The news Tuesday afternoon of the death of singer, songwriter, actor, entrepreneur and philanthropist Dolly Parton swept through East Tennessee like one of the summer gullywashers that overflow the creeks of her beloved Great Smoky Mountains.

Parton spent several years as young performer on Knoxville radio and TV shows.

The immediate outpouring of tributes both local and global was testament to Parton’s artistic and cultural standing across generations and geographic boundaries. But the loss is almost certainly felt most strongly in the hills and hollers of Southern Appalachia that she mythologized and remained devoted to throughout her life.

“I don’t think there’s anybody who better represented East Tennessee and Appalachia,” said longtime local music writer Wayne Bledsoe, who interviewed Parton several times during his decades at the Knoxville News Sentinel. “Certainly nobody is more recognizable for that than she is. I mean, who would you want to have represent you? … Who wouldn’t be proud to have her represent us?”

President Donald Trump ordered flags across the country to be flown at half-staff for a week in Parton’s memory. In an online post, he called her death a “true loss for millions of people” and added, “There has never been anyone like her, and never will.”

Parton turned 80 earlier this year and had been in ill health for some time. But her death in Nashville still came as a surprise, partly because she had long ago achieved an ethereal stature that made her absence seem unthinkable. In her later years, she became something like a universally admired secular saint.

As Bledsoe put it, “People who didn’t even like her music loved her.”

A Siren on Gay Street

Parton had special resonance in Knoxville. Although the Sevier County native never lived here, she spent the early years of her music career singing on local radio and TV stations.

Jack Neely, executive director of the Knoxville History Project, said Parton’s uncle, Bill Owens, was a musician who came to town regularly. And when he heard his young niece sing, he started bringing her along.

“Her Uncle Bill was so impressed with her that he began driving her on a daily basis from Sevier County, their home up in the Pittman Center area, to Knoxville, to be on the radio and especially on Cas Walker’s shows,” Neely said. It’s unclear exactly when Parton made her broadcast debut, but she was a regular featured performer by 1958 — the year she turned 12.

The place she performed most regularly was in the studio of the country-music radio station WIVK, home to Walker’s “Farm and Home Hour” broadcast, which at the time was located on the second floor of a building at 319 N. Gay St. The building is still there, across the street from Regas Square.

Although Parton was a staple of Knoxville broadcasts for six years or so, Neely said there was little notice or mention of her in the local news.

“I figure she must have played maybe as many as 200 or 300 times in Knoxville on radio and television but got very, very, very little attention from the media,” he said. “She’s mentioned performing at a big outdoor bash in Maryville once in the late ’50s. And I think there’s one little article about her working as a songwriter before she left East Tennessee and went to Nashville.”

Walker, the irascible grocer, politico and broadcast producer, was among Parton’s earliest and most devoted promoters. (You can hear a clip of her performing on his show right here.) Neely said the story goes that Walker was even the one who drove Parton to Nashville when she moved there in 1964.

After that, of course, her star kept rising. There was her successful partnership with country singer Porter Wagoner in the late 1960s and early 1970s, growing into her breakthrough as a solo artist with the songs that laid the foundation for her superstardom: “Coat of Many Colors,“ “My Tennessee Mountain Home,” “Jolene” and many more.

They included her 1974 No. 1 country hit “I Will Always Love You,” which she wrote as a farewell to Wagoner after ending their professional partnership. Eighteen years later, Whitney Houston turned it into an international smash as the lead single from her movie soundtrack to The Bodyguard. (Parton had wisely retained full royalties to the song, turning down an offer from Elvis Presley to record it in exchange for co-writing credit.)

She starred — and earned good reviews — in movies including 9 to 5, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas and Steel Magnolias. And she kept writing songs and recording albums, even as the vicissitudes of shifting tastes shuffled her out of mainstream hit-making.

Parton released her 49th and final solo studio album, Rockstar, in 2023. It included covers of classic rock songs sung as duets with their original performers, including Debbie Harry, Ann Wilson, Sting, Joan Jett, Steve Perry and Pat Benatar.

In a sign of her continued cultural cachet, she also appeared on a reworking of “Jolene” on Beyoncé’s 2024 album, Cowboy Carter. Beyoncé paid tribute to her on Tuesday, writing, “You were the barometer. The north star. Bold and brilliant. Talented and tenacious. You taught so many lessons on how to be uniquely oneself.”

