Good golly, it’s ANOTHER DOLLY!
But after surviving a kidnap bid and a rape attack, Stella Parton’s life has been even more jaw-dropping than her sister’s
DOLLY Parton’s younger sister Stella was in her 20s, a shop worker and wannabe country singer overshadowed by her sibling’s success, when she set off for a meeting she hoped would lead to a big career break. She was due to see an uncle who had already helped Dolly become a star, and Stella believed he could do the same for her. Instead, she was left reeling.
‘I had my one-year-old son Tim with me,’ she recalls, ‘and my uncle pointed at us and said, “You need to take that kid of yours and go back to work in the beauty shop where you belong.” ’
Worse, Stella says Dolly, who was also at the meeting, quietly added: ‘Well, Stella, if you’re going to sing, you need to change your name from Parton.’
‘They thought I’d be a threat to my sister if I continued to sing,’ says Stella, who is four years younger than Dolly.
‘When I was told to change my name, I felt like my birthright was being taken. But I’ve forgiven all of that now. I think Dolly felt helpless and I’m sure it confused her, as at that time she was still a little girl herself. We were just young women, sisters, being pitted against each other.’
Though they did not fall out, anyone assuming that Stella, now 66, with a music career in the U.S. spanning almost 50 years and 31 albums, must have had an easy ride on the back of her famous sibling should think again. For although 70-year-old Dolly has forged an extraordinary career, Stella’s life has at times been just as compelling.
She has survived a kidnap bid, suffered extreme physical violence — including attempted rape — and has had to endure frequent comparisons to her sister.
‘We’ve always had a big sister/little sister relationship, but it’s very loving,’ she says. ‘We are very protective of each other.
‘I never saw myself as an aspiring star, just a working artist and single mother. There were always comparisons, though.’
Once, she says, a music promoter even told her that to compete with Dolly and her famously generous embonpoint, she needed to get a breast enlargement. She refused.
Stella’s sing-song voice and teased blonde locks, her warmth and earthy sense of humour hint at the sisters’ similarities. Then there are the high cheek bones, laughing eyes, and generous mouth. Their dress sense, though, couldn’t be more different.
Dolly has often joked she’s ‘made a fortune looking cheap’. Stella’s understated on-stage attire, by contrast, often involves higher necklines and tailored jackets.
‘I think people were often disappointed when I turned up for shows because they expected me to have that overblown image,’ she says. ‘I wasn’t glamorous and I don’t like to be noticed when I’m not on stage. But I can honestly say there’s not been that competitive element with Dolly because I never wanted to have her kind of career.’
STELLA
grew up on the family farm in Sevier county, Tennessee, between the Smoky Mountains and the Little Pigeon River, as one of 12 children to parents Robert Lee Parton and wife, Avie, who was prone to depression and nearly always pregnant.
From age seven, Stella was entrusted with cooking, cleaning, childcare and laundry. During school holidays and at weekends Dolly, still only ten years old, would live with an aunt 30 miles away. Dolly was already a regular on local radio and TV, so it was easier for her aunt, who lived closer to the studios, to drive Dolly there.
Says Stella: ‘I’m sure at the time she felt more fortunate than me, maybe because she was excluded from the day-to- day drudgery at home. But I think it also brought her a certain amount of guilt — that was painful for her.’
She adds: ‘ Dolly tried to overcompensate by being over-generous with some of the younger children and over-indulging our mother with gifts, hoping they’d make her better. But Dolly had it tough. She had to survive in the grown-up world of showbusiness.’
Dolly suffered from the frequent absences from her family. ‘ When she left home, she missed us so bad,’ says Stella. ‘My sister Cassie and I would take a four-hour bus journey to be with her and we’d all cry when we had to leave.’
Stella herself left home at 15, also intent on a career in music, but after marrying at 17, having her only child Tim at 19 and becoming divorced at 21, her life was rather more turbulent.
At one point, struggling to raise her son alone while working, Stella would clean Dolly’s house for an extra £30 a week. Once, after a reception in Nashville, Stella, then aged 24, was asked to give a lift home to a local politician. He attacked her in her car and she was lucky to escape with just a broken nose and torn clothes.
He was well known and Stella didn’t report the attack, reasoning that ‘because of who he was, nobody would believe me’. Years later, she was introduced to the man, whom she instantly recognised.
Far from being repentant about the attempted rape, however, he simply acknowledged they had met before, ‘and he looked right at me,’ she says. ‘It was as if he wanted to remind me of that horrible night. That was worse in some ways and it sent me into a depression. You can still see the scar on my face today — where the bone popped through the flesh’.
Later, she had a relationship with an abusive man who threatened to kill her if she left. Too afraid to tell anyone, for fear he might try to kidnap Tim, or even Dolly, Stella suffered in silence.
He toured with her, barely letting her out of his sight until one day, after she broke off their engagement, he abducted her.
She was too frightened to raise the alarm as they waited for a plane at Nashville airport, ‘because it would be on the local news and I was afraid to embarrass my family. My son Tim was in military school at the time and if there had been any publicity he would have been horrified’.
Stella was then spirited abroad (‘ I won’t say where’). For ten days she was made to stay with his family who didn’t speak English, until one day after he’d left the house, ‘I looked his mother in the face and basically communicated with her through eye contact. I think intuitively she knew something was wrong.’
That night, mother and son had a huge fight. The next day Stella left.
Stella, who now works to help victims of domestic abuse, revealed the story in her memoir, Tell It Sister, Tell It five years ago, ‘and a lot of that stuff was news to Dolly,’ Stella admits.
‘She never said a word about it to me afterwards. I think it probably bothered her that she didn’t know, but I would never want her to feel guilty about that. She had her own stuff to deal with.’
WHILE
Stella admits she hasn’t had much luck with marriage — she is said to have had four husbands, but won’t confirm this — it stands in stark contrast to Dolly who will be celebrating her 50th wedding anniversary in May.
Dolly married Carl Dean, shortly after arriving in Nashville. Though he has always shunned the limelight, he is set to make a rare public appearance on stage for a golden wedding party at their Willow Lake Plantation home in Tennessee.
So the enigmatic and elusive Mr Dean really does exist.
‘Oh yes!’ says Stella. ‘And they’re very compatible. I don’t believe either of them could have been married to anyone else.
‘My guess as to the secret of their long marriage is that they spend lots of time apart. But he’s always there whenever family babies are born and he’s there for all the weddings and all the funerals.
‘I’ve also been in a real bad situation a time or two and called on him and he was there for me, and never spoke of it. He’s a good man.’
Before the anniversary celebrations begin, though, Stella tours the UK with songs from Mountain Songbird, her tribute album to Dolly.
In it she sings some of her sister’s best-loved songs, including Jolene and I Will Always Love You, as well as a duet, More Power To Ya, which the sisters wrote together.
They remain close, ‘and the hardest part was picking which songs to sing because Dolly’s written over 3,000,’ says Stella. ‘She’s iconic because of her image and her accomplishments, but for me, she’s one of the greatest poets.
‘Dolly never wanted children and so her songs are her children, which is why I take such care performing them — I treat them like they’re my nieces and nephews. I hope that I’ve embraced them with as much love and respect as I have for my sister. We have such a close bond.
‘I would never have been comfortable with the kind of public image my sister has enjoyed. But she was my sister before the world knew her and she will be my sister to the very end of our lives.’
Stella Parton’S UK tour begins on February 25. For dates and venues see StellaParton.com. Her album Mountain Songbird: a Sister’s tribute is out now.