various cosmetic surgeries:

“I do have a few little tattoos, but they were mostly done to cover scars because I’m so fair…So it started with that.”

In 1986, Dolly Parton co-created Sandollar Entertainment with Sandy Gallin, the company that produced all episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. That includes the original movie from 1992. Sandollar executive Gail Berman saw potential and proposed launching Buffy as a series even though the film tanked.

Parton is uncredited, but fans think that Buffy Summers’s birthday, January 19, is a tribute to the country singer herself.

Listen to Dolly being interviewed, as usual she brings smiles and laughter!