The first time I heard the name Dolly Parton was during an art lesson at my junior school, when Miss Clarke, the flamboyant Irish art teacher who bestrode the large art room like it was a separate fiefdom from the rest of the school, remarked that my drawing of mountains was "a bit like Dolly Parton" and when I looked at her dumbfounded, she explained what she meant, to my eternal mortification, though I remained dumbfounded.
My next memory of the name Dolly Parton was the release of the film Steel Magnolias in 1989, when I remember thinking, when I heard Sally Field, Dolly Parton, Daryl Hannah, Shirley MacLaine, Olympia Dukakis (I hadn't even heard of Julia Roberts at that point) that this was surely the greatest cast ever assembled. I suppose the 11-year-old me was a more nuanced creature than I allow myself.
Anyway, Dolly Parton's died. It says something (something everyone is saying) that, after I read the news that Dolly Parton had died while sitting on the sofa downstairs, I went upstairs and my 10-year old daughter was, oblivious to the news, singing 9 to 5 to herself. Just because that was the song a 10 year old girl would be singing to herself in 2026.
My main life association with a Dolly Parton song https://101songs.blogspot.com/2020/03/songs-jolene.html is surreally negative, and certainly not DP or the almighty Jolene's fault, but does slightly contradict my fanciful hypothesis, which I've held for a few years, that Dolly Parton was a protective superhero.
Specifically, my fanciful hypothesis is that Dolly Parton and Debbie Harry are, or have been, America's dual protective superheroes, the main guardians against growing evil.
I first speculated that Debbie Harry was a superhero many years ago, when I heard the (unlikely in reality) story that she'd once escaped from the serial killer Ted Bundy. When I saw someone on twitter describe Dolly Parton as an American hero when it was revealed she'd funded the Moderna covid vaccine, I put two and two together and made one - Dolly Parton and Debbie Harry, Team America.
They were born within months of each other at the end of the War, one in Florida, one in Tennessee. Both had versions of hard childhoods (DH given up for adoption that led her to New Jersey and New York). So one is city, one is country. Both were genre stars (new wave/country), who, in the late 70s, were able to move to the pop mainstream, and had indelible classics.
Both, you may have noticed, were blonde. Blonde as a central part of their identity, moving the concept of American blonde on from the victimhood and tragedy of Marilyn Monroe and the male fantasy of Hitchcock. Somewhere between Monroe and Madonna, but maybe better than both.
Both were boss. Both did not have children, though have been described in maternal terms by their fans. Both were tough as nails. As I remarked before when I read her autobiography, Harry's toughness, her ability to just shrug her shoulders at some really rough and frightening shit, is almost unnerving. Dolly Parton's way was always warmth and humour.
One presented avant-garde, one traditional, one was north, one was south.
Both have been good people. DP stretches beyond "good person" in her active, relentless philanthropy (indeed, I wonder if, when Ethan Hawke described Paul Newman as America's greatest philanthropist in terms of how much he'd raised for good causes relative to his personal wealth, that remains, or was ever true vs Parton). Debbie Harry seems to me a manifestly good person too. You don't hear anything negative, beyond the odd affectionately disgruntled ex-band member. She has always been right right-on, in later years she works regularly for good causes.
Both acted, acted pretty well, in different types of minor classics. From 1980 onwards, DP's fame and place at the centre of cultural life has ownly grown, whereas DH's has faded a little. But both have played the Glastonbury Legends slot. Both are legends - ego-free ideals of how to be a star and an icon.
Here is a short superhero playlist of all classics:
Heart of Glass
9 to 5
Sunday Girl
Here You Come Again
Rip Her to Shreds
Jolene
Atomic
I Will Always Love You
Picture This
Love is Like a Butterfly
One Way or Another
The Light of a Clear Blue Morning
And here is one of the first posts i saw on Bluesky when the
news was announced
https://bsky.app/profile/blondieband.bsky.social/post/3mtwmnarn4k2v
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