Dolly Parton known as the Queen of the Country Music. Here are some interesting Dolly Parton facts
1- Dolly Parton’s Born Name is : Dolly Rebecca Parton Dean
Parton’s middle name comes from her maternal great-great grandmother, Rebecca (Dunn) Whitted (1861–1930)
Born January 19, 1946 on a farm in Sevier County, Tennessee, Dolly is the fourth of twelve children.
2- Dolly made her first guitar at age 7, but Uncle Bill did give her her first real guitar not long after.
2- At 13, she was recording (the single “Puppy Love”) on a small Louisiana label, Goldband Records, and appeared at the Grand Ole Opry, where she first met Johnny Cash, who encouraged her to follow her own instincts regarding her career
3-Dolly is Obsessed with Butterflies
Reportedly, Dolly Parton loves collecting anything related to butterflies. She has such a deep love for them, that she even named her 1974 album, ‘Love is
4- Dolly’s first two hits as a songwriter were co-writes with Uncle Bill– Bill Phillips’s “Put It Off Until Tomorrow,” and Skeeter Davis’ “Fuel to the Flame.
5- She has garnered nine Grammy Awards, two Academy Award nominations, ten Country Music Association Awards, seven Academy of Country Music Awards, three American Music Awards, and is one of only seven female artists to win the Country Music Association’s Entertainer of the Year Award. Parton has received 47 Grammy nominations.
6- She’s a prolific songwriter
Dolly might be known for her over the top image but she’s also a very serious songwriter, who’s estimated to have written over 5,000 songs. Other than her hits ‘Jolene’ and ‘9 to 5’, she was also the writer and original singer of ‘I Will Always Love You’ which Whitney Houston covered for the Bodyguard soundtrack.
By age 10, Dolly was performing on local television and radio shows in nearby Knoxville, Tennessee. “I always wanted to be a star. It just seemed natural to me,” she said. “Making music is all I’ve ever known.”
7- Parton’s Hometown Has a Statue in Her Honor
Dolly grew up a stone’s throw from Dollywood, Sevierville, Tennessee. Between stimulating tourism and her philanthropy, she has given a lot back to her hometown.
Sevierville residents returned that appreciation with a life-sized bronze Dolly that sits barefoot, beaming, and cradling a guitar, just outside the county courthouse. The sculpture made by local artist Jim Gray was dedicated on May 3, 1987.
8- Dolly has a few tattoos
There’s a long standing rumour that the reason you never see Dolly Parton’s arms is because she’s actually covered in tattoos! However Dolly has denied this, but admitted that she does have “a few little tattoos”, which were mostly done to cover scars.
9- She turned down Elvis Presley
Long before Whitney covered ‘I Will Always Love You’, the King himself wanted to have a go at the song. However Presley also wanted half of the publishing rights and Dolly refused. Always a smart business woman, she decided she’d rather keep her royalties than have Elvis record a song that she’d already made a hit.
10- She has her very own theme park, Dollywood – but she’s never been on any of the rides
‘I have motion sickness,’ the singer once explained. ‘I could never ride some of these rides. I used to get sick on the school bus.’ Pass the bucket.
The state’s number one tourist attraction, Dollywood was selected by the theme park industry as one of the top three theme parks in the world in 2006.
11- Dolly the Sheep was named after her
Yep, that little lamb – the world’s first cloned mammal – got her name from the busty country singer. Quizzed about the choice, scientist Ian Wilmut said, ‘Dolly is derived from a mammary gland cell, and we couldn’t think of a more impressive pair of glands than Dolly Parton’s.’
12- Dolly’s Playboy Cover
It comes as no surprise that Dolly would be picked to feature on Playboy’s cover, but she put a spin on the feature. Instead of stripping down, Dolly decided to
wear a bunny costume for the cover of 1978. Sorry folks, if you thought you were going to see Dolly Parton naked – it just ain’t gonna happen. Under no circumstance was Dolly ever going to show her goods, she still looks pretty hot though.
13- PARTON IS A MEGA SUPPORTER OF LITERACY.
