Some Dolly Parton facts for her 73rd Birthday!

Dolly Rebecca Parton was born January 19, 1946 in Sevier County, Tennessee.

She is the fourth of twelve children of Robert Lee Parton (1921–2000), a farmer and construction worker, and his wife Avie Lee (née Owens; 1923–2003).

She has described her family as being “dirt poor.”

Parton’s father paid the doctor who helped deliver her with a bag of oatmeal.

At seven, she started playing a homemade guitar. When she was eight years old, her uncle gave her her first real guitar.

Parton began performing as a child, singing on local radio and television programs in the Eastern Tennessee area.

By ten, she was appearing on The Cas Walker Show on both WIVK Radio and WBIR-TV in Knoxville, Tennessee.

At thirteen, she was recording (the single “Puppy Love”) on a small Louisiana label, Goldband Records, and appeared at the Grand Ole Opry where she first met Johnny Cash, who encouraged her to follow her own instincts regarding her career.

On May 30, 1966, Parton and Carl Thomas Dean (born July 20, 1942 in Nashville, Tennessee) were married in Ringgold, Georgia. The couple met at Nashville’s Wishy Washy Laundromat the very first day the aspiring country starlet was a resident of Music City.
Although Parton does not use Dean’s surname professionally, she has stated that her passport says “Dolly Parton Dean” and that she sometimes uses Dean when signing contracts.

Dean, who is retired from running an asphalt road-paving business in Nashville, has always shunned publicity and rarely accompanies his wife to any events.

According to Parton, he has seen her perform only once.

However, she has also commented in interviews that, although it appears they spend little time together, it is simply that nobody sees him publicly.

She has commented on Dean’s romantic side, saying that he does spontaneous things to surprise her and sometimes even writes poems for her.

In 2011, the couple celebrated their 45th anniversary.

The classic tune “Jolene” was inspired by a redheaded bank teller who seemed to fancy Parton’s husband a bit too much. “He just loved going to the bank because she paid him so much attention," Parton said. "It was kinda like a running joke between us...I was saying, 'Hell, you're spending a lot of time at the bank. I don't believe we've got that kind of money.'"
The name choice of “Jolene” was inspired by a girl with the same name who Parton met while signing autographs.

When Paton asked the girl her name and heard "Jolene," a lightbulb went off:

I said, "Well that's just about the prettiest name I ever heard. I'm gonna write a song about you and if you ever hear it, you'll know it was about you."

Since she was 7-years-old, Parton has written approximately 5,000 songs. Parton considers herself a writer first and foremost -- singing has always come second. According to her website, Parton writes a song every two or three days, and she always makes time to write on her birthday. She wrote her first song about her corn-cob doll. She was not able to write yet, so her mother had to copy the lyrics for her.

She refused to sell Elvis Presley the publishing rights to her hit 'I Will Always Love You.' Elvis' manager called Parton the day before the recording session and told her that he and Presley wouldn't record any songs that they didn't have at least half of the publishing rights to. "It had nothing to do with Elvis, because hopefully he was disappointed too, but I just wouldn't let him have the publishing," said Parton.

Her first country single, “Dumb Blonde” (composed by Curly Putman, one of the few songs during this era that she recorded but did not write), reached No. 24 on the country chart in 1967, followed by “Something Fishy,” which went to No. 17.

Parton had her eye set on country music stardom from a young age, so it makes sense that she skipped college and headed straight to Nashville to shop her music around. But she didn't even wait until the diploma was on the wall to leave home.

According to Parton, her first day was like something out of a movie:

“I just couldn’t believe the day I got here. I thought, "I’m here. I’m really here. I’m really here forever. I’m here to live and to be part of it."

Because her father banned his daughters from wearing lipstick, she and her sisters had to think of interesting ways around the rule. So, the sisters Parton did the only thing they could think of - rub Mercurochrome, an antiseptic, on their lips to dye them red:

“I’d paint my lips and see there wasn't nothing Daddy could do. He couldn't rub that off. It stained your lips and those little bitty bottles [were] just perfect to go around your lip line. Then I would do that and I would blot it off and Daddy, he'd say, 'Come here get that lipstick off you!' I'd say, real calm, 'It's my natural color, Daddy.”

Some of the first things that Parton bought when she hit it big in country music were a truck for her dad and a Cadillac for her mom, the latter of which Dolly still owns:

”I bought my mama a Cadillac. That went back to me when Mama passed on. I wouldn’t take nothing for it. My husband drives it a lot. Because it was Mama’s car, and I still drive it some, I call it the ‘Dolly-Mama.’ Everybody knows not to mess with the Dolly-Mama, because that was such a precious thing. I was always so proud that I could do for my family when I started making some money.”

There have long been rumors that Dolly Parton is covered in tattoos under her long-sleeved gowns. Well, that story is sort of true. It turns out that she does have tattoos (mostly dedicated to her husband), but they began as a way to hide unsightly scarring from various cosmetic surgeries:

“I do have a few little tattoos, but they were mostly done to cover scars because I'm so fair…So it started with that.”

