Dolly Parton: ‘I’m A Star To Everybody But Me’
Dolly Parton is one of the most famous people in the world, but don’t tell her that. The country icon did a new interview with Southern Living magazine and said, “I think I’m a star to everybody but me. I always wanted to be famous, but nobody could have thought of the extent it became.”
She added, “I’ll see a whole wall of my pictures somewhere, and I’ll wonder, ‘How did that happen?’ It’s more a joy than a surprise.”
Parton also talked about her prolific songwriting, saying that writing songs is her favorite part of her job. She said that she walks around “with a song in my head and in my heart.” And says that even in the calm of her home there’s always music running through her mind. Dolly quipped, “I’ll go into a closet and wonder, ‘Now, what in the hell did I come in here for?’ There’s nothing that makes me happier than writing a song.”
The article was done around a photo shoot for the cover shoot in which the superstar posed with a blue pickup truck. She later said, “My daddy loved a blue truck. Women told him, ‘Lee, that truck makes your eyes look so blue,’ so he always drove a blue one.”
RELATED: Dolly Parton Is A National Treasure
Parton appeared on Jelly Roll’s wife Bunnie XO’s podcast recently and talked about her friendship with country icon Johnny Cash and his wife June Carter Cash.
She noted that she became good friends with the couple over the years. Dolly told Bunnie, “He was a real nice guy and very quiet… She was a loudmouth like me, so we got along just fine.”
Parton added, “And I remember when somebody said something about, ‘Johnny, don’t you get tired of hearing June talk all the time?’ And he said, ‘No. I do some of my best thinking when June’s talking.'”
The country icon said that Cash’s way with his wife was sort of like how Dolly’s husband, Carl Dean, deals with her. She said, “I think he does some of his best thinking when I’m talking.”
In my many interviews with Parton over the years, she once told me how Johnny Cash made her feel before she knew him when she was just a kid. She offered, “He was just so magnetic, and I was a young girl, I was in the audience and I was probably thirteen or something. I was young. That was my first experience of what sex appeal was and thinking, you know, grown-up thoughts. I always kidded him that he was my first crush, my first grown crush.”
Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash were married in 1968 and remained together until her death at age 73 in 2003. Johnny died just four months later, at age 71.
