I mean, that’s a very fair reaction.
It’s hard to believe it’s been over a week since the queen of country music, Dolly Parton, passed away at 80 years old in Nashville, Tennessee. She is of course a beloved singer, songwriter, philanthropist, actress, playwright, and author died peacefully in her home state.
She was friends with actress Jane Fonda for decades, ever since they co-starred in the iconic 9 to 5 film back in 1980, and during an appearance on Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend a little while back, Jane opened up about her friendship with Dolly, which of course started when they met on the movie set:
“We went on the road. She was so grateful for me casting her in the movie 9 to 5, and I was preparing to do a story of a hillbilly illiterate woman based on a book called ‘The Doll Maker,’ and I needed to go there and meet those people. and Dolly, I said to her, ‘You’re the only hillbilly I know. Can you can you help me?’”
They joked that it’s the kind of thing you can say to Dolly and her not be offended, and she went on to talk about how she stayed at Dolly’s house before their trip and she got to meet the mysterious Carl Dean, Dolly’s husband of almost 60 years.
The famous story goes that they met on the first day Dolly lived in Nashville, outside of the Wishy Washy laundromat. Dolly had walked to the close by gas station to get a drink, and Carl drove by and saw her and instantly fell in love.
While Jane’s telling the story, she makes the shape of Dolly’s curves with her hands and says Carl “fell over backwards” talking about how stunning she was:
“I said, ‘I wanna meet somebody who lives in a holler, with no electricity or anything, so I can kind of flush out my character’. I went to Nashville, I stayed with her and her husband, Carl. That was an experience, in her house. Carl cooked us breakfast. I said, how did you two meet?
And he described the first time he saw her, he was driving a truck past a 7-Eleven, and there she was in the parking lot drinking a Crown Cola. He was just sitting at the breakfast table, he said, ‘No, you don’t understand, it was like…’ And he fell over backwards. He is a handsome, man, boy.”
I mean, some very rare insight into Carl, someone who purposefully stayed out of the spotlight for the entirety of their marriage. And it sounds like Carl knew how lucky he was… we didn’t really know much about their marriage, but it sounds like he thought the world of Dolly and was taken with her from the first time he laid eyes on her.
Jane also described the 10-day trip they went on in Dolly’s bus, and how she never saw Dolly not looking “100% Dolly Parton” the entire time they were out on the road, saying she presented herself to all of the fans exactly how they hoped she would… I’ll be honest, I feel like Jane’s talking about “those people” in a pretty derogatory manner, but I’m going to let it slide for the sake of the story but I just had to point that out:
“I sang back up for Dolly at the Grand Ole Opry, oh my God. And anyway, she put me on her tour bus with three or four friends of hers, and we spent 10 days touring Appalachia. Missouri, the Ozarks, Arkansas, and I ended up meeting somebody that I went back and lived with, and chopped their wood and milked their cow and so on and so forth.
So here we were on the road, in the back hollers, you know, with people who lived in tar paper shacks. Dolly, and it was her tour bus, and she was had the state room at the end. I never saw her not looking 100% Dolly Parton. The wig, the whole thing, going to see these people. She represented herself just like they hoped she would. And I thought, yeah, that’s how to do it.
You’ve gotta love those people who like you. And oh boy, does she have fans, and she just loves them and appreciates them. And she taught me a lot. She didn’t say anything, she showed example.”
It’s a common theme throughout all of the stories I’ve heard about Dolly since her passing, about her character and genuine she really was in real life and how she treated all of her fans like humans, something you really can’t say about many celebrities and I sitll can’t believe she’s gone.
But really, what a legacy she left behind:
Dolly released a beautiful song about her husband called “If You Hadn’t Been There” which says it all about their relationship: