{"id":813,"date":"2026-08-27T04:12:31","date_gmt":"2026-08-27T04:12:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cityflowjournal.com\/?p=813"},"modified":"2026-08-27T04:12:31","modified_gmt":"2026-08-27T04:12:31","slug":"dolly-parton-head-of-the-country-class","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cityflowjournal.com\/?p=813","title":{"rendered":"Dolly Parton: head of the country class"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

The mountains spoke to Dolly Parton. Growing up in the deep green forests and dark hollers of East Tennessee, she listened to the rhythmic song of the whippoorwill, the steady rise and fall of her father\u2019s ax as he chopped wood, and the hushed rustling of the wind through the red maple leaves. In those sounds, she heard songs. \u201cEverything was music to me,\u201d she said. \u201cEven the katydids, or if somebody was hammering on the other side of the hill at a sawmill, I\u2019d start writing a song with that rhythm.\u2026 Everything is a song to me.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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Dolly, who left her family\u2019s two-room log cabin on Locust Ridge to pursue a career in songwriting in Nashville the day after her high school graduation, shared the sounds of the Appalachian mountains with the world. \u201cI\u2019m the only person that ever left the Smoky Mountains and took them with her,\u201d she told Knox News in 2023. Her sweet mountain soprano and uncanny gift as an American songwriter made her a star in Nashville. But her fierce, unyielding commitment to her mountain heritage made her Appalachia\u2019s own patron saint.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It was not uncommon, as Dolly was rising to fame, for \u201chillbilly\u201d culture to be misjudged if not mocked outright. Rather than join the madding crowd, she used the qualities that defined her \u2014 her flamboyant sense of style, her razor-sharp wit, and her country girl\u2019s charm \u2014 to bring Appalachian culture into the mainstream. One of the clearest examples of this came in her 1977 primetime interview with Barbara Walters.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cDolly, where I come from, would I have called you a hillbilly?\u201d Walters asked.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIf you had, it would have probably been very natural,\u201d Dolly answered, \u201cbut I would have probably kicked your shins or something.\u201d She gave the broadcaster a disarming giggle.<\/span><\/p>\n

Walters pressed: \u201cBut when I think of hillbillies, am I thinking of your kind of people?\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI think you probably are,\u201d Dolly said. \u201cWe\u2019re the ones that you would consider the L\u2019il Abner people, Daisy Mae\u2026 they took that sort of thing from us.\u201d Dolly was referring here to Al Capp\u2019s mid-20th-century comic strip, which profited from and deepened rural tropes. \u201cWe were very proud people,\u201d Dolly continued, \u201cpeople with a lot of class \u2014 it was country class, but it was a great deal of class.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In later years, Dolly expressed pride in her hillbilly roots. \u201cI mean, we were really Hill. Billies. To me that\u2019s not an insult,\u201d she told <\/span>Southern Living<\/span><\/i> in an interview. \u201cWe were really redneck, roughneck, hillbilly people. And I\u2019m proud of it.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Dolly\u2019s music came from a place of deep and abiding empathy. And with it, she gave voice to the America that exists outside of the cultural centers. In her songwriting \u2014 or \u201csongtelling,\u201d as she called it \u2014 she resisted simplistic stereotypes, instead creating richly developed characters drawn from the people and experiences of her own childhood. She wrote, in the great American literary tradition, of eccentrics (\u201cThese Old Bones\u201d), recluses (\u201cJoshua\u201d), nomads (\u201cGypsy, Joe and Me\u201d), and prostitutes (\u201cA Gamble Either Way\u201d). She wrote also of orchard keepers and banjo pickers (\u201cApplejack\u201d) and of the mountain doctor and minister who delivered her, accepting a bag of cornmeal as his payment (\u201cDr. Robert F. Thomas\u201d).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In interviews, she said that, among the roughly 3,000 songs she\u2019d written during her career, \u201cCoat of Many Colors\u201d was her favorite. She penned the song in 1969 while touring with Porter Wagoner, scrawling the lyrics onto the back of a dry-cleaning receipts. The song tells the tale of childhood innocence and humiliation. In winter, as the first cold was setting in, Dolly\u2019s mother Avie Lee Parton stitched a coat from bits and pieces of fabric. As she worked, she told Dolly the Biblical story of Joseph and his magnificent coat. The child\u2019s joy and contentment turned to shame when, at school, she was met by the jeers of her classmates. In the end, the song becomes a parable about spiritual wealth.<\/span><\/p>\n

