Can’t believe she’s gone.
The legendary Dolly Parton, one of the most (and maybe only) universally beloved people left in not only country music but also in our country, passed away today at the age of 80 after battling recent health issues.
Dolly had recently provided an update on her health after missing a planned appearance at Dollywood:
“I’ve told you before, all my fans, that I’ve had a few little health issues, and sometimes, I get a little dizzy, and I get dehydrated, and I’m dehydrated. …
So all is going well on the medical end of things, and I continue working away on all of our other projects, like the SongTeller hotel and my Life of Many Colors museum here in Nashville, and the Broadway Musical in New York, and that is taking a lot of time.”
Throughout the course of her illustrious career, Dolly released 50 studio albums and charted 25 #1 hits on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart. In addition, she released 13 collaborative albums with Porter Wagoner, as well as 9 live albums and 6 soundtrack albums.
Known for her incredible songwriting that often drew heavily from her life growing up poor in East Tennessee, Dolly leaves behind a rich catalog of hits like “Coat of Many Colors,” “I Will Always Love You,” “Jolene,” “9 to 5,” and “Here You Come Again.” But as legendary as she was for her music, she may have been equally iconic for her signature look.
Dolly never shied away from her plastic surgery or her large blonde wigs, which she said was inspired by…a local prostitute:
“I kind of patterned my look after the town tramp. I didn’t know what she was, just this woman who was blonde and piled her hair up, wore high heels and tight skirts, and, boy, she was the prettiest thing I’d ever seen. Momma used to say, ‘Aw, she’s just trash,’ and I thought, ‘That’s what I want to be when I grow up. Trash.'”
The Queen of Country Music was so iconic that her look inspired not only impersonators and drag queens. In fact, Dolly herself once entered a Dolly Parton lookalike contest – and as it turns out, she didn’t even win.
While promoting her 2013 memoir, Dream More, Dolly told ABC in an interview about the time she entered a drag queen celebrity impersonator contest in Los Angeles… and lost.
Upon entering, she obviously didn’t reveal her true identity, and ended up getting beaten out by a real drag queen who’d spent months preparing to take the stage as Dolly:
“They had a bunch of Chers and Dollys that year, so I just over-exaggerated… made my beauty mark bigger, the eyes bigger, the hair bigger, everything.”
It’s hard to even imagine a more exaggerated version of Dolly, but it sounds like she pulled out all the stops for this contest.
And if you can even believe it, she said she got the least applause out of everyone in the contest, too:
“That’s what was funny because all these beautiful drag queens had worked for weeks and months getting their clothes… and they were dressed like me.
So I just got in the line and I just walked across, and they just thought I was some little short gay guy, and I got the least applause. But I was just dying laughing inside.”
Of course, Dolly was only 5 feet tall, and even though she had heels on, I’m sure she looked tiny compared to all the other guys in the contest who also had on heels.
That’s what was so iconic about Dolly though: She had a good laugh about it, and always embraced her signature exaggerated look, ever confident in who she was regardless of what others thought.
We’ve lost a real legend. There will never be another like her.