In 1995, she founded Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library with the goal of encouraging literacy in her home state of Tennessee. Over the years, the program—built to mail children age-appropriate books—spread nationwide, as well as to Canada, the U.K., and Australia.
14- She has 41 career top 10 country albums, a record for any artist, and she has 110 career charted singles over the past 40 years.
15- She ‘does films’ too, y’know
Dolly has channeled her inner thespian in various TV shows and movies, including 1980’s 9 to 5 (for which she wrote and recorded the title track, too), hit 80s chick flick Steel Magnolias and, more recently, Gnomeo and Juliet, in which she appeared in animated gnome form.
https://youtu.be/hNa_4Ns6TqM
16- Her siblings are also musicians.
Parton’s sisters, Stella and Freida (above) have had singing careers as well as Rachel Dennison. Her brother Randy and sister Cassie star in Dollywood show ‘My People’ along with her nieces.
17- Her Family Was So Poor They Paid the Doctor with a Bag of Oatmeal
Many of Dolly’s songs (including her hit “Coat of Many Colors”) revolve around her childhood poverty. Dolly grew up “dirt poor” in the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee as one of 12 children in a one-room cabin with no electricity or running water. Her community was so poor, her father reportedly paid the doctor who delivered her with a bag of oatmeal.
18 – She Grew Up in a One Room Cabin in Rural Tennessee
Parton was born into a Pentecostal, church-going family with music playing a huge role as she grew up. Her first performances were in the church playing a homemade guitar. Parton and her family lived in a one-room cabin in the Great Smoky Mountains. She sang about her childhood in the song “In the Good Old Days (When Times Were Bad).”
19- She Received Death Threats for Her Support of LGBT People
Well Hello Dolly
This seems absolutely bonkers, but after releasing the song “Travelin’ Thru” on the soundtrack for Transamerica, Parton (a gay began to receive death threats from religious zealots with an axe to grind.
This wasn’t the first time Parton received threats, either. The KKK also sent the singer death threats after her amusement park, Dollywood, participated in an LGBT event called Gay Days.
Luckily, she hasn’t let the hate stop her from living her life, or for supporting the LGBT community.
20- She entered a Dolly Parton Look-A-Like Contest. And lost.
Parton “over-exaggerated” her usual appearance, but she was not as convincing as the “beautiful drag queens [who] had worked for weeks and months getting their clothes. They just thought I was some little short gay guy,” she recalled.
21- She was voted the Country Music Association Female Artist of the Year two years in a row.
22- . In December, 2006 Dolly was honored by the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts for her lifetime of contributions to the arts.
23-. In June 2007 Dolly was named the recipient of the prestigious Johnny Mercer Award from the Songwriter’s Hall of Fame.
24- She has known her best friend (Judy Ogle) since third grade.
“We still just have a great friendship and relationship and I love her as much as I love anybody in the whole world,” Parton said to ABC News in 2012.
25- Her first crush was Johnny Cash.
Parton first saw Cash when she was a young teen singing at Nashville’s Grand Ole’ Opry. She recalled to Nightline, “I was sitting in the audience and that’s when I first knew about sex appeal. He had this tick when he moved his shoulder… and it was still sexy. It still got to me.”
26- Dolly Recreated Her Childhood Home
Dolly grew up in a family with 11 other siblings! They were raised in a small house in the mountains of Tennessee and didn’t have neither electricity nor indoor
plumbing. After Dolly rose to fame, she hired her brother Bobby to help restore the house to the way it looked when she was a child, but this time, with electricity and plumbing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolly_Parton
https://b93.iheart.com/onair/conrad-920/24-weird-and-charming-facts-about-15065720/#ixzz4eslDInVN
https://www.tworeddots.com/view/30-fun-facts-about-dolly-parton/?experiment=243&page=14
My older sister and I grew up loving and listening to Dolly Parton all the time while in the car driving to school. It’s amazing to learn that she has her own theme park, and it was chosen as one of the world’s top 3 theme parks 14 years ago. I think that my sister and I would love to look into visiting the Dolly Parton theme park someday for a girls’ trip.
https://www.usalife.tech/2023/04/28-amazing-facts-about-dolly-parton.html