Dollywood and the ‘Spirit of the Smokies’

Parton’s impact went well beyond her entertainment career, especially in East Tennessee. In 1986, she purchased an interest in a Pigeon Forge theme park then called Silver Dollar City. The park was rechristened Dollywood, and as it expanded over the years it became the tentpole attraction of Sevier County’s now multi-billion-dollar tourist industry. 

Sevier County was also where she started her Dollywood Foundation and the Imagination Library, a nonprofit organization that provides free books to children ages 0-5. It now has a presence in more than 1,800 communities across the United States, Canada, Australia, Ireland and the United Kingdom. It has distributed more than 300 million books.

Parton was a major donor in helping Sevier County recover from the devastating 2016 wildfires, hosting a telethon that raised more than $9 million for displaced families.

The county has recognized her contributions over the years with a statue near the county courthouse in Sevierville and a major thoroughfare — Dolly Parton Parkway — named in her honor. In a joint statement on Tuesday, Sevier County Mayor Larry Waters and County Mayor-Elect Bryan McCarter said, “Her generosity, compassion, and love for the people of Sevier County have touched countless lives and will continue to do so for generations to come. We are deeply grateful for all that Dolly gave to our community and for the way she carried the spirit of the Smokies with her wherever she went.”

A Knoxville institution also bears Parton’s name. Earlier this year, following a major gift from her, the former East Tennessee Children’s Hospital renamed itself as Dolly Parton Children’s Hospital. At the time, Parton said, “I’ve always believed that every child deserves a fair chance to grow up healthy, hopeful and surrounded with love. Now, that belief is what brought me together with the incredible folks at East Tennessee Children’s Hospital.”

Local officials were effusive in their tributes on Tuesday. Knoxville Mayor Indya Kincannon said, “Dolly Parton was bigger than life, but never forgot her roots. At just 10 years old, she performed at a radio station on Gay Street, and went on to become an international music and movie icon.”

County Mayor-elect Betsy Henderson posted, “East Tennessee has lost one of its brightest lights. Even though she was a worldwide star, Dolly Parton never forgot where she came from. She spent her life giving back to the people and the place she loved.”

And at the state level, Gov. Bill Lee said, “Rare is the one who climbs to the pinnacle of fame, then scoffs at its allure, only to retain the genuine humility that defines them. Dolly Parton was one of a kind, who loved people, her work, her family, and her Lord. Tennessee has forever been changed — enhanced — by her, and will never be quite the same without Dolly.”

Mary Pom Claiborne, who recently retired as communications director at Knox County Public Library — where she oversaw the local operations of the Imagination Library program — said in an interview that Parton’s gift of books went beyond a belief in the importance of literacy.

“It’s probably the perfect combination of stories and imagination, which is really in her DNA,” Claiborne said. “And it really is foundational. I mean, if you can’t read, you really are shut out of a lot of things. But it wasn’t just the chore of reading, or the task of reading. It was also the moments on your parents’ lap, that nurturing, that love that comes with those story times.” 

She added, “I don’t think you would have the same success doing the exact same program without her name on it. I don’t think there’s any way that people would be so excited about it or sign up immediately or take it seriously. It would be just a bunch of middle-aged librarians kind of nagging you to read. But when Dolly tells you to read, it’s a very different story. She had pixie dust.”

A Writer at Heart

For Bledsoe, Parton’s legacy is defined above all by the songwriting craft that she worked at determinedly all of her career. In one interview, she told him that to prepare herself for writing, she would go stay in her family cabin and fast for a week.

“She was one the best songwriters of our lifetime, at least,” he said. “Maybe one of the best songwriters ever. When you hear a ‘Jolene’ or a ‘Coat of Many Colors,’ you know, people are going to know those songs 100 years from now. It’s like Stephen Foster or somebody like that. And they were just so honest and real. People work all their lives to get that. She just had it. I mean, she definitely worked hard as a songwriter, but when she gave a part of herself in a song, you felt it.”

(You can read more thoughts from Bledsoe in a Facebook post he wrote yesterday, including a story the songwriter Kinky Friedman told about Nelson Mandela listening to Parton while he was imprisoned in South Africa.) 

Asked to recommend a lesser-known Parton song from her vast catalog, Bledsoe picked the title track from her 1991 album, Eagle When She Flies. It came out at a time when Parton was being eclipsed by younger country singers and changing Nashville styles. It’s a story of a woman beset by the daily difficulties of life who still finds ways to rise above them.

“She’s been there, God knows she’s been there
She has seen and done it all
She’s a woman, she knows how to dish it out or take it all
Her heart’s as soft as feathers, still she weathers stormy skies
And she’s a sparrow when she’s broken
But she’s an eagle when she flies”