Remembering Dolly Parton: 10 Surprising Things, and What She Meant to Nashville
- Paul Whitten
- 1 day ago
- 6 min read
By Paul Whitten, Founder of Nashville Adventures
Some mornings you wake up and the whole city feels different. This is one of them.
Dolly Parton died on August 25, 2026, at eighty years old, at the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center right here in Nashville. She had been facing cancer quietly, the way she faced most hard things, without asking anybody to make a fuss. Now the woman who did more for this town than almost any single person alive is gone, and Nashville is not quite sure what to do with the quiet.
I have walked visitors past the Ryman a thousand times and told her story on nearly every tour. So let me tell it one more time, the right way. Here are ten things that might surprise you about Dolly Parton, and then a few honest words about what she meant to Nashville, to Tennessee, and to us.
10 Surprising Things About Dolly Parton
She got to Nashville the day after high school graduation. In 1964, the morning after her Sevier County ceremony, Dolly climbed on a bus with a cardboard suitcase and a paper bag of dirty laundry and rode straight into Nashville. She met Carl Dean, her husband of nearly sixty years, that very afternoon outside the Wishy Washy Laundromat. She showed up with nothing but songs and nerve.
She said no to Elvis, and it made her a fortune. In 1974, Elvis Presley wanted to record "I Will Always Love You." The night before the session, Colonel Tom Parker called and demanded half the publishing. Dolly cried all night, then told him no. She kept that copyright in her pocket, and when Whitney Houston cut the song for The Bodyguard in 1992, it reportedly earned Dolly somewhere around ten million dollars.
That clicking in "9 to 5" is her fingernails. Listen to the top of the record. The little percussion track you hear is Dolly tapping her acrylic nails together like a tiny typewriter. The song went to number one and earned an Academy Award nomination, played in part on an instrument she was born with.
She once lost a Dolly Parton lookalike contest. Dolly slipped into a lookalike contest full of drag queens, played up her own beauty mark and her own big hair, and came in dead last. "They thought I was some short little gay guy," she laughed about it later. Nobody knew the real thing was standing right there, that is Dolly in a nutshell.
She has given away more than 300 million books. Her Imagination Library, launched in 1995, mails a free book every month to young children from birth until they start school. She built it because her own father never learned to read. It is now the largest program of its kind on earth, running across five countries. You can read about it at Dolly Parton's Imagination Library.
She helped fund a COVID vaccine. In 2020, Dolly quietly gave a million dollars to Vanderbilt here in Nashville, money that helped fund the early research behind Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine. She did it in honor of a friend and barely mentioned it out loud. Millions of people owe a piece of their health to a country singer from Locust Ridge.
She wrote around 3,000 songs. Not recorded. Wrote. Dolly is one of the most prolific songwriters in American history, and she famously wrote "Jolene" and "I Will Always Love You" close together, two of the most covered songs ever, out of one small stretch of work.
She made a rock album at 77. When the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame nominated her in 2022, Dolly first tried to bow out, saying she had not earned a rock nod. Then she changed her mind, accepted the honor, and went and recorded a full rock record called Rockstar to live up to it. That might be the most Dolly thing she ever did.
She is Miley Cyrus's godmother. The Nashville family tree runs deep. Dolly was close to the Cyrus family and served as godmother to Miley, one of a long line of younger artists she chose to lift up instead of compete with.
She built an economy in her own backyard. Dollywood, the park she opened in 1986 up in Pigeon Forge, grew into one of the largest employers in her home county and a big reason the Smoky Mountains pull in millions of visitors a year. She turned the holler she grew up in into steady work for her neighbors. You can see it for yourself at Dollywood.
What Dolly Meant to Nashville
Nashville makes stars and then sometimes forgets to thank them. Dolly was different, because Dolly never forgot us either.
She recorded on Music Row when it was still a row of old houses. She played the Ryman Auditorium when the pews were hard and the air conditioning was a rumor. She stood on the Opry stage as a nervous girl and stood on it again as a legend, and both times it moved her to tears. Every songwriter who ever carried a guitar down Sixteenth Avenue was walking a road she helped pave, and our own songwriting history is richer for it.
"Dolly Parton leaves behind a legacy that will shape lives for generations to come. Through her talent, generosity and unwavering belief in others, she inspired people around the world to dream bigger and live with joy." (via Nashville Mayor Freddie O'Connell, WSMV)
When people ask me what Nashville really is, I do not point at the neon on Broadway. I point at Dolly. Small town kid, enormous dream, worked like the devil, gave every bit of it back. That is this town at its very best.
What Dolly Meant to Tennessee
Tennessee has given the country presidents, generals, and more musicians than any one state has a right to claim. Dolly outshone all of them, and she never once acted like she had outgrown home.
She was born the fourth of twelve children in a one room cabin on the Little Pigeon River, up in Sevier County, and she never pretended she came from anywhere else. When the mountains needed her, she came running. After the 2016 wildfires tore through Gatlinburg, she started a fund that sent monthly checks to every local family that lost a home. This week Sevier County lowered its flags and declared a day of mourning for its most famous daughter, and you will not find a soul up there who thinks that is too much.
"Find out who you are, and do it on purpose." (Dolly Parton)
That was her whole philosophy in eight words. A poor girl from the Smokies decided exactly who she was going to be, then spent sixty years being it on purpose, in rhinestones, in front of the entire world.
What Dolly Parton Meant to Nashville Adventures
Here is where I get personal.
We are a small, veteran-owned tour company. We are not the Opry and we are not a record label. But every single day we make our living telling the story of this city, and you simply cannot tell the story of Nashville without telling the story of Dolly Parton.
She is in our walking tour when we pass the old studios. She is in the songwriter stories we tell on the sidewalk. She is the name we reach for when a visitor from the other side of the world asks who really matters here. Our whole company exists because people fall in love with Music City, and more of them fell for it through Dolly than through anyone else who ever lived here.
She also modeled the one thing we try hardest to live up to. She gave back, and she made it look like the most natural thing in the world. We hand one percent of every dollar we earn to veterans and scholarships, and Dolly is the patron saint of that idea. She proved you can build something enormous and stay kind the whole way up.
Come Walk Her Nashville With Us
The best way to honor Dolly is the way she would have wanted. Come see this city. Hear its stories. Let a little of it get into you.
If you find yourself in Nashville in the days ahead, we would be proud to show you the Music City she helped build. You can book a tour with Nashville Adventures any time, and we will save a Dolly story for the sidewalk.
Rest easy, Dolly. We will always love you.
