With a career spanning six decades and comprising 50 albums, there’s no denying that 11-time Grammy winner Dolly Parton has shaped country music.
However, as the Jolene hitmaker celebrates her milestone 80th birthday, it’s not just her 3,000-strong, $120million music catalogue that we’re honouring.
With three Emmys, 100m record sales, and two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame to her name, you could forgive the Queen of Country for a smidge of arrogance – she’s earned it.
But that’s not Dolly.
Instead, her legacy will be one of generosity, humility, and compassion, having continually proven that it’s not only cool to be woke at any age, but philanthropy is the beating heart of everything she does.
In the days leading up to her big 8-0, the 9 to 5 songstress (with a net worth of $650m) only further cemented her status as music’s greatest gift giver, releasing a reimagined version of her life-affirming 1977 tune Light of a Clear Blue Morning.
Featuring goddaughter Miley Cyrus, Lainey Wilson, Queen Latifah, and Reba McEntire, she called the version a reminder that, in troublesome times, ‘we can’t let the darkness win’.
And irrespective of her own recent health woes, which sparked concern as she was forced to push back her Las Vegas residency, Dolly continues to put others first, donating net proceeds to pediatric cancer research at Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt in Nashville, Tennessee.
‘As I celebrate my 80th birthday, this new version is my way of using what I’ve been blessed with to shine a little light forward,’ declared the beloved entertainer.
Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital has long been a recipient of Dolly’s selflessness, making life-saving treatment possible for young patients via funding for groundbreaking trials.
And anyone who knows anything about Dolly will understand how second nature charitable acts are to her, which will undoubtedly pave the way for budding country artists hoping to carry the torch once she’s gone.
Since the mid-1980s, Dolly has devoted herself to various causes. While she now sells a wide range of products that bear her name – from makeup and wine to cookbooks and even dog accessories – the profits aren’t just lining her denim pockets.
Most notably, Dolly has been a force for change in children’s education, motivated by the fact that her own father never learned to read or write.
Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library mails free books to children from birth until they begin school, operating in the UK, Ireland, Canada, and Australia, as well as the US.
To date, more than 200m books have been sent out worldwide, with one in 10 children in the USA under five enrolled in the scheme. Across the pond, the likes of North Lincolnshire have received over 800k books.
Furthermore, through the Dolly Parton Scholarship, she awards a $15,000 college scholarship to five seniors in Sevier County each year. And, in the early 90s, Dolly established the Buddy Program to personally offer students who graduate $500, reducing dropout rates for 7th and 8th graders from 35% to 6%.
I believe that God didn’t mean for me to have kids so everybody’s kids could be mine, so I could do things like the Imagination Library
Beyond education, Dolly has been instrumental in aiding victims of disasters in rebuilding their livelihoods.
She helped raise $13m for those impacted by the 2016 East Tennessee wildfires before founding the My People Fund, which provided $1k a month for six months to families whose homes were destroyed. To this day, the initiative helps residents fund rent, utilities, food, and mental health support.
The performer’s Smoky Mountain businesses raised a further $700k for victims of Middle Tennessee’s catastrophic flooding in 2021.
Furthermore, Dolly has defied many of her conservative country music counterparts who have expressed scepticism around vaccines.
Following the Covid-19 pandemic, while Eric Clapton peddled conspiracy theories, she donated $1m to Vanderbilt University to fund the Moderna jab. Professor Naji Abumrad, whom Dolly befriended in 2013 after his car accident, said her donation made research toward the vaccine ‘go 10 times faster’.
But it’s not just music and money that have made Dolly a healer.
While beloved for her empowering, emotionally charged songwriting, she’s just as eloquent outside the recording booth, throwing solidarity behind Black Lives Matter, LGBTQ+ protections, and women’s rights. She’s also basically an honorary drag queen.
‘If you’re gay, you’re gay. If you’re straight, you’re straight. And you should be allowed to be how you are and who you are. We’re not God, we’re not judges, we’re supposed to love one another, we’re supposed to not judge,’ she said.
She stays out of politics, but the ‘human element’ is what Dolly does best.
‘I’ve got transgender people. I’ve got gays. I’ve got lesbians. I’ve got drunks. I’ve got drug addicts — all within my own family. I know and love them all, and I do not judge.’
This unconditional understanding is a testament to Dolly’s humble beginnings.
One of 12 siblings, she was raised in a small two-room log cabin with no electricity or running water, yet never considered herself ‘poor’, having felt rich in everything money can’t buy.
Dolly has remained loud and proud about those values for eight decades, even when displaying them hasn’t been popular.
Inherent racism has long been woven into the fabric of country music and used as a marketing tool to perpetuate falsehoods about the genre belonging only to white, rural southerners.
For Dolly, though, the amusement park owner makes it clear where she stands – and that’s ‘unequivocal in [her] support’ of protesters against injustice.
‘I understand people having to make themselves known and felt and seen,’ she told Billboard in 2020:
‘Do we think our little white a**es are the only ones that matter? No!’
She solidified her allyship once more by acknowledging that she, too, is guilty of ‘innocent ignorance’.
Consequently, Dolly renamed her Dixie Stampede diner attraction as ‘The Stampede’, having discovered the word’s racist connotations, two years before Dixie Chicks also rebranded.
‘As soon as you realise that [something] is a problem, you should fix it. Don’t be a dumba**. That’s where my heart is. I would never dream of hurting anybody on purpose.’
So, in short, whether it be breaking Guinness World Records by topping the charts, becoming the largest employer in her home county, opening a bald eagle sanctuary, or buying her own clothes ‘off the rack’, Dolly’s goodwill and modesty know no bounds.
And in an age of Kanye West, Rihanna, Taylor Swift, and Beyoncé all claiming billionaire ranking, perhaps what Dolly will be most remembered for is that, despite how she easily could’ve been one too, she never was.
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