New Monday #133

Happy Monday,

Dolly Parton died last week at 80. By any measurement, she was AMAZING. Musical yardstick,"a rock star now", financial calipers, moral compass, wit and humor—she was remarkable.

Dolly by the Numbers

I urge you to take the time to read the list. It's mind-blowing.

Personal

• Height: 5'0"
• Marriages: 1 (Carl Dean, married 1966 until his death in March 2025)
• Biological children: 0
• Instruments played: guitar, electric guitar, banjo, autoharp, dulcimer, fiddle, piano, recorder, saxophone — plus her acrylic fingernails, used as a percussion instrument
• Song catalog: 3,000+ songs, estimated value $150 million
• Estimated net worth: $650 million

Grammy Awards

• Wins: 11
• Nominations: 54
• Lifetime Achievement Award: 2011

Country Music Association (CMA)

• Wins: 10
• Nominations: 45

Academy of Country Music (ACM)

• Wins: 13
• Nominations: 45

American Music Awards

• Wins: 4
• Nominations: 18

Total Awards

• Wins: 190
• Nominations: 384

Career Records

• No. 1 country hits: 25 (most by any female artist)
• Consecutive decades charted: 7
• Top 10 country albums: 49 (most by a female artist)
• Studio albums: 66 (most by any female country singer)
• Span between No. 1 albums: 46 years, 197 days (longest for a female artist)

Pop & AC crossover

• Billboard Hot 100 No. 1s: 2
• Hot 100 #1, AC #1: "9 to 5" (1981, solo)
• Hot 100 #1, AC #1: "Islands in the Stream" (1983, with Kenny Rogers)
• Hot 100 #3: "Here You Come Again" (1977)
• Hot 100 #53, AC #17: "I Will Always Love You" (1982 re-release)

Sales & Certifications

• Albums sold worldwide, RIAA certified (2014): 100 million+
• New gold/platinum certifications, January 2022: 47
• New global certifications, early 2026 (80th birthday): 82

Guinness World Records

• Total records held: 11
• No. 1 country hits: 25, most by any female artist
• Span of No. 1 country hits: 35 years, 26 days
• Hot Country Songs chart entries: 113, most by any woman
• Decades charted on Hot Country Songs: 7
• Decades with a Top 20 country hit: 7
• Top 10 country albums: 49, most by any female artist
• Consecutive decades with a Top 10 album: 7
• Studio albums: 66, most by any female country singer
• Span between No. 1 albums: 46 years, 197 days, from New Harvest...First Gathering (1977) to Rockstar (2023)
• Grammy nominations: 55, a record for a female country artist
• EGOT nominee: first country singer ever nominated across Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony

Business

Businesses & Properties

• Dollywood — theme park
• Dollywood's Splash Country — water park
• DreamMore Resort and Spa — resort
• HeartSong Lodge & Resort — resort
• SongTeller Hotel — hotel
• Dolly Parton's Stampede — dinner theater attraction
• Pirates Voyage — dinner theater attraction
• Dolly's Tennessean Travel Stop — retail and food service travel stop
• Dolly's Life of Many Colors Museum — museum exhibit
• The Dollywood Company — parent company, joint venture with Herschend Family Entertainment
• Dolly Parton Productions — entertainment and production company
• Sandollar Productions — film and TV production company, co-owned with Sandy Gallin
• Owe-Par — music publishing company, co-founded with Bill Owens
• Blue Eye Records — record label
• Doggy Parton — pet apparel and accessories line
• Dolly Parton's Kitchen — baking mix line, Duncan Hines partnership
• Scent From Above — fragrance line

Some impressive numbers

• Dollywood opened: May 3, 1986
• Ownership: 50/50 joint venture with Herschend Family Entertainment, through Dolly Parton Productions
• Annual attendance: roughly 3 million guests a season, Tennessee's most-visited ticketed attraction
• Park footprint: 150 acres
• Expansion investment announced: $500 million
• Regional economic impact, Sevier County, TN: $1.8 billion, 23,000+ jobs

Creative Ventures (Film & TV Producing)

Production companies

• Sandollar Productions — co-founded with Sandy Gallin, active 1980s–90s
• Magnolia Hill Productions — Sam Haskell's company, longtime partner on her NBC and Netflix projects

