WHEN DOLLY LEAVES THE ROOM
Dolly Parton, Gen X, and the Passing of an Era
There comes a point in every generation when you begin to truly understand the passage of time.
Sometimes it happens through birthdays. Milestones. Children growing up. Numbers attached to ourselves that don't quite match the person we still see when we look in the mirror.
And sometimes it happens when someone who has seemingly been there for your entire life suddenly isn't.
This morning was one of those mornings.
Dolly Parton died.
And this one hurts.
Not only because Dolly is gone, but because her passing feels like another piece of the world I grew up in slipping from the present into history.
The First Dolly I Remember
Image: Dolly Parton. Source: Harper's Bazaar
The first time I remember seeing Dolly Parton, I was a little girl.
Back then, we had this wonderful thing on television called the variety show.
There were weekly shows and enormous television specials hosted by some of the biggest entertainers in the world. Singers sang. Comedians performed sketches. Actors wandered through. There were dancers, bands, musical numbers and celebrities you knew alongside people you were meeting for the first time.
For those of us growing up before YouTube, streaming and social media, this was one of the ways the entertainment world introduced itself to us.
You didn't search for someone.
Sometimes they simply appeared in your living room.
And somewhere in that wonderful television mixture, Dolly Parton appeared in mine.
Now, I wasn't particularly into country music.
My father had a taste for it, so while Earth, Wind & Fire and Stevie Wonder regularly rang through our house, every once in a while Glen Campbell would wander through singing “Wichita Lineman.”
And yes.
I was subjected to Hee Haw.
We all have childhood trauma. 😂
So country music wasn't completely foreign to me.
But then there was this woman.
Dolly Parton.
The hair.
My God, the hair.
The clothes.
The makeup.
The voice.
And this fascinating little song called:
“Jolene.”
When you're a child, you don't necessarily understand what the grown-ups are singing about.
I certainly didn't understand the emotional complexities of a woman pleading with another beautiful woman not to take her man.
Infidelity?
Romantic insecurity?
Adult relationships?
Whatever.
I knew the important part.
Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene...
I loved that chorus.
I loved her voice.
And I couldn't stop looking at her.
For a little while, I suppose I thought:
Is this what country music looks like?
I would eventually discover the answer.
No.
That wasn't what country music looked like.
That was what Dolly looked like.
There was a difference.
Then Came 9 to 5
Image: Jane Fonda, Dolly Parton and Lily Tomlin, 9 to 5. Source: The hollywood Reporter.
My Dolly education paused there for a while.
I was discovering music at an increasingly frantic pace. Rock and roll was beginning to pull me in. There were records to find, bands to investigate and an entire musical universe opening in front of me.
Dolly remained somewhere in the cultural orbit.
Then came 9 to 5.
And suddenly I saw her differently.
Dolly walked into that movie alongside Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin carrying the persona we'd already come to recognize.
She didn't leave Dolly behind to become a movie star.
She brought Dolly with her.
And she was wonderful.
Doralee Rhodes could have been nothing more than the stereotypical beautiful blonde secretary. Instead, Dolly turned all of the assumptions people already made when they looked at her into part of the character.
People underestimated Doralee.
People underestimated Dolly.
That was usually their mistake.
Then there was the song.
“9 to 5.”
That opening rhythm mimicking the clacking of a typewriter, famously created with Dolly's acrylic fingernails, became instantly recognizable. The song crossed musical boundaries, reaching No. 1 on both the Billboard Hot 100 and country chart and earning Dolly an Academy Award nomination.
This wasn't simply a country record anymore.
Everybody knew that song.
And everybody seemed to know Dolly.
Dolly Goes to Hollywood
The movies continued.
The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.
Rhinestone.
And eventually one of my favorites:
Steel Magnolias.
Image: Cast of Steel Magnolias, Sally Field, Shirley MacLaine, Olympia Dukakis, Daryl Hannah, Julia Roberts and Dolly Parton. Source: Rookie Mag.
Think about that cast for a moment.
Sally Field.
Shirley MacLaine.
Olympia Dukakis.
Daryl Hannah.
Julia Roberts.
And Dolly Parton.
That is a room filled with formidable women.
And Dolly belonged in it.
She had this wonderful ability on screen to be funny without becoming a joke. Warm without becoming syrupy. Larger than life while somehow still feeling completely accessible.
Truvy felt like somebody you might actually know.
That became one of Dolly's gifts.
The woman looked like she had arrived from another planet entirely constructed from rhinestones...
and somehow still felt like your neighbor.
Wait. She Has an Amusement Park?!
Image: Dollywood entrance. Source: Wikipedia
Then came one of those wonderful adult discoveries.
Dollywood?
What the what?
