The late singer and songwriter grew up on a farm in Tennessee
Dolly Parton’s music reached fans all over the world, but it all started on a Tennessee farm.
“We owned the whole big farm,” she told Music City News in 1967. “We just farmed and that’s all we did. I used to work in the field, hoe corn and set tobacco.”
“We all had to learn how to milk because we all had to do our personal chores,” Parton told Martha Stewart in a September 2024 interview.
Parton died Aug. 25, 2026, at the age of 80 after a quiet battle with cancer.
Her childhood farm was in Sevier County, home to more than 500 farms as of the 2022 USDA Census of Agriculture.
Her parents, Robert Lee Parton and Avie Lee Owens, were sharecroppers who eventually acquired their own 40-acre farm.
As Parton’s music catalog grew, its subject matter included stories of farming and rural life.
Here are a few examples.
Her third album, In the God Old Days (When Times Were Bad), released in 1969, included the titular song.
This song paints a picture of a family struggling to get by.
“We'd get up before sunup to get the work done up
We'd work in the fields 'til the sun had gone down
We've stood and we've cried as we've helplessly watched
A hailstorm a-beatin' our crops to the ground
We've gone to bed hungry many nights in the past
In the good old days when times were bad,” the first verse goes.
Parton wrote Daddy’s Working Boots, which featured on her 1973 album My Tennessee Mountain Home, to pay homage to her father and his efforts to support his family.
“As long as I remember, I remember Daddy workin’
Workin’ on the job or either on the farm
Trying to provide for the family that he loves
And daddy’s workin’ boots have taken many steps for us,” the song goes.
That album also includes the song My Tennessee Mountain Home, a nod to her hometown and quiet rural upbringing.
“In my Tennessee mountain home
Life is as peaceful as a baby's sigh
In my Tennessee mountain home
Crickets are singing in the fields near by,” the lyrics say.
And in 1994 Parton lent her voice to a re-recording of Where Grass Won’t Grow with George Jones and other artists.
The song is about trying to survive on a 12-acre farm in Tennessee.
“The dirt was clay an' was the color of the blood in me
A twelve acre farm on a ridge in south Tennessee
We left our sweat all over that land
Behind a mule we watched grow old
Row after row
Trying to grow corn an' cotton on ground so poor that grass won't grow,” the song goes.