The Life and Times of Dolly Parton Quiz

Answer: Sevierville

Sevierville is situated about ten miles south of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. It is small: about twenty square miles with a population under 20,000. It seems that Sevierville was a center of much abolitionist activity in the 19th century. Sevierville openly invites visitors on its website, which says "Where Smoky Mountain Fun Begins."

Answer: sitar

Dolly Parton plays the dulcimer, the fiddle, and the drums as well. She says that she has "the gift of rhyme." Her musical career began when she was ten. She has rather famously said that she got both her musical abilities and her free-flowing imagination from a combination of what she calls her mother and father's "hard work ethic."

Answer: Johnny Cash

She met Johnny Cash at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville. 'Rolling Stone Magazine' included Dolly Parton and Johnny Cash as among the greatest 100 singers of all time.

This is a famous idea of Johnny Cash: "I'd like to wear a rainbow every day, and tell the world that everything is o.k. But I'll try to carry off a little darkness on my back. Until things are brighter, I'm the Man in Black."
Similarly, Dolly Parton calls things as they are and doesn't squirm away from the unpleasant.

Johnny Cash: 'Cash: The Autobiography,' 1998.

Answer: 1946

Dan Rather reported that Dolly Parton said to him in a CBS interview: "I'm just doing great....It's like you have to spend a lifetime in the business to really know kind of what you're doing ... It's like this great song out of Nashville that Buddy Killen had, 'When I've learned enough to really live, I'll be old enough to die.'"

She says about retirement,"I think that I'm never going to retire....I love to work. I wake up with a new dream every day, and so, as long as I can, you know, dream and as long as I can afford to put them in motion, that's just what I'm going to do."

Answer: Coat

This song embraces and celebrates her very humble beginnings, affirms her faith and speaks out for diversity and a loving spirit.

Answer: I Will Always Love You

Dolly Parton wrote this song in 1973. According to Dolly Parton, she got a call from Colonel Tom Parker the morning Elvis Presley was going to record "I Will Always Love You." Parker told her that Elvis didn't record anything he didn't have a copyright to. Dolly Parton reported that this news literally 'broke her heart." She refused to let Elvis Presley have the copyright. Undercover.com, March 24, 2009
In 1992 when Whitney Houston sang "I Will Always Love You," she did not ask to get the copyright.

Answer: Islands in the Stream

This was a 1983 hit, written by the Bee Gees.
The name of the song is the title of an Ernest Hemingway novel.

Answer: Travelin' Thru

In 2006, for the second time, Parton was nominated for an Academy Award for her song, "Travelin' Thru" which she wrote for the film "Transamerica." The song's defense of a transgendered woman drew the ire of many, even death threats. Subsequently, Dolly Parton has spoken eloquently of her understanding of and solidarity with all peoples.

In an 2009 interview with Larry King, she says of the Dixie Chicks, "But I have to say that in defense of them, they are great girls, they are great artists, and I'm sure they never meant the harm that has come from all of this....Natalie is kind of like me. She opens her mouth sometimes before her brain kicks in....I really think it's time to be Americans and kind of forgive them, because that's the American way to do."

Answer: My Tennessee Mountain Home

"My Tennessee Mountain Home," both the title track and the album, was Parton's open-ended memory of her youth in Tennessee. She began the album with parts of the first letter she ever wrote her parents. Although critics have praised this album highly, it never was in either the top ten US country albums or singles.
This title song functions as a theme at her unique theme park, Dollywood.

Answer: 5,000

According to her website, she writes a song every two or three days. Her first song, "Little Tiny Tassletop," was about her corn-cob doll. She could not write at the time, and her mother apparently wrote the words down for her.

Answer: cheap

In an interview, Parton openly brings up the topic of money, "I made a lot of money, and I need a lot of money, because it costs a lot of money to look this cheap," she said with a laugh." Bob Edwards, "Dolly Parton's Stairway to Success,"
NPR, September 24, 2002.

As of 2009, various sources believe that Dolly Parton's net worth is over 900 million dollars.

Answer: Carl Thomas Dean

"We get along great, and we've never even had a big argument, a big fight," Larry King Live, July 3, 2003.
"He's proud of me," she says. "He doesn't care what I do, and he knows I'm always coming home. He knows I love him, and he loves me. But he's a loner. He don't want to be with anyone but me, so that works out just fine." CBS Sunday Morning, "Nobody's Fool," July 24, 2004.

Dean is a construction worker. They married May 30, 1966. Ultimately, it was a mutual decision not to have children. He chooses not to travel with her. Their marriage, despite all rumors, appears to be unique and complete for them.

Answer: 9 to 5

A musical version of the highly successful film, "9 to 5," opened on Broadway in April, 2009. It received five Tony awards and will start a national tour in September 2010. The 1980 movie was the highest earning comedy of the year. It starred Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, Dolly Parton, and Dabney Coleman.

Answer: Tony Blair

Archbishop Desmond Tutu was also interviewed for this series which particularly focuses on the role of faith in high profile people.

Answer: Library

Her literacy program, "Dolly Parton's Imagination Library," a part of the Dollywood Foundation, mails one book per month to enrolled youth from the time of birth until kindergarten. It began in Sevier County but now functions in thirty-six U.S. states. In December 2007 it expanded to Europe.

Parton has been very generous with this program. She herself says of it that she "put her money where her mouth is - and with such a big mouth that's a pretty large sum of money." She encourages people to become 'champions of the imagination."