When I saw the news of Dolly Parton’s death this afternoon it wasn’t necessarily surprising, but still a shock. It was if I couldn’t imagine Dolly ever dying. I loved her music, her acting, and her generous philanthropy, and her incredible decency and humanity. She understood poverty as the daughter of a sharecropper in Tennessee. Her compassion towards suffering people, her determination to see poor children have good educations were legendary. Dolly was the epitome of human decency. She didn’t seem to have any animosity towards anyone. The only people that didn’t like her, didn’t like her because of her compassion towards anyone; AIDS victims, LGBTQ people, poor people, children, and all people during the COVID pandemic.
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The songs that she wrote were, like many in country music rooted in a hardscrabble life. I remember listening to her songs in the 1970s and then watching her in Nine to Five which also starred Lily Tomlin, Jane Fonda and Dabney Coleman, followed by The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, costarring Burt Reynolds, Jim Neighbors, Dom Deluise, and Charles Durning. I saw her in other movies, and most recently on the final episode of Grace and Frankie where she reunited with her old friends Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin. I won’t reveal a spoiler so you just need to see the picture at the beginning of this article. I will leave you with a video of Dolly singing at the end of The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.
While the song wasn’t written by Dolly, she made it her own. The chorus speaks to anyone who has ever gone through, or who is persevering though tough times. Doll knew all about those from her childhood.
I'll be fine and dandy
Lord, it's like a hard candy Christmas
I'm barely gettin' through tomorrow
But still I won't let
Sorrow bring me way down
I break into tears every time I hear it and watch that scene. This is Dolly performing it herself during a Bob Hope Christmas special in 1988.
So, until next time, try to remember the goodness of Dolly Parton, because when we remember goodness, our hearts, no matter how hardened by what has been happening in our country, especially since Donald Trump came on the political stage in 2015, we can preserve our own sense of decency and humanity.
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