Dolly Parton's Humble Roots Explain Her Down-Home Charm (2024)

Dolly Parton's parents had 12 children together, including a set of twins. A few of her siblings went on to forge successful entertainment careers of their own. Dolly'sbrother Randy is also a singer, songwriter, and actor. Her sister Rachel Dennison is, too - in fact, she played Dolly's role in the 9 to 5 TV series.

Stella Parton, another sister, is also a singer-songwriter andhad a string of country hits that charted in the 1970s.

As Parton put it, her familywas"dirt poor;"she was born in a one-room cabin in rural Tennessee. Her father, Lee, didn't have the money to pay the doctor who delivered her, so he paid him with a bag of cornmealinstead.

Parton later recalled: "But we were also very close as a family, always had a great faith in God. That gave us strength. I still draw from that because I stayed close to my family and my home. I didn't leave home to get away from them."

As a child, Parton once stepped on a broken jar and almost severed three toes. Since they couldn't afford a doctor then either, her mother, Avie, sewed the toes back on herself.

The Partons' livesmay have been marked by poverty, but Dolly'sparentsmade sure their 12 children didn't feel poor. "We always made jokes and said we didn't even know we were poor till some smart aleck up and told us," Partontold the Today show. "We didn't have any money, but we were rich in things that money don't buy. You know, like love and kindness and understanding."

Parton alludes to this sentiment in one of hermost famous songs, "Coat of Many Colors," in which she sings about her mother making her a coat out of discarded rags:

I wore it so proudly;

Although we had no money,

I was rich as I could be,

In my coat of many colors

My momma made for me.

Parton was born in the small Appalachian town of Pittman Center, TN. She grew up about nine miles awayin Locust Ridge, near Sevierville. The Parton farm inspired another of her most well-known tunes, "My Tennessee Mountain Home." She sings that "life is as peaceful as a baby's sigh" where she grew up.

"We also had rocking chairs on our porch back at the Tennessee mountain home," Parton said in an interview with Southern Living."But I think people just always used to gather on days like today when it's too hot to be in a house. You get outside and sit on your porch - that's where you do your biggest dreaming."

In the 1980s, shebought back the family homestead there.

Lee Parton was initially a sharecropper before earningmoney to purchase the Locust Ridge property, after which he farmed his own land. He could neither read nor write. Dolly's father's illiteracy compelled her to start Dolly Parton's Imagination Library, a charity that gifts children one free book a month until they enter kindergarten.

Of the project, she said: "My daddy couldn't read and write, but daddy was so smart, he could just do numbers in his head... When I decided what I was going to do for a great charity, then I thought well I'm gonna do this: to get books in the hands of children, because if you can learn to read, if you can read, you can self-educate yourself."

Her father sacrificed a lot for his family, beyondjust his education. The family was so poor that he used to save a portion of his lunch to share with his kids later that night. They called it "Daddy's dinner bucket."

One of the most profound heartbreaks Parton experienced as a child was the death of her 4-day-old baby brother when she was 9. "My mother, through the years, when we were born, since there were so many of us, used to say, 'This one gonna be you[r] baby,'" Parton explained. "That just meant that you got to take extra care of it. You have got to get up with it at night and rock it back and forth."

This brother was the one her mother had "given" her. "So, there is a lot of heartache and stuff that goes on with that," Parton admittedin 2015.