She speaks of her looks as “bizarre,” “artificial,” and “ridiculous.” As a child, Dolly Parton says she saw a “lady tramp,” to put it politely, around town, and her mother said the woman was “trash.” Dolly says, “I wanted to be like that woman.” And that’s how she became Dolly Parton.
Songwriter Linda Perry says in the documentary Here I Am that there are two dollies, and the inner dolly knows what she owes to the outer. On a talk show, the hostess asks sternly if she isn’t afraid of being taken for a joke. “The joke turns against the one who makes it. I can change my appearance whenever I want.”
She was born in Tennessee, the fourth of twelve children, and as a teenager she wrote songs for the family because there was no cinema or television. She had her first appearances in 1956. At eighteen she went to Nashville and a day later married a truck driver. You are still married. None of the session musicians who have their say here have ever seen him.
Dolly appeared on Porter Wagoner’s show, country music’s Rudi Carrell, and made duet records with him. He claims she wrote “I Will Always Love You” in 1974 because he told her she always sang about daddy’s shoes and mom’s cooking pots. She says “I Will Always Love You” was her departure from Porter Wagoner.
She has been making solo records since the early 1970s, writing fantastic songs like “Coat Of Many Colors”, “The Bridge” and “Jo lene”. She moved away from country music. “Here You Come Again” became a pop hit in 1977. In 1980, Jane Fonda produced the film 9 To 5 and hired Dolly Parton to play a secretary opposite Lily Tomlin. Parton insisted on writing the theme song — using her fingernails to mimic typing. 9 To 5, both the film and the song, became box office hits.
“We’ve never seen her without her makeup,” says Jane Fonda. “She always wore her wig in the morning.” A woman on a TV show asks how she does her hair. – “Honey, I’ll buy them ready made.”
Whitney Houston’s version of “I Will Always Love You” made Dolly Parton very wealthy. She bought the family’s old cabin in Tennessee: “Sometimes a woman wants to pee off the porch.”