😂
Dolly Parton had an amusement park?
Of course she did.
But when I learned more about it, I discovered something important about the woman behind the spectacle.
Dollywood wasn't simply another celebrity slapping her name on something.
Dolly partnered with an existing Tennessee attraction in 1986, and part of her motivation was bringing jobs and tourism to the region where she had grown up. The enterprise became an enormous economic presence in East Tennessee.
That was when another Dolly began emerging for me.
Not the singer.
Not the actress.
Not the woman with the hair.
The woman who gave back.
And she kept doing it.
The More You Learned About Dolly...
One of the remarkable things about Dolly Parton was that the more you learned about her, the more interesting she became.
Take the Imagination Library.
Image: Dolly Parton and Imagination Library. Source: Dollyparton.com
Dolly started the program in 1995 in her home county in Tennessee. Her inspiration was deeply personal: her father couldn't read or write.
The idea was wonderfully simple.
Give children books.
Put books into their homes before they even begin school.
The program grew far beyond Tennessee and eventually began sending millions of free books to young children every month across several countries.
As a writer, I can't help but love that.
A woman who built so much of her life with words decided one of the ways she wanted to leave the world better than she found it was to put words into the hands of children.
And that generosity became part of the Dolly story.
She made money.
She built businesses.
She became extraordinarily successful.
And then she repeatedly asked:
What can I do with it?
And Somehow, We're Back to the Variety Show
Then television brought the story around again.
Remember how I first encountered Dolly?
The variety-show world.
Eventually, the variety show came knocking at her door.
Dolly hosted her own television variety programs, first with the syndicated Dolly! in the 1970s and later with ABC's big-budget Dolly in the late 1980s.
Image: Dolly! Source: Wikipedia
The woman I first remembered appearing inside that strange mixture of television entertainment had become big enough to build the mixture around herself.
And that's when you realize how difficult Dolly became to categorize.
Country singer?
Absolutely.
But also pop.
Movies.
Television.
Business.
Philanthropy.
Comedy.
Songwriting.
Dolly moved through all of it.
She belonged to country music.
But somehow...
she belonged to everybody.
And She Never Stopped
This may be the part I admire most.
Dolly kept going.
She got older.
Of course she did.
So did we.
But she never seemed particularly interested in allowing age to decide whether she was still invited to the party.
In 2023, at 77 years old, Dolly Parton walked onto the field during the Dallas Cowboys Thanksgiving halftime show dressed in a sparkling version of a Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders uniform.
Image: Dolly Parton at the Dalls Cowboys' halftime show 2023. Source: Yahoo!
At 77.
Because apparently Dolly Parton had looked at the concept of age appropriate and decided:
Nah.
😂
She sang “Jolene.”
She sang “9 to 5.”
Then she sang Queen.
Because of course she did.
You could see that time had caught up with her.
Why wouldn't it?
But she was still there.
Still performing.
Still Dolly.
And then came one of my favorite late-career Dolly moments.
Apparently Dolly Parton Is a Rock Star Now
In 2022, Dolly Parton was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
Yes.
The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
And Dolly initially tried to withdraw her nomination because she didn't believe she'd earned the right to be called a rock artist.
Think about that for a second.
This woman had spent decades crossing virtually every boundary the entertainment industry could construct, and her response was essentially:
Well, I don't know if I've earned that one.
The Hall disagreed.
Dolly eventually accepted.
But apparently simply accepting wasn't good enough.
So she walked onto the stage in leather, picked up an electric guitar and performed a newly written rock song called “Rockin'.”
Then she decided that if everybody was going to call her a rock star, she'd better make a rock album.
😂
And the following year, at 77 years old, she released Rockstar.
Image: Dolly Parton. Rockstar. Source: NBC News.
She brought friends.
Paul McCartney.
Ringo Starr.
Elton John.
Stevie Nicks.
Sting.
Ann Wilson.
Pat Benatar.
Debbie Harry.
Rob Halford.
And yes...
Joan freaking Jett.
Dolly apparently looked at the history of rock and roll and said:
Y'all busy?
😂🤘
She wasn't interested in simply becoming a museum exhibit of her own career.
She was still making things.
Not Today
Then, more recently, something changed.
There were rumors about Dolly's health.
She was sick.
She had been hospitalized.
Was she dying?
For a couple of days, fans seemed to collectively hold their breath.
Then Dolly appeared.
She reassured everybody.
She joked that she “ain't dead yet.”
And we exhaled.
Not today.
I think that's what many of us felt.
Not today.
We weren't pretending Dolly would live forever.
But we weren't ready.
She was still Dolly.
She was still working.
She was still making plans.
So...
not today.
But little by little, we saw less of her.
Performances were postponed.
