We’ve all had that moment where you suddenly start hearing an artist’s music on every radio and ask yourself whether someone died. That would have never worked for Dolly Parton in Nashville, a town where hardly an hour passes without hearing “Coat of Many Colors” or “Jolene” spilling out of a bar on Broadway.
As fate would have it, I was at the Grand Ole Opry, where Dolly first became a household name, when word of her passing began circulating on Tuesday on social media. I’m not a big fan of country music, but like most Americans I reflexively loved Dolly—one of the most genuine, caring celebrities ever to inhabit the public eye.
By the time I was driving back to downtown Nashville from Opryland, tributes were already popping up on the electronic billboards along I-40, and by the evening the signs of mass mourning were everywhere, with the city’s Cumberland River bridges lit up in pink and flowers piling up on the steps of the Dolly Parton SongTeller Hotel on Commerce Street.
Most appropriately, Dolly’s name and songs were on the lips of virtually every performer in town, including Jack Johnson, who worked part of Dolly’s “Nine to Five” into his set at the Ascend Amphitheater just a few hours after Parton’s death at age 80 was announced.
It’s both a “too soon?” and fair question to ask what Dolly’s passing will mean for tourism in Tennessee, where the singer was practically synonymous with Nashville and whose Dollywood amusement park is one of the state’s biggest attractions. But a visit to Music City, where both dead and living country music icons are held in equal esteem, would suggest that Dolly’s star will hardly be diminished by her passing.
Even before Tuesday, hers was among the most common visage on display in the city’s honky tonks and souvenir shops (perhaps surpassed only by the darker visage of the Man in Black). That seems unlikely to change. In fact, it’s not hard to imagine a Dolly Parton Museum taking a place of honor downtown alongside the Johnny Cash Museum—and Dolly again becoming the hottest ticket in Nashville.
Dollywood, likewise, can be expected to see a spike in visitation along with Dolly nostalgia. It’s perhaps instructive to note that downtown Nashville has an outpost of Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville resorts. Despite Buffett’s passing in 2023, Maragaritaville has continued to channel the singer’s good-time island vibes. Dollywood, the Dolly Parton hotel and other ventures are likely to be equally enduring.
Dollywood, especially, is seen as a distillation of the southern culture and hospitality that Dolly embodied as much as an amusement park. There’s no reason to believe that millions of visitors won’t continue to flock to Tennessee to hear Dolly’s music, marvel at the things she created and tap into the singer’s death-defying legacy of style, generosity and plain ‘ole kindness.