In 1998, Nashville Business ranked her to be the wealthiest country-music star. As of 2017, her net worth is estimated to be $500,000,000

In 1980, Parton made her debut as an actress, starring in the hit comedy 9 to 5. She also contributed to the film’s soundtrack. She has since starred in movies including Steel Magnolias, Rhinestone (with Sylvester Stallone....it’s wonderfully terrible), Straight Talk, Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, Unlikely Angel, Smoky Mountain Christmas, Blue Valley Songbird, and most recently helped collaborate on Coat of Many Colors and Dumplin’

Go big or go home, right? Because Dolly's been performing for so many years, it makes sense that she would have tons of stage costuming, but who knew she had so many wigs? When Vogue asked her the exact amount, Parton couldn't even count:

“Oh, heavens, I have no idea. I can’t really count them all. I always make a joke and say, “I wear one almost every day, so I must have at least 365!”

She also is known for having undergone considerable plastic surgery. On a 2003 episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show, Winfrey asked what kind of cosmetic surgery Parton had undergone. Parton replied that cosmetic surgery was imperative in keeping with her famous image. Parton has repeatedly joked about her physical image and surgeries, saying, "It takes a lot of money to look this cheap." When asked about future plastic surgeries, she famously said, "If I see something sagging, bagging or dragging, I'll get it nipped, tucked or sucked." Parton's feminine escapism is acknowledged in her words, "Womanhood was a difficult thing to get a grip on in those hills, unless you were a man."

In 2003, her efforts to preserve the bald eagle through the American Eagle Foundation's sanctuary at Dollywood earned her the Partnership Award from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Parton received the Woodrow Wilson Award for Public Service from the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars of the Smithsonian Institution at a ceremony in Nashville on November 8, 2007

Parton and Dean helped raise several of Parton’s younger siblings in Nashville, leading her nieces and nephews to refer to her as “Aunt Granny”, a moniker that later lent its name to one of Parton’s Dollywood restaurants.

The couple have no children of their own but Parton is the godmother of performer Miley Cyrus.

Parton also has worked to raise money on behalf of several causes, including the American Red Cross and HIV/AIDS-related charities. In December 2006, Parton pledged $500,000 toward a proposed $90-million hospital and cancer center to be constructed in Sevierville in the name of Dr. Robert F. Thomas, the physician who delivered her. She announced a benefit concert to raise additional funds for the project. The concert played to about 8,000 people.

Parton got the inspiration for her big, blonde hair and pouty red lips from a local lady of the night in her town that she saw when she was younger. “I had never seen anybody, you know, with the yellow hair all piled up and the red lipstick and the rouge and the high heeled shoes, and I thought, 'This is what I want to look like,'" she said in a 2012 interview.

Parton has turned down several offers to pose for Playboy magazine, although she did appear on the cover of Playboy’s October 1978 issue wearing a Playboy bunny outfit, complete with ears (the October 1978 Playboy issue featured Lawrence Grobel’s extensive and candid interview with Parton, representing one of her earliest high profile interviews with the mainstream press).

The association of breasts with Parton’s public image is illustrated in the naming of Dolly the sheep after her, since the sheep was cloned from a cell taken from an adult ewe’s mammary gland.

In Mobile, Alabama, the General W.K. Wilson Jr. Bridge is commonly referred to by a nickname, “the Dolly Parton Bridge,” due to its arches resembling Parton’s chest.

She once lost a Drag Dolly Parton lookalike contest. “I just over-exaggerated my look and went in and just walked up on stage. I didn’t win. I didn’t even come in close, I don’t think,” she said. Parton "over-exaggerated" her look for the competition, making her beauty mark, eyes and hair bigger, but was no match for the "beautiful drag queens [who] had worked for weeks and months getting their clothes." She told ABC News she got the least applause. "They just thought I was some little short gay guy," she recalled.

Non-musical ventures include Dollywood, a theme park in Pigeon Forge in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee in Sevierville county. Ever since leaving Sevierville at 18, Parton has been committed to helping the people in her hometown—and she's made good on that promise, in part by opening the lucrative amusement park. Dollywood is now the largest employer in the county.

The Ku Klux Klan directed death threats at Dolly after Dollywood joined other family amusement parks participating in LBGT-friendly “Gay Days.” As expected, the ugly threats didn’t deter Dolly’s plans one bit. Dolly spoke lovingly of her queer fans in a 2014 interview with Billboard, but added that those who criticize and judge LGBTQ people are committing their own kind of sin. "[Dollywood is] a place for entertainment, a place for all families, period. It's for all that. But as far as the Christians, if people want to pass judgment, they're already sinning. The sin of judging is just as bad as any other sin they might say somebody else is committing. I try to love everybody."

Parton founded the charity Imagination Library, which provides free books to preschoolers, in 1995. She has said that the organization is a way to honor her late father, who couldn't read. "Not long before he passed, he told me he was more proud of me for the Imagination Library than anything else I had ever done.” The foundation mails one book per month to each enrolled child from the time of their birth until they enter kindergarten. Currently, over 1600 local communities provide the Imagination Library to almost 850,000 children each month across the U.S., Canada, the UK, and Australia. In 2018, Parton was honored by the Library of Congress on account of the "charity sending out its 100 millionth book".

Parton is the most honored female country performer of all time.

She has garnered eight Grammy Awards, two Academy Award nominations, ten Country Music Association Awards, seven Academy of Country Music Awards, three American Music Awards, and is one of only seven female artists to win the Country Music Association’s Entertainer of the Year Award. Parton has received 46 Grammy nominations.

“It’s hard to be a diamond in a Rhinestone World”-Dolly Parton

Happy Birthday you beautiful gem!