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Making the Most of Life
RD: You met your husband right after you arrived in Nashville.Parton: On the very first day. It was God's will, I think. I'd left a boyfriend at home, had no intentions of getting caught up with a guy. But he was just there. He was very quiet; it was not like him to go over and talk to a girl. And he talked to me. I've been good for him, and he's been good for me.
RD: After all this time.
Parton: Yeah. They're always writing in tabloids that we're divorcing. We've never even had a really serious argument. We pick at each other like most people, but we've never ever, ever talked about divorce.
RD: So what's the secret?
Parton: I'd say God. That does have a lot to do with it. And we're not stuck in each other's face.
RD: He won't tour with you, right? Do you wish he would?
Parton: No. I like it just like it is. If he'd been in my face all the time, we would have fought. I've had business partners and other relationships with guys who wanted to start telling me what to do. You can only go so far with that and then my burrs go up. We get along because we have different interests, but we have a lot of the same things we enjoy doing. It's one of those perfectly balanced things, and I'll be with him all the days of my life.
RD: Really?
Parton: Oh, yeah. There's no way I'd ever leave him, no way he'd ever leave me. And if one of us did die, I doubt that either of us would ever marry again. Maybe just be friends, go eat with somebody. But I can't imagine trying to get that comfortable with somebody else. I wouldn't even know how to break in a new person.
RD: The two of you never had children. Do you have any regrets?
Parton: No. I don't miss it now. We didn't do anything for years to not have kids, and so it wasn't meant to be. I always say that I think God didn't let me have kids so all kids could be mine. When Carl and I married, we took in five of my younger brothers and sisters and pretty much raised them. When they started having kids, they said, "What are the kids going to call you, because we feel you're like grandparents?" I said they could call me Aunt Grannie, and Carl Uncle Peepaw. If I'd had children of my own, we'd have been more selfish, I'm sure, putting money away for them. This way we can share it more.
RD: Tell us about your charity, the Imagination Library.
Parton: We started it several years back through the Dollywood Foundation. It's a literacy program. We gave each child born in Sevier County, where I'm from, a book once a month until they're in kindergarten. They call me the book lady. Now the program's in 540 communities and 41 states. We've sent out over two million books this year.
RD: How did you come up with the idea?
Parton: A lot of it is because of my dad and my family. Many of them didn't get an education. My daddy died five years ago, and he was more proud of the kids calling me the book lady than he was that I was a star.
RD: Could he read?
Parton: No. Daddy couldn't read or write.
RD: How old were you when you developed your look?
Parton: I make jokes about it, but it's the truth that I kind of patterned my look after the town tramp. I didn't know what she was, just this woman who was blond and piled her hair up, wore high heels and tight skirts, and, boy, she was the prettiest thing I'd ever seen. Momma used to say, "Aw, she's just trash," and I thought, That's what I want to be when I grow up. Trash.
RD: When you're not in public, do you take off the makeup?
Parton: Well, I like being dressed up. I wear my high heels all the time because I'm short. Even my house shoes have heels because I can't reach my cabinets. I put on some makeup every day, because you never know who's going to come by, and I don't want anybody to see me totally down. Unless I'm really dead serious and on a writing binge, then I don't care.
RD: Do you do your own hair and makeup?
Parton: I wear wigs all the time because it's just so handy, and to get my hair to stay bleached and teased and sprayed like I used to do, it's so damaging. I have a hairdresser who does the wigs. I keep my own hair about the same length as my wigs, and when my husband and I roam around in our camper, I just get up in the mornings, put a few hot rollers in, tease it a little bit and put it up in little scrunch-ies. That's when I'll wear my flannels or my T-shirts.
RD: In your camper?
Parton: We have an RV. We love to cruise around, go through fast food restaurants, picnic, travel state to state. If we want to camp out, we can, but we usually get a little dinky motel room at night. We don't care as long as it's a clean bed and bathroom. We've done that for years. It's one of the things we do together that we love.
RD: What was behind the concept of an album of covers from the '60s and '70s?
Parton: I love these songs. I'm at a time in my career and life to where I'm pretty much just doing what I want. When I did bluegrass, I was doing what I wanted people to remember when I was long gone. Same with the '60s and '70s songs. I'd like to do something from the '50s too -- just to leave a few things behind.
RD: Do you have specific memories for the songs on the album?
Parton: Yeah, with every one of them. When I sing "Crimson and Clover," I play this guitar that looks like it's made out of the fender of a car. I say this was made out of a car that I spent a lot of time in the backseat with a boy listening to Tommy James.
RD: Were you trying to get any sort of message out with the songs you selected?
Parton: They're just great songs. Like "Turn, Turn, Turn." There's a time for everything. There's time for war, there's time for peace, there's time for dying. So everything has a season.
RD: Would you ever be interested in acting again?
Parton: I've not had offers for anything great, and I don't want to just do anything. Something will come around like it always does. I'm going to take off [performing] this year because I'm doing the musical Nine to Five on Broadway. I'm not in the show, but they asked me to write the music and I'm involved in the business end.
RD: What else do you want to do?
Parton: I want to do a great gospel music thing. And I have a children's book coming out next year called I Am a Rainbow. I'm going to write children's albums. And I want a children's TV show of my own, like a "Dolly's Dollhouse." Maybe when I'm older, like Mr. Rogers, I can just kind of work the neighborhood.
RD: "Dolly's Dollhouse"?
Parton: Yeah. I'd love that because I'm a big old young 'un myself. I love being around kids. They just kill me.
RD: Is there anything else you haven't done that you want to do?
Parton: Yes. I want to have a great line of cosmetics and perfumes. I wake up with new dreams every day.
RD: Do you think that you will one day slow down?
Parton: I'm a very energetic person, almost hyper to the point of being spastic. So the more I can do to channel that into things that I love to create is healthier for me and probably for everybody around me. And the older I get, the earlier I get up. The second my feet hit the floor, I'm awake. I'm like hurry, hurry. I just love life. And I feel like we ain't got but a certain amount of time anyway. I want to make the most of all of it.
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