What a Way to Make a Living: Remembering Dolly Parton

In a world where everyone doesn’t like someone, nobody didn’t like Dolly.

Dolly Parton, who died on August 25 at the age of 80, sometimes seemed like the last universally beloved person in the world, which you could tell by the way everyone wanted to work with her – even people who don’t need to work with other people. James Patterson wrote a book with her. Beyoncé got her to appear on her album. Dolly not only recorded a song with Sabrina Carpenter but got her to take out the bad words. She got both of the remaining Beatles to appear on her last record, and I feel like those guys aren’t usually scrounging for gigs. She was on SNL and The Simpsons and was Hannah Montana’s godmother both on TV and in real life.

She wrote “Jolene” and “I Will Always Love You” in one day; most musicians would settle for writing two songs half that good in one lifetime. Her “9 to 5” is the toe-tappingest workers’ anthem in labor history. She was a steel magnolia and ran the Chicken Ranch. As a TV producer she made sure the world got to see Buffy the Vampire Slayer. She launched the Imagination Library program, getting hundreds of millions of books in the hands of kids around the world. And she helped fund early research that led to the COVID-19 vaccine. How many people do you know who both built a theme park and treated a global pandemic?

She was a bona fide superstar for 60 straight years and for that entire run she was funny and kind and self-deprecating and tirelessly productive. Honor her memory and listen to some Dolly. Or better yet, be like Dolly.