20 Adorable And Uncanny Facts About Dolly Parton

20 Adorable And Uncanny Facts About Dolly Parton | Society Of Rock Videos

via Dolly Parton/YouTube

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More than a singer-songwriter, Dolly Parton is also well known for her humanitarian efforts. She wants to help people in any way she can – whether it’s giving free books to kids or funding a vaccine development.

Here are some facts about her:

20. She candidly told Playboy about growing up sharing a bed with siblings who peed on it. She recalled, “The kids peed on me every night. There were so many of us. We slept three and four in the bed.” She admitted, “I would wash every night, and as soon as I go to bed, the kids would wet on me and I’d have to get up in the morning and do the same thing.” Apparently, “that was the only warm thing we knew in the winter time” which according to her, made it “almost a pleasure — to get peed on — because it was so cold.”

19. She revealed that she liked to flirt but that no one compares to her husband. She told Daily Mail that she’s “never met a man I didn’t like” because “Men are my weakness.” And that her husband Carl Dean “knows I’ll always come home and I’m not having sex with these people – I’m just flirtin’ and having fun.”

18. She once joined a Dolly Parton Look-Alike contest and unbelievably lost to a man. She told ABC, “They had a bunch of Chers and Dollys that year, so I just over-exaggerated — made my beauty mark bigger, the eyes bigger, the hair bigger, everything.” Then she recalled that the “beautiful drag queens” worked for months with their clothes but she “just got in the line and I just walked across”. In the end, she “got the least applause.”

17. She opened the amusement park Dollywood to provide jobs for the people living in the low-income area of Tennessee where she grew up.

16. She turned down Elvis Presley when he asked to cover her song “I Will Always Love You”. She was initially interested until she was informed that once Presley recorded it, he’d get half of its publishing rights.

15. After graduating high school, she moved to Nashville. She told CMT, “I was here looking around, thinking of my future and what all it was going to be.”

14. When her father prohibited her from wearing lipstick, she used the antiseptic liquid Mercurochrome instead. And when her father told her to take it off, she’d say: “It’s my natural color, Daddy.”

13. She is Miley Cyrus’ godmother since she and Billy Ray Cyrus have known each other for decades.

12. She loves Adele so much that she used her name in one of her songs. She explained to Digital Spy, “On ‘Head Over High Heels’, when I say ‘I put on my tight dress, hair piled on my head, painting my lips red and my eyes like Adele!'”

11. She likes to cook and even insists on cooking before going on tour, then puts the food in freezer bags. This is so she can eat home-cooked meals even while on the road.

10. Her first performance was at a radio show when she was only ten years old.

9. She installed a working bath tub in her tour bus too.

8. She grew up poor. And being the fourth of 12 kids, they once paid a doctor with nothing but a bag of oatmeal.

7. She produced the iconic Buffy the Vampire Slayer series and its original movie via the production company Sandollar Television. She co-founded the company with Sandy Gallin.

6. She does have tattoos. There have been rumors for years that she’s covered in ink. And in 2020, she finally addressed them in an interview with People magazine. She admitted, “I do have some tattoos, that’s true.” Then she added, “But they’re tasteful. I’m not a tattoo girl.”

5. She has an entire wig room in her tour bus. She has no idea how many wigs she owns but told Vogue that she likes to joke, “I wear one almost every day, so I must have at least 365!”

4. She always wanted to spoil her family especially her parents. She bought her dad a big blue truck and a Cadillac for her mom. She kept the Cadillac even after her mother passed away.

3. She donated $1million to fund the coronavirus vaccine. But even though she helped fund its development, she hasn’t gotten vaccinated yet. She said that she “didn’t want to jump line” especially because she didn’t donate the money for her own protection, she “did it for everybody.”

2. She’s been married to Carl Dean for 57 years whom she met in Nashville. She also shared that although her passport is Dolly Parton Dean and that she often signed her contracts using Dean, she didn’t bother changing her name publicly because of her record deal.

1. She doesn’t have kids but she’s helped countless other children via her Imagination Library that provides millions of books. She told Oprah Winfrey, “I didn’t have children because I believed that God didn’t mean for me to have kids so everybody’s kids could be mine.”

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