“If you don’t like the road you’re walking, start paving a new one.”
There are some women whose influence feels bigger than their career.
Dolly Parton was one of them.
For more than half a century, Dolly understood the power of a signature. The rhinestones. The towering blonde hair. The fitted silhouettes. The impossible glamour. The unmistakable voice.
Everything about her was immediately recognizable and completely her own.
What I have always loved most about Dolly is that beneath all the glamour was a woman who never seemed to take herself too seriously. She was funny, warm, self-aware and genuinely kind. She understood that you could be ambitious without becoming hardened, glamorous without becoming inaccessible, and wildly successful without forgetting where you came from.
Dolly was born in 1946 in rural Tennessee, the fourth of twelve children, and grew up in a family that lived in poverty. Music was woven into her childhood, and by the time she was a young woman, she had moved to Nashville to pursue songwriting.
She didn’t simply become a performer. She became a storyteller.
Over a career spanning nearly six decades, Dolly wrote more than 3,000 songs, released dozens of albums, acted in films and television, created businesses, built Dollywood, and became one of the most recognizable women in American culture. Her songs Jolene, Coat of Many Colors, 9 to 5, and I Will Always Love You became part of the cultural fabric far beyond country music.
And then there is I Will Always Love You.
Dolly wrote and recorded the song herself in the 1970s, but Whitney Houston’s extraordinary 1992 rendition transformed it into a global phenomenon. The success brought Dolly approximately $10 million in royalties.
What she did with some of that money has always stayed with me.
Dolly invested in a commercial property in a predominantly Black neighborhood of Nashville and later described it as “the house that Whitney built,” honoring the Black woman whose interpretation had carried her song to another level of cultural impact. (KPBS Public Media)
As a Black woman and a designer, I find something particularly beautiful about that story.
It wasn’t simply about receiving success from someone else’s interpretation of her work. Dolly recognized the person who helped create that success—and chose to let some of that success flow back into a community connected to her.
That spirit of generosity appeared throughout her life.
In 1995, she founded the Imagination Library, inspired in part by her father’s inability to read and write. What began as a program providing books to children in her home county eventually grew internationally, distributing more than 300 million books to children. (imaginationlibrary.com)
And somehow, through all of it, Dolly remained Dolly.
She never abandoned the big hair because someone told her it wasn’t sophisticated enough. She never traded her rhinestones for someone else’s idea of refinement. She understood something that I think every creative woman eventually learns:
You don’t become iconic by removing the things that make you different. You become iconic by making those things unmistakably yours.
Dolly once spoke about her appearance as a reflection of the woman she felt herself to be inside. Her glamour wasn’t an apology for where she came from. It was part of the story.
That is what makes her influence feel so lasting to me.
She showed us that femininity could be extravagant. That ambition could be joyful. That kindness could coexist with enormous success. That you could build an empire without losing your sense of humor.
And perhaps most importantly, she made people feel that there was room for them, too.
Dolly Parton was never just a country singer.
She was a songwriter, entrepreneur, actress, philanthropist, storyteller, and one of the greatest examples of a woman building an entire world from her own imagination.
She didn’t wait for the road to become easier.
She paved her own.
And what a beautiful road she left behind.
—
Lurelly
Icons of Influence
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