The first artist who truly stirred Dolly Parton: “My very first crush”
For most teenage girls, the fantasies of celebrity crushes don’t often go far beyond the poster strung up on the bedroom wall. Dolly Parton was a little different. She had to face the moment head-on.
But that’s simply part of the deal that comes with being a fledgling child star, with Parton beginning her career in earnest at a young age, when she would appear and perform on local TV and radio shows throughout East Tennessee. By ten years old, she was gaining a profile. By 13, she was ready to hit the big time with her first show at the Grand Ole Opry.
However, it was on this latter occasion that Parton’s horizons opened, in every sense of the word. Yes, she was officially being taken into the fold of the most famous country establishment in the world, but to a 13-year-old girl, that seemed like small fry compared to the real momentous moment which happened that night.
After all, if it wasn’t for the man introducing her to the stage that night, Parton never would have realised the significance of her first celebrity crush. To the rest of the world, he was the unshakable, inimitable Man in Black. To Parton, he was the definition of a dream. It could only have been Johnny Cash.
Parton’s worship of Cash was made evident over the course of their long and storied friendship, but in reality, that connection was only sparked because the country starlet, as she was at the time, claimed she loved him first. As she later recalled in an interview many years down the line: “I was about 13 when I first met Johnny Cash, and that’s when Johnny was all strung out on drugs and everything, but he was so magnetic, so sexy.”
It was, of course, a pivotal moment that cemented the trajectory of Parton’s career, but that was far from her mind at the time. “He was my first male grown-up crush, he just really moved me. That’s when I realised what hormones do and what sex appeal really means,” she enthused, as if the man was still standing right in front of her.
They do say that love is inexplicable, but that is never more proven than the singer, so famed for her way with words, being completely lost in how to describe her feelings. “He just kind of stirred me somehow,” she tried to explain. “And so I guess that’s when I realised I was becoming a little woman.”
She even had the nerve to tell June Carter that she should have been first in line for Cash’s affections, but it was always said with love. “Oh, we laughed about it through the years,” Parton added. “I told him, you know, you were my very first crush, my first sexy grown-up crush. He always got a kick out of that.”
In a late 1950s landscape alongside the likes of Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, and Jerry Lee Lewis, it did seem that every man who ever set foot on a stage possessed an instant sex appeal. It was, naturally, a tried and tested method, but on behalf of 13-year-old girls everywhere, Parton needed to see it for herself.