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But they didn\u2019t understand it
\n<\/span><\/i>And I tried to make them see
\n<\/span><\/i>That one is only poor
\n<\/span><\/i>Only if they choose to be
\n<\/i>Now I know we had no money
\n<\/span><\/i>But I was rich as I could be
\n<\/i>In my coat of many colors
\n<\/i>My momma made for me
\n<\/i>Made just for me<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Dolly often spoke of her father Robert Parton \u2014 who had no formal education and was not able to read or write \u2014 as the smartest man she had ever known. He had what Dolly called \u201chorse sense,\u201d meaning he had a kind of rural street smarts. He was skilled at bargaining, bartering, trading, valuing crops, and managing Parton family finances. \u201cI always thought that if Daddy had an education,\u201d Dolly wrote in <\/span>Songteller<\/span><\/i>, \u201cthere\u2019s no telling what he could have been.\u201d What he lacked in schooling, he made up for in hard work. Dolly wrote the song \u201cDaddy\u2019s Working Boots\u201d as a study in labor as an expression of love.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Daddy\u2019s workin\u2019 boots have served as his foundation
\n<\/i>Though just like him, they\u2019re tired and worn
\n<\/span><\/i>For years, they\u2019ve helped him stand
\n<\/span><\/i>Daddy\u2019s working boots have filled their obligation
\n<\/span><\/i>They\u2019ve walked that rocky road with a mighty, mighty man<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

It was her father who inspired Dolly Parton\u2019s Imagination Library, a literacy nonprofit that has donated more than 300 million books to children across the world since its launch in 1995. \u201cI told him,\u201d Dolly wrote, \u201c\u2018Daddy, there are probably a million people in this world who don\u2019t know how to read and write.\u2026 Don\u2019t be ashamed of that. Let\u2019s do something special.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Dolly spoke of her own tender-heartedness as a kind of super power. She believed, fundamentally, in the goodness of people, and when she could, she would step in to help, in the way of the ancient mountain matriarchs. \u201cYour earth wisdom, your toil and love gave us food, clothing, and shelter,\u201d Virginia folk artist Fred J. Carter wrote in the poem \u201cAppalachian Mother,\u201d which seems to capture her. This is Dolly\u2019s most enduring legacy.<\/span><\/p>\n

Following the 2016 wildfires in Eastern Tennessee, she established the My People Fund, raising more than $12.5 million total for families who lost their homes. During regional flooding in 2021, she helped raise $700,000 to support those who were affected. Then, in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, she personally donated $1 million to Tennessee-based nonprofit the Mountain Ways Foundation. Her charitable organizations and enterprises donated another $1 million, making the total donation $2 million.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

At Dollywood, the celebrated theme park in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, fans are gathering this week to mourn the songbird\u2019s passing, leaving homemade butterflies and other momentos. Back in 1986, at the park\u2019s grand opening, Dolly announced: \u201cI feel like today is the first time I really got to come home, because I have dreamed for many years of getting to come back, of bringing something back so you folks would know that I\u2019m as proud of you as you\u2019ve always been of me.\u201d Today, the park is Sevier County, Tennessee\u2019s biggest employer. In many ways, Dollywood is Dolly\u2019s ideal of Appalachia, what it would be if she could remake it from the inside out, without poverty or pain or sorrow. \u201cDon\u2019t you feel proud when you\u2019re there?\u201d a friend once asked me. \u201cDon\u2019t you feel proud of who you are?\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In love and gratitude, from one mountain girl to another \u2026 thank you Dolly, for making us proud of who we are.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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The mountains spoke to Dolly Parton. Growing up in the deep green forests and dark hollers of East Tennessee, she listened to the rhythmic song of the whippoorwill, the steady rise and fall of her father\u2019s ax as he chopped wood, and the hushed rustling of the wind through the red maple leaves. In those […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":812,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-813","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"yoast_head":"\nDolly Parton: head of the country class - \u0421ity Flow Journal<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/cityflowjournal.com\/?p=813\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Dolly Parton: head of the country class - \u0421ity Flow Journal\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The mountains spoke to Dolly Parton. 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