Appearances were canceled.
She acknowledged that health problems were preventing her from performing the way she wanted.
And the reality became harder to ignore.
Dolly was aging.
That shouldn't have been surprising.
But it was sad.
Because when somebody has been part of the cultural landscape for nearly your entire life, there is a strange little part of you that expects them to remain there.
And somewhere beneath all that relief after the health scare was the thought nobody particularly wanted to say aloud.
Someday, “not today” would become today.
Today it did.
And I wasn't ready.
When the People Who Built Your World Begin to Leave
That's what I'm sitting with today.
Of course I'm sad that Dolly Parton is gone.
But there's something else underneath it.
It feels like another piece of an era has gone with her.
When I write Rock ’n’ Roll Angel, I spend a lot of time talking about rock.
The records.
The concerts.
The guitar players.
MTV.
The ridiculous hair.
The songs that can still trigger an involuntary response forty years later.
But rock and roll wasn't happening by itself.
Neither were we.
There was soul.
R&B.
Country.
Disco.
Pop.
Movies.
Television.
Comedy.
Variety shows.
All of these things were happening simultaneously, spinning around one another inside the cultural world in which Gen X grew up.
And every once in a while, someone became bigger than whichever little corner of that universe had produced them.
Dolly Parton was one of those people.
You didn't have to listen to country radio.
You didn't have to own her records.
You didn't have to know anything about Nashville.
You knew Dolly.
She became one of the columns holding up the cultural roof of an era.
And when one of those columns disappears, you notice the space it leaves behind.
When Dolly Leaves the Room
Maybe that's one of the hardest things about growing older.
The world doesn't disappear all at once.
It leaves a little at a time.
A television show ends.
A favorite place closes.
A record store disappears.
Something that once seemed enormously important becomes a trivia question.
And eventually, the people who created the soundtrack of your youth begin leaving too.
Another voice becomes a recording.
Another face becomes an old photograph.
Another piece of your present becomes history.
Today it was Dolly.
And I find myself thinking about that little girl sitting in front of the television all those years ago.
She doesn't understand what “Jolene” is about.
She doesn't know anything about songwriting or Nashville or Dollywood or Hollywood or philanthropy or Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductions.
She just knows there's this woman on television.
That voice.
That hair.
Those clothes.
That face.
That chorus.
And she wonders:
Is this what country music looks like?
No, sweetheart.
Turns out it wasn't.
That's what Dolly looked like.
There was only one of her.
And for most of my life, she was somewhere out there in the world.
Singing.
Acting.
Writing.
Building.
Giving.
Laughing.
Wearing rhinestones.
Making another plan.
Becoming something else while somehow never becoming anything other than herself.
Today, Dolly left the room.
And the room feels different without her.
But what a room she helped build.
What a life.
What a legacy.
And damn.
Weren't we lucky to have her. ❤️
Sources & Further Reading
Dolly Parton — Official Life & Career A strong general source for Dolly's biography, career milestones, early television work, awards and evolution from Tennessee performer to international entertainer. Dolly Parton: Life & Career
Dolly Parton — Music & Career Legacy Useful for the broader claim that Dolly crossed genre boundaries, her Country and Rock & Roll Hall of Fame memberships, Rockstar, and the scope of her recording career. Her official site reports more than 100 million records sold worldwide. Explore Dolly's Music & Legacy
Dolly Parton's Imagination Library This is an especially important one for the article. Dolly founded the program in 1995, inspired by her father's inability to read and write. Her official site reports that it grew to span five countries and distribute more than 2 million free books each month. Dolly Parton's Imagination Library
Dolly Parton — Awards & Milestones Good supporting material for the enormous breadth of her cultural career. It includes her major awards and honors and helps substantiate our larger point that Dolly eventually transcended the category of simply “country singer.” Dolly's Awards & Milestones
Songwriters Hall of Fame I actually like including this because songwriting gets a little overshadowed by Dolly's gigantic personality. She was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2001, and she considered songwriting fundamental to who she was. Dolly and the Songwriters Hall of Fame
Rock & Roll Hall of Fame — Dolly Parton This is the one I'd use for the Rock Hall section: her 2022 induction, her initial hesitation about accepting the nomination because she didn't consider herself a rock artist, and the wonderful next chapter that eventually led to Rockstar. Dolly Parton at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame
Thanks for taking this trip back with me.
What do you remember? Were you there too, or did this story bring back a memory of your own? I’d love to hear it. Share your stories in the comments, and if this made you smile, laugh, cringe, or turn up an old favorite song, share it with someone who remembers too.
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Until next time...
Keep the memories alive. Keep the stories coming. And whatever you do... turn it up.
— Dr. AY Heath (Angel)
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