‘The Queen Of East Tennessee’: Who Was Dolly Parton To You?
(ANALYSIS) As you would imagine, I have been spending quite a bit of time talking to folks about Dolly Parton, the queen of East Tennessee.
I learned she had died while gazing around inside an airplane approaching the Rocky Mountains. Someone with the funds to buy on-board WiFi had a news program playing on his tablet and I saw the headline. I was stunned, even though I have been following her health struggles for several months. She managed to hide any information that pointed to cancer.
That’s part of the mystery of Dolly, of course. She was extremely public in some ways and totally private in others. It isn’t surprising that she let her own health and energy wane during the final years of the life of her husband Carl Dean.
But no one would have know that, since their marriage was — by mutual agreement — kept as far from the hot public spotlight as they could manage.
You see, there was Dolly Parton the world-class songwriter, Dolly Parton the multi-media pop superstar, Dolly Parton the country-bluegrass legend, Dolly Parton the philanthropist, Dolly Parton the entrepreneur, Dolly Parton the folky humorist and Dolly Parton the brilliant businesswoman who revolutionized how women could live and work in the economics and legal structures of Nashville.
Yes, there was — behind the scenes — Mrs. Carl Dean. And there was Dolly Parton, the sibling in her large and very proud family. She was the Dolly Mama of decades of nieces and nephews. That family was rarely in the public eye, but played a huge role behind the scenes, especially in the mountains of East Tennessee.
After several days of talking about Dolly with people during our complicated travels northwest to Alaska, as well as doing last week’s “Crossroads” podcast, it hit me that we were often talking about different Dolly Parton personas.
In each case, of course, we were talking about a CELEBRITY who was very important to millions of people, but she was important to different people in different ways. This was a skilled performer handling multiple audiences.
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Terry Mattingly is Senior Fellow on Communications and Culture at Saint Constantine College in Houston. He lives in Elizabethton, Tennessee, and writes Rational Sheep, a Substack newsletter on faith and mass media.