There’s a Heart Beneath the Boobs and a Brain Beneath the Wig: Dolly Parton, 1946-2026

We just loved her. Dolly Parton was earthy and honest and kind and talented. She wrote “Jolene” and “I Will Always Love You” on the same day. I don’t often cry at celebrity deaths, even when they hit me deeply. But I’m tearing up at the loss of Dolly Parton. She’s one of those people who I suspect could have been a billionaire had she not so freely given money away. I’m shaken in a way I can’t fully express despite the fact that it’s literally my job here to express myself in words. This is how I felt when Jimmy Carter and Fred Rogers died, that forces of pure goodness has left us.

Parton was born very poor. She herself called it dirt poor. She was the fourth of twelve. Her mother was in poor health—well, eleven pregnancies including a set of twins will do that to you. Her father was illiterate but, Parton said, incredibly smart and business savvy. Her mother had incredible musical talent. She said she inherited strengths from both of them that propelled her far above where she’d come from.

Her family mattered to her, and we were all her family. She had no children, but she took care of her younger siblings, and she adopted their children and grandchildren. Miley Cyrus was her goddaughter. And she created the Dolly Parton Imagination Library, which has given books to millions of children around the country. Unfortunately my children aged out of it before it was available here, but it would be a great idea if we could expand it in her name and also make it nationwide. Clearly it was a tribute to her father, and I wonder if Parton was considering the heights he could have reached if he could have read.

She was unmistakably herself. She was open about the work she’d had done and about wearing wigs. She followed the advice Johnny Cash gave her when she was thirteen and made her own choices for her career. She sang the songs she wanted to sing. She acted when and where she wanted to act—she gave up on movies after the movie Straight Talk, apparently, because it was difficult acting and she found TV acting easier. And she kept singing and kept encouraging new musicians and my Gods her cover of her own “Jolene” with Pentatonix is fantastic.

We loved her. All of us. I’m not sure anyone didn’t. Even if you didn’t love her music. She was a good, kind, supportive, loving woman. I’m not sure anyone had a bad experience with her. She would apparently go to Dollywood without the makeup and rhinestones and wig and have fun without being recognized—and with her beloved husband, Carl Dean, who died last year. She kept her private life with him private, and he supported her at home while she made the world better for all of us. Gods bless her.