The queen of country Dolly Parton, performer of “Jolene”, “9 to 5” and “I Will Always Love You”, died this August 25 at the age of 80. Behind the platinum blonde wigs and cascades of rhinestones, the singer had made her bluntness an instrument in favor of queers.
Stiletto heels, interminable nails and gravity-defying blonde wigs, Dolly Parton had made excess a signature. The queen of country died on Tuesday, August 25 in Nashville, at the age of 80, after a “bref combat contre le cancer”, according to the announcement by her nephew. After more than six decades of career, Dolly Parton has sold over 100 million records, 25 country chart-topping titles and around 3,000 songs written. Behind the flamboyant character, there was above all an author-composer with impressive talent. “Jolene”, “9 to 5”, “Coat of Many Colors”, “I Will Always Love You”… Her songs have far surpassed the borders of Tennessee. And although the poor girl raised in the mountains became a multimillionaire, she never really left the Great Smoky Mountains, nor forgot her people.
The fourth of twelve children, Dolly Rebecca Parton was born on January 19, 1946 in a one-room shack in Sevier County. Her mother raised the brood while her father worked as a sharecropper and laborer. The family was poor but raised Dolly in music. As a child, she sang for her church, received her first guitar at 8, appeared on local television at 10, and participated in the Grand Ole Opry show at 13. After finishing high school in 1964, she left for Nashville, the capital of country. She rose to prominence with the album Hello, I’m Dolly in 1967 and joined the same year the singer Porter Wagoner’s show, which brought her into American households. But the singer proclaimed her independence and bid farewell to her mentor by writing “I Will Always Love You”, a No. 1 country hit in 1974 and again in 1982. Whitney Houston would make it one of the greatest pop hits in history in 1992 when she covered it for the film Bodyguard.
From country to pop, via the cinema screens
Legend has it that Dolly Parton wrote “I Will Always Love You” and “Jolene” on the same day. Hard to dream up a more productive day. Released in 1973, “Jolene”, a plea addressed to a rival who might steal her husband, permanently established her as one of the greats of country. The woman whose bombshell appearance sometimes drew contempt and judgment from her peers never doubted her value. By the late 1970s, “Here You Come Again” opened the doors to pop for her. In 1980, “9 to 5”, an anthem for women ground down by their jobs and the title song of the film How to Beat Your Boss, in which she stars with Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin, reached the top of the Billboard Hot 100 and earned her an Oscar nomination. Then came “Islands in the Stream” with Kenny Rogers, the film Potins de femmes, and the musical project Trio with Emmylou Harris and Linda Ronstadt. Country, pop, cinema: Dolly refused to choose.
She also refused to renounce the doll-like image she had built. The glitter for Dolly is less a symptom of an industry imposing appearance on women than the accessories of a character she controls and herself mocks. This unapologetic “camp” excess helped her gain popularity with queer audiences. In 2012, she recounts having attended incognito a Dolly Parton look-alike contest against drag queens—and having lost. But affection extended far beyond a wig-line story.
Christian and queer ally
A star of a music genre historically associated with a conservative America, Dolly Parton has defended the LGBT+ community for decades. As early as 1991, “Family” supports the gay community, then particularly stigmatized by the AIDS epidemic. In 2009, when asked by Joy Behar about marriage for all, she responded without hesitation with disarming humor: “Of course, why shouldn’t they be allowed to marry? They should suffer like the rest of us.” In 2005, she wrote “Travelin’ Thru” for Transamerica, a film about the journey of a transgender woman, and earned an Oscar nomination. About the film, she denounces people “blind or ignorant” who go through life “full of prejudice and hatred”, before summing up: “I think art can change minds. People have the right to be who they are.”
In 2010, facing Larry King on CNN, she explains: “I have always been accepted in the gay community because I accept them”, reminding that she does not judge her fans and that everyone should be able to be who they are. Her faith does not stop her from speaking out against conservatives. In 2016, asked by Larry King about criticisms from some of her Christian fans, she answers by pointing them to their own principles: “If you are the good Christian you think you are, why do you judge people? That is God’s job.” The same year, she opposes North Carolina’s HB2 law, which among other things restricts transgender people’s access to bathrooms.
With Miley Cyrus, her goddaughter, she also records in 2017 “Rainbowland”, a song imagining a world free from judgment where everyone can live freely. The track takes on a very concrete resonance in 2023 when a Wisconsin elementary school removes it from its spring concert, deeming it controversial in a district where teachers can no longer display rainbow flags. The same year, while Tennessee intensifies laws targeting transgender people and drag performances, Dolly Parton tells The Hollywood Reporter that gays, lesbians and trans people are part of her family and her professional circle. “I know them and I love them all, and I do not judge”, she asserts. According to her, they cannot change who they are any more than she can “stop being Dolly Parton”. At the end of 2023, she gifts an acoustic guitar studded with rhinestones and signed to Brigitte Bandit, a drag queen from Austin who has fought at the Texas Capitol against anti-drag and anti-LGBT+ bills.
Philanthropist, engaged in public health issues and quick to take a stand on divisive topics in today’s America, Dolly Parton has always refused political labels. Perhaps that is why today she is mourned as much in parishes as in gay bars.
