Stella Parton was 7, and her big sister Dolly was 10, when Dolly started her career in TV and music.
Stella later remembered how those sessions went.
“We would write songs together, and she always wrote the good lines and would laugh at my bad ones,” she said on the talk show Vicki! in the early 1990s.
On the same show, she said Dolly loved to tell dirty jokes in the back of the school bus and always made her little sister sit up front, because, Dolly said, Stella was too young to hear them. It drove her cr𝐚zy.
Dolly Parton was one of 12 children born to Robert and Avie Lee Parton in rural East Tennessee, and music belonged to all of them. Rachel, the youngest, told People in 1982 that “singing was like breathing at home.” Several of the brothers and sisters went on to sing, write and record in their own names, beside the most famous voice in the family.
Dolly died at 80 after battling cancer, and her death was announced on Aug. 25 in a video tribute from her nephew Bryan Seaver. Six of her 11 siblings survive her. Five have died, most recently her brother Coy, in July at 82.
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Stella and Cassie Parton Made Their First Records as Children Singing With Dolly
Stella and Cassie made their recording debuts as children, singing with Dolly on an album by their uncle Bill Owens, the same uncle who taught Dolly to play guitar when she was 8. In 1967 the sisters cut a gospel album together, In the Garden, and Stella made her country debut that same year.
That was also the year Dolly joined The Porter Wagoner Show, and in 1970 Cassie sang on it with her sisters. Cassie was still singing with family in 2013, when she performed with her brother Randy in My People, a show at Dollywood.
Stella kept going in her own name. She had a 1975 hit with “I Want to Hold You in My Dreams Tonight,” and over the years she has released dozens of albums.
She has also spoken about how Dolly’s childhood differed from her own. Stella told the Daily Mail in 2016 that she was sure Dolly felt more fortunate than her at the time, maybe because Dolly was excluded from the day-to-day drudgery at home, and that it also brought Dolly a certain amount of guilt that was painful for her.
Stella has been clear about how she works with the family. “Everybody knows that I’m independent,” she told People. She added that if they call her in to help with producing, consulting or anything else, she is always there.
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Floyd Parton Wrote a No. 1 for Dolly, and Randy Recorded One Before Alabama Did
Two of the brothers left their mark on No. 1 hits. Randy, who performed with his band Moonlight Bandits, was the first to record “Roll On (Eighteen Wheeler).” Alabama later took it to No. 1 in 1984.
Floyd was the songwriter. He wrote “Nickels and Dimes” and “Rockin’ Years,” the 1991 No. 1 duet Dolly sang with Ricky Van Shelton about a couple staying together all the way into old age. He knew her music from the inside too, playing guitar and singing backup in her Travelin’ Family Band in the mid-1970s.
Floyd died in 2018 at 61. In a statement to People, the Parton family thanked everyone for their kindness and told how they said goodbye.
“Yesterday, we laid our sweet baby brother to rest. We all sang his lovely song, ‘Rockin’ Years,’ together as a family at the service to say goodbye to him. He lived a short life of love and beautiful songs.”
He wrote a love song about growing old together, and his family sang it to send him off at 61. Randy died three years later, in 2021, at 67, and their brother David followed in November 2024 at 82. Baby brother Larry had lived only four days in 1955.
Dolly’s 2024 Family Album Gave Her Brothers and Sisters Duets of Their Own
Some of the siblings took their own road. Freida broke from the family’s country roots and sang rock instead. Rachel starred in the ABC sitcom 9 to 5, the TV series based on the 1980 film Dolly starred in, and released a country album in 1984. In 2024 she and Dolly wrote a cookbook together, Good Lookin’ Cookin’.
That same year, Dolly made room for many of them on Smoky Mountain DNA: Family, Faith and Fables, an album built around the Owens and Parton family. Stella, Randy, Rachel, Freida and Cassie each got a duet with her. Floyd got one too, when his original recording of “Foolin’ Around” was used to make a duet with his sister, and Freida and their mother, Avie Lee, are credited as writers.
Dolly said on her official website that she did not get to be who she was without many of the people heard on that record. On April 4, 2025, Owepar Records released Floyd’s posthumous album, The Songwriter, the Singer.
After Dolly died, Stella sat down with CBS Mornings co-host Gayle King at RCA Studio A in Nashville for an exclusive interview about her sister.
“I know she was at peace,” Stella said.
Dolly always wrote the good lines, by her little sister’s account. Her bad lines once made Dolly laugh, and decades later that little sister is one of six Parton siblings who survive her.
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