Before the rhinestones and spot lights, country music icon Dolly Parton was a Tennessee farm kid who knew how to milk cows and tend to the crops.
Parton, who passed Aug. 25 at age 80, was raised as the fourth of 12 children in rural East Tennessee. Her parents, Robert Lee and Avie Lee Parton, worked as sharecroppers before eventually acquiring their own small farm.
They raised much of their own food on 40 acres, leaning on gardens, livestock and crops to help feed their large family.
Parton later summed up her childhood years in a 1967 interview with Music City News.
“We owned the whole big farm. We just farmed and that’s all we did,” she said of the family’s time in Locust Ridge. “I used to work in the field, hoe corn and set tobacco.”
The farm work was part of daily life for Parton and her siblings. In a 2024 conversation with Martha Stewart, Parton and her sister, Rachel, recalled taking care of the animals on their family’s property.
“We all had to learn how to milk because we all had to do our personal chores,” Parton told Stewart. “I don’t think any cow would want me to milk them now with these nails,” referring to the long, elaborate acrylic fingernails she became known for.
One of Parton’s best-remembered farm stories involved her family’s dairy cow. In her 1994 autobiography, “Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business,” she recalled getting lost in the woods as a child before hearing the bell of the family cow, Bessie, and following the sound home.
Parton’s rural upbringing also found its way into her music. Her childhood home inspired “My Tennessee Mountain Home,” released on the 1973 album of the same name. The song looks back on the East Tennessee community where she grew up, painting a picture of home with memories of corn growing in the fields, honeysuckle vines and the mountains in the distance.
Other songs, including “Coat of Many Colors” and “Daddy’s Working Boots,” looked back on the poverty her family faced and the pride tied to her father’s work.
In the announcement of Parton’s death, her nephew and longtime head of security, Bryan Seaver, tied Parton’s farm roots back to her father.
“Dolly was a farmer just like her daddy. He farmed the soil, she farmed songs and happiness.”
From her rural roots growing up in East Tennessee to playing on some of the world’s biggest stages, Dolly Parton never lost sight of where she came from. The lessons she learned working alongside her family, caring for livestock and making a living from the land followed her throughout her career, finding their way into her songs, stories and the legacy she leaves behind.
