No one ever understood her own place in American life more deeply, or embraced it with more gusto, than Dolly Parton. This was a woman who understood the assignment. She was a kind of living national monument—her lines drawn brighter and her colors more saturated than seemed possible in real life. But there she was: realer than real.
Others might have been tormented by the role she was thrust into. But Parton always seemed totally at peace with what she meant to people. She took in all that adoration and desire, a weight of public love that would have crushed a weaker soul, and converted it into ten trillion watts of gratitude and joy. I believe it was her faith that taught her to do that.
When you visit the Grand Canyon for the first time, you think: it can’t really be everything it’s been made out to be, everything it is on the postcards. And then there it is, like a drawing of itself that you’ve stepped into. Watching Dolly was like visiting the Grand Canyon. She really was all that, and no description you wrote of her could do her justice.
Look at the way she works the crowd in this clip: totally in control of her image, totally self-aware about it, standing outside to wink at it while also inhabiting it fully. She was more than a caricature; she was ten times as sophisticated as any knowing commentary on her could ever be. She was like America: simple and sincere yet totally overpowering and bemused by her own wonderful extravagance—me? Here? Would you believe it!
There will never be another. It was her faith that made her heart able to take all that. It will be her faith that leads her home. RIP.
In 1990, Dolly Parton went on vacation in Ireland.
She walked into a local pub in County Kerry and delivered a flawless performance of Coat of Many Colors.
A heart of pure gold who made people smile across oceans.