Dimon Kendrick-Holmes
Dolly Parton, the country music icon who died Aug. 25, seemed to be always working and always happy. In that way, she taught us a lot about work as we celebrate Labor Day.
Here are five things:
Do what you love
The fourth of a dozen children, Parton wanted attention. She loved being the star of the show, even if it was in the Tennessee holler where she lived.
So that's what she did. She wrote her first song at age 6. She had a regular gig on local television at age 10. She recorded her first song at 11. She met Johnny Cash and was on the Grand Ole Opry at 13.
When she turned 16, she didn't get her driver's license. She became a professional songwriter.
She kept doing what she loved, being a star, and she did it for the rest of her life.
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Don't sell yourself short
Parton was dirt poor. Her classmates laughed when she put her dirty clothes in grocery bags and moved to Nashville. She believed in herself. When she became the "pretty little girl" on Porter Wagoner's TV show, she knew she could soar higher than that. And she did.
Tell your story — and own it
First and foremost, Parton considered herself a songwriter -- which, as a country music songwriter, meant she was also a master storyteller.
When her mother made her a dress out of rags, she wrote "Coat of Many Colors." Later, when her husband Carl Dean suddenly became interested in going to the bank, she figured out why and wrote "Jolene."
When she wrapped her voice around an old mountain song, "Farther Along," for instance, you could see the mist settling in the hollers of her beloved Smoky Mountains.
In 1977, Barbara Walters played hard-nosed journalist and tried to stick it to Parton.
"Dolly," Walters asked, "where I come from, would I have called you a hillbilly?"
"If you had have, it would have been something very natural, but I would have probably kicked your shins or something," Parton said.
Walters kept at it: "But when I think of hillbillies, am I thinking of your kind of people?"
“I think you probably are,” she said. “But we were very proud people, people with a lot of class. It was country class, but it was a great deal of class. And most of my people were not that educated, but they are very, very intelligent. Good common sense — horse sense, we called it.”
Parton owned it, and in the process elevated both herself and her people.
Remember that it's a game
“You always read about how music is very healing but then when you see it, it is really powerful,” Chad Tucker said.
Perhaps her best song, and by far her most financially successful, was "I Will Always Love You," which went to No. 1 on the country chart in 1974.
Elvis Presley wanted to record it, and Parton was interested. Who wouldn't be?
But then Elvis' manager, Colonel Tom Parker, told her that when Elvis recorded your song, you signed over half of the publishing rights to him.
No dice. Over time, Dolly proved to be a shrewd businesswoman, and now she's the Queen of Country. Saying no to The King brought her countless millions of dollars from that song alone.
In 1982, Whitney Houston recorded it, and it went to No. 1 again, and made out like a bandit.
Treat people right
When Parton decided to break her partnership with Porter Wagoner, she could have written a song along the lines of "Take This Job and Shove It."
Instead, she wrote "I Will Always Love You," and she left him with the impression that the song was his idea.
She treated him with kindness, which throughout her life was a Dolly Parton trademark.
In recent weeks, how many newspapers around the country have written stories about how Parton touched the life of somebody young or old in their community?
At the Winston-Salem Journal in North Carolina, where I am executive editor, we've written three, about a child with cancer, a jaded police officer and an entire audience at MerleFest.
Scott Sexton wrote the one about the police officer, who was on security detail during a Dolly Parton concert.
"She was so friendly." he said, "If anybody said, 'Hi,' she'd stop and talk for 45 minutes."
"When she sang 'Coat of Many Colors,' I just stood there and cried like a baby," Howard said.
He said they needed extra security officers to make sure she stopped talking to people and got to the concert on time.
Oh, and when she sang "Coat of Many Colors," he cried like a baby.
In her spare time, Parton developed a program to give books to children every month from birth to kindergarten.
She started Dollywood, and then sent the children of all her employees to college.
No, we're not all going to be stars, whether we'd love to be or not. And we're not all going to make the kind of money she did.
But we can still work hard, make a difference and be good to people.
Just like Dolly.
Dimon Kendrick-Holmes is executive editor of the Winston-Salem Journal and Greensboro News & Record and North Carolina editor for Lee Enterprises. Contact him at dimon.kendrick-holmes@greensboro.com.