Notable productions

• Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992 film) — Sandollar
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV series, 1997–2003) — Sandollar
• Angel (TV series, 1999–2004) — Sandollar
• Father of the Bride (1991) — Sandollar
• Father of the Bride Part II (1995) — Sandollar
• Sabrina (1995) — Sandollar
• Straight Talk (1992) — Sandollar; she also starred
• Shining Through (1992) — Sandollar
• Fly Away Home (1996) — Sandollar
• Gross Anatomy (1989) — Sandollar
• Kicking and Screaming (1995) — Sandollar
• Babes (TV series, 1990–91) — Sandollar
• Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt (1989) — Sandollar; won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature
• Dolly Parton's Coat of Many Colors (2015, NBC TV movie)
• Dolly Parton's Christmas of Many Colors: Circle of Love (2016, NBC TV movie; Emmy-nominated)
• Dolly Parton's Heartstrings (2019, Netflix; 8-episode anthology series)
• Dumplin' (2018, Netflix film) — executive producer, wrote the original songs

Philanthropy

• Nonprofits founded: 1 (Dollywood Foundation, 1988)
• Programs under the Foundation: 5+, including the Imagination Library
• Books gifted, Imagination Library (as of June 2026): 325 million+
• Current pace: 3.5 million books/month
• Countries reached: 5
• Gift to Vanderbilt University (2020): $1 million, funded early COVID-19 research that fed into the Moderna vaccine

Honors

• Presidential Medals of Freedom declined: 3 (From Trump, 1 from Biden)
• Honorary doctorates: 2 — Carson-Newman College (1990), University of Tennessee–Knoxville (2009, Doctorate of Humane and Musical Letters)
• Rock & Roll Hall of Fame: initially declined her 2022 nomination — "I don't feel that I have earned that right" — but was inducted anyway by the voters; accepted, declaring herself "a rock star now." And then she made an album in 2023 called Rockstar because of it. It was her last album.

How Did She Pull All This Off?

Obviously she was smart, and remarkably talented. But she also had a work ethic and an attitude. In her own words:

"Find out who you are and do it on purpose."

"The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you got to put up with the rain."

"Don't get so busy making a living that you forget to make a life."

"I always say I'm a workhorse that looks like a show horse."

"If I see someone without a smile, I give them mine."

"It's a good thing I was born a girl, otherwise I'd be a drag queen."

"You'll never do a whole lot unless you're brave enough to try."

I love this one: "I'm not offended by all the dumb blonde jokes because I know I'm not dumb—and I'm not blonde either."

RCA Studio B

In 1972, Dolly had a really good week: She wrote I Will Always Love You and Jolene. Both were huge hits. Heck, Whitney Houston's cover of I Will Always Love You alone made Dolly a multimillionaire, even though she was already a multimillionaire.

She recorded Jolene, and a lot of her 70s Country output, in Nashville at RCA Studio B.

Studio B was built in the 1950s and it was a revolving door studio for Country performers. Chet Atkins built the place. Elvis recorded there, and, of course, Dolly Parton.

Listen to Jolene here: https://youtu.be/Ixrje2rXLMA?si=ujW0Hxp5dqN3SjyW

Check out the very cool, and rather un-country, percussion parts in the second half.

For Jolene, she cut the vocals on an Electro-Voice RE-15 dynamic super-cardioid mic. This is actually a fabulously good microphone, with wide, smooth response. It wasn't prone to proximity effect due to its design—something it has in common with its huge brother, the RE-20. Would you like one, the mic of Dolly, Bowie, Jimi Hendrix, Elvis, James Brown and Zappa? Can't get them new—it was discontinued in the late 60s and replaced by its chunky brother, the RE-20. You can find them used... click here to see the price!

Jolene was a 16 track recording, cut live in the studio. The console in RCA Studio B was constructed by RCA engineers and used components from API and Melcor. Actually, Melcor was the predecessor of API. The console had a futuristic shape, with kind of "wings" on the meter bridge. I found some images, but couldn't find anything vintage. Take a look here for shots of the console and the studio.

Notice there are black plates covering up holes where modules used to be—I'm guessing API style EQs? I wonder where those are? RCA Studio B closed for business and now it's featured in "Music Row" tours and used for teaching at Belmont University in Nashville, which has a top-flight music and audio production program.

Here's Dolly playing the Theme from Benny Hill on the sax! She was 70 at the time.

My wish for all of you, and for me, is that we manage to do even half the things Dolly Parton did even half as well as she did them.

Live like Dolly, friends!

Warm regards,

Luke

We'll give Dolly the last word:

"You can wish your life away. But if you're going to dream, you're going to have to get out and, like I always say, you have to put some wings on them dreams, and some feet and fingers and some hands. They gotta get into some stuff. You can't just sit around and think of all the things you want to do. You've got to think of what you want to do, and then you've got to get out and make that happen."