At 80, Dolly Parton remains our most unlikely national unifier

Dolly Parton turns 80 today (January 19, 2026). It’s a milestone birthday for the music icon who has been in the public eye for well over 60 years. Her birth was not auspicious. Born into crushing poverty in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains, her father paid the doctor who delivered her with a sack of cornmeal. Her family said she started singing before she could talk and within a few years, she composed a song about a corncob doll that her proud mother transcribed and tucked into a shoebox for safekeeping. Young Dolly also had a gift for rhyme and a keen ear for rhythm and sound. She heard music everywhere: a spoon banging against a cooking pot, the honking of geese overheard, the creak and slam of a screen door.

By the time she was ten, she began appearing on the radio in Knoxville, Tennessee, and later moved to live local television. Her debut was not auspicious there either. A trick pony had appeared before her and relieved itself on the studio floor. Dolly had to step over a pile of pony dung before taking a deep breath and singing.

Facing obstacles – be they ragged clothes that triggered childhood bullying or high school classmates who ridiculed her for favoring country music over The Beatles – became a way of life for Dolly. Yet she always seemed to rise above the criticism. Her first teacher, Archie Ray McMahan, noticed that trait early on. “She didn’t get into fusses,” she said. “She just smiled and let everybody fight their own battles.”

The day after high school graduation, Dolly boarded the first bus for Nashville, where record producers said she sounded like a screech owl and was too country to sing country music. When she met Fred Foster, the head of Monument Records, her luck changed. He liked singers who didn’t sound like anyone else. He had hits with a guy named Roy Orbison and a straightlaced, suit-wearing young man from Texas, Willie Nelson. You could be a movie star one day, he told Dolly. Her first hit single was “Dumb Blonde.” The chorus was prescient: “Just because I’m blonde, don’t think I’m dumb. Cause this dumb blonde ain’t nobody’s fool.”

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She was off and running. The Porter Wagoner Show came next, followed by cross-over to pop music, movies, a network television show, award-winning collaborations with Kenny Rogers, Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris, and landmark bluegrass albums. Then came Dollywood, an amusement park so wildly successful that it became the economic engine of East Tennessee. Yet making money for personal riches was not her goal. “I felt all my life,” she said, “that I was supposed to do something on a larger scale.” She used her growing fortune to build medical centers, offer relief when floods and fires ravaged Tennessee, and support scientific research that led to the Moderna COVID vaccine. As a tribute to her father, who suffered all his life from illiteracy, she founded the Imagination Library, which provides free books to children from birth until the time they enter school. At last count, the number of books in kids’ hands around the world topped over 300 million. Nothing gave her father more pride, she said, than to hear children call her The Book Lady.

Dolly Parton’s accomplishments have had a profound impact on our culture. Songs such as “Coat of Many Colors,” “Jolene,” and “I Will Always Love You” will be enjoyed well beyond her 80 years. Yet another part of her legacy deserves acknowledgment. Her character. Observers have called Dolly Parton the most unifying figure in America. She is just as likely to be embraced by those sporting a rainbow lapel pin as a red MAGA hat, and affection for her crosses racial, economic, religious, social and generational divides. Long after she stepped over that pony dung as a youngster, Dolly has exhibited decency, compassion, humility and a mighty sense of humor. She makes us feel included and seeks connection rather than division.

One hundred and sixty-five years ago, President Abraham Lincoln stood on the steps of the United States Capitol and appealed to our “better angels.” In her own way – with a mixture of sass, fun and her distinctive cup of ambition – Dolly Parton asks us to do the same.

Dolly Parton once observed that people don’t come to her concerts to see her. They come to see her be them. Maybe that’s the 80th birthday gift we might offer this American original. In a country as divided as we now are, maybe it’s time for all of us to be a little more like Dolly Parton.

Martha Ackmann is the author of “Ain’t Nobody’s Fool: The Life and Times of Dolly Parton,” recently published by St. Martin’s Press.

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