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- Hacker News
- She made money doing what she loved, and gave a huge amount of it away to help others. Can't ask for better than that, she will be missed.by steveBK123
- I grew up in East TN, and this feels like the death of Queen Elizabeth, Mother Teresa, and your favorite fun aunt all rolled up into one. Except no one had a bad word to say about Dolly. She was beloved around the world, but she was an institution back home.by cbfrench
- > She was beloved around the world, but she was an institution back home.
And the rest of the world is envious!
by nxobject - I grew up in Kentucky, so Dolly still felt like a sweet distant aunt that nobody ever had a harsh word about. Went to Dollywood several times as a kid.
My hope is that people will try an emulate her charity and compassion.
by esseph - I still remember how hard I was struck by the scene in The Orville, where someone from another planet hears a Dolly Parton song playing and asks who it is. He goes on to say, "She speaks with the might of a hundred soldiers!"
She did. She is one of our species' great poets.
- That was a really great cameo.by lemonberry
- The US's only secular saint. Her memorial service will need to be held in a football stadium to handle the number of people who want to pay their last respects.
- No I'm guessing that she arranged for a small personal ceremony only - insisting on that would be in line with her character.
- What do you mean by secular saint? Genuinely confused by the statement.by mlrtime
- "Her memorial service will need to be held in a football stadium to handle the number of people who want to pay their last respects"
Way bigger. Dolly was beloved by millions, if not billions of people worldwide.
You'd need an area the size of Tennessee itself for the memorial service.
by lightedman - yeah she's a treasure to pretty much everyone.by chasd00
- At least, since Fred Rogers died.by kylemaxwell
- Dollywood can hold more people than a football stadium. Probably will.
Its a nice theme park. She bought it because she thought it would be cool to have a really awesome theme park in TN. She was both correct and successful. It's pretty cool.
by VLM - Random fact, Dolly the cloned sheep was named after Dolly Parton:
"Dolly is derived from a mammary gland cell and we couldn't think of a more impressive pair of glands than Dolly Parton's."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolly_(sheep)
In the end I think her generosity outshone her other famous attributes.
by hermitcrab - The UK office's (Ricky Gervais) final words in the last episode:
"and some say she's just a big pair of tits"
by partyficial - The past really is a foreign country.by triceratops
- I am from the wrong continent to be inculcated in country music from an early age, but I read books distributed from her program every week to the niece. So that's probably her more durable contribution to society, I think.by curuinor
- > "wrong continent to be inculcated in country music"
A humorous response to whenever someone says "country music" is: "Which country?"
by em3rgent0rdr - Something tells me that the songs and films will outlast the books program, but hopefully it's making a difference in the lives of kids. There's no telling how far reaching that can end up being.by autoexec
- A fun YouTube video of Dolly Parton in an Irish pub: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqdKrv1Vh-g
“Dolly Parton makes an impromptu appearance at Páidí Ó Sé’s pub in Dún Chaoin, Co. Kerry and takes to the stage to entertain the locals.
While on holiday in Kerry, singer Dolly Parton paid a visit to former Kerry footballer Páidí Ó Sé’s pub, where she performs her song ‘Coat of Many Colours’ accompanied by musicians Steve Cooney and Seamus Begley.
Dolly signs off at the end of her performance,
Thank you very much and welcome to Dinglewood
This episode of Cursaí was broadcast on 1 October 1990.”
by stevoski - Amazing share! What a performer. What a life.by cm2012
- What a way to recognize her! I get the same feeling when she stormeed Glastonbury in 2014 - pure class. When you think about it, she had all of the virtues of a "national treasure" in the British sense.by nxobject
- Very cool video and respect to the guitar player for gracefully handling a once in a lifetime opportunity.by mmmm2
- To me, apart from her amazing music and philanthropy, what Dolly Parton represents is something that was (emphasis on past tense) at one time truly exceptional about the United States - that someone from a very humble background (poverty in East TN) could have a tremendous impact on the culture of the world - the other example in entertainment being Michael Jackson (from Gary IN).
Admittedly the US music industry was among the few where this phenomenon happened, although definitionally very few reach pop stardom.
In contrast, much of the world exports only its "elite culture", not the culture of common people.
by danans - See also Britney Spears, who's mom ran a small daycare. Taylor Swift's an in between story, middle class financial services parents, hard to say if they were paycheck to paycheck or not...
Its not necessarily the best thing that big companies have a business model of taking advantage of poor, or relatively poorer, people, particularly attractive young women. See our global Epstein class and global Weinstein class.
by VLM - Your contention is what, that now this is no longer possible or less likely?by whimsicalism
- Don’t you still see this with hip-hop to some extent?
I also think a lot of the difference is that a much smaller percentage of the population grows up as poor as she did. A person from a similar wealth/income percentile today mightn’t seem to have had such a difficult start.
Obviously lots of other things are different today – it’s easier than ever to access a wide variety of music but that’s not what people tend to do (iirc); there’s less money to be made selling music; there’s perhaps less interest in more ‘rural’ genres of music.
- I put her in my pantheon with Johnny Cash. Turns out Cash introduced her on her Grand Ole Opry debut in 1959, when she was 13. She killed it. Parton said later she was best friends with Johnny and June.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcfyzJW-BA4
I don't think I've ever seen the interwebs talking about one thing as much as right now.
by delichon - As a performer, sure.
But Dolly was 1000x the songwriter that Johnny Cash was.
by dsiegel2275 - When Michael Jackson died, reaction online was so sudden it made Google search backend stumble... They didn't have a solution to auto-hotspot-protect half the planet searching his name suddenly.
I'll be interested to see if the mitigations hold today.
by shadowgovt