Tag: rip dolly parton

Free Reading for September and Dolly Wisdom

I rarely weep for celebrity deaths, but Dolly is a representative of love and authenticity in a way so few have captured.

I remember being a child and knowing about her only as the lady with big boobs. We would put balloons under our shirts and giggle about being Dolly. 

I watched her in movies like 9 to 5 around the same time, and began to see the messages of empowerment that she was all about. 

Then I experienced her music. First through Whitney Houston, whose rendition of “I Will Always Love You” paid such great royalties that Dolly built a strip mall to support commerce in a black neighborhood and called it “the house that Whitney built.”  

This era led me to listen to more of her music, and I watched more of her interviews.