Dolly Parton, the country music icon who performed in Philadelphia six times and championed childhood literacy in the region, died Tuesday after a brief battle with cancer. She was 80.
Her family announced the death. Parton’s ties to Philadelphia stretched back more than four decades. These ties included arena concerts at the Spectrum and a 2022 visit to the Wilmington Library to promote her Imagination Library program, which now mails free books to thousands of children in the area.
From the Spectrum stage with Kenny Rogers
Parton first played Philadelphia on Aug. 28, 1985, at the Spectrum as part of her Real Love Tour. She shared the bill with Kenny Rogers and Mac Davis, with Sawyer Brown as the opening act. Tickets cost $15 to $17.50, roughly $50 in today’s dollars.
By then she had already written “Jolene” and “I Will Always Love You” and starred in the film “9 to 5.” On the tour, she and Rogers performed duets including “Islands in the Stream,” “We’ve Got Tonight” and “Real Love.”
“We flirted with each other for thirty years and it was much more electric. I think once you consummate a relationship like that it loses something,” Rogers told Dan Rather in 2014 for AXS TV. “So we did some massive flirting in front of the nation, but there was never anything more than that.”
She returned to the Spectrum, by then renamed the Wachovia Spectrum, on Nov. 18, 2004, for her Hello, I’m Dolly Tour. The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Dan DeLuca reported that she joked onstage, “If I was to pull a Janet Jackson tonight, I’d take out everybody in the first three rows.”
The tour combined her country, pop and bluegrass styles. Parton told the Washington Post at the time: “Some liked the country, some liked the pop, some liked the big production, some loved the bluegrass and the more simple sound. So I decided to combine all the things that I’ve done through the years.”
Bluegrass, covers and a 2005 return
Parton was back in Philadelphia on Aug. 20, 2005, for the Vintage Tour. She played her classic hits and experimented with covers of songs she admired, including “Me and Bobby McGee,” “Turn, Turn, Turn” and “Blowin’ in the Wind.”
Variety’s David Rooney wrote of the tour: “The expansiveness and joy of her stage personality and the genuine warmth she brings to the down-home recollections peppered through the show make Parton an irresistible performer.”
“What’s most singular is her gift for being all things to all people, connecting equally with the die-hard country fans and the massive crowd of gay boys who had resurrected their Madonna Western-wear to come see a camp icon.”
World Cafe, XTU and the Philadelphia airwaves
Parton’s Philadelphia visits were not limited to concert stages. On Jan. 23, 2001, she sat down with former World Cafe host David Dye to discuss her childhood, her 38th album “Little Sparrow” and the inspirations behind her biggest hits.
“This is the kinda music I think, if I can sing at all, I sing the best, ’cause it’s the music of my soul, of my childhood and of my heart,” she said of her bluegrass roots. “I had to get rich so I could afford to sing like I’m poor again.”
In November 2007, she stopped by 92.5 XTU, Philadelphia’s country music station, for a 30-minute conversation ahead of her appearance at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York the next morning. She spoke about her role as Miley Cyrus’ godmother and her inability to sing “I Will Always Love You” during Porter Wagoner’s funeral.
A last concert days after the Pulse shooting
Parton’s final Philadelphia concert took place June 15, 2016, at the Mann Center on her Pure & Simple Tour. The show came just days after the Pulse Nightclub shooting in Orlando.
WHYY’s Eric Walter wrote about attending the concert: “The city skyline spread out before me, University City’s glass towers glowing with rainbow colors, I was surrounded by old and young; walking and wheeling; queer and straight; male and female; beige, white, and brown; religious, atheist, and agnostic; Democrat and Republican. What a cross-section of America!”
Parton closed the show with “Hello God,” a song about a world in need of help and protection. “This old world has gone to pieces,” she sang. “Can we fix it, is there time?”
Journalist Shima Oliaee, who later reported a podcast called “Dolly Parton’s America,” wrote for Time Magazine about seeing the tour. “On the television and in the news, hatred from both sides of the American political aisle had never seemed more grotesque, but at Parton’s show, we all sang together,” Oliaee wrote. “Looking back, I can’t help to wonder if she knew it would be something of a healing tour, the last of its kind she would do.”
Free books for thousands of local children
Parton’s last visit to the region was on May 5, 2022, when WHYY’s Mark Eichmann interviewed her at the Wilmington Library about her Imagination Library program. Illiteracy was personal for Parton. Her father, Lee, could not read or write.
“This one is so personal to me, I have to say, this means more to me than almost anything in my whole career,” Parton told WHYY News. “I’m just so proud of how it’s come along through the years and we’re just doing wonderful things with it and wonderful people like here in Delaware that’s helping us out.”
The program later expanded to include bilingual books. Parton’s Imagination Library currently mails free monthly books to nearly 800 children in West Philadelphia and 3,500 children in Montgomery County.
“I want this whole thing, my legacy, to really always say that I started this program and that it was a good program and that it was for the children and to help bring families together,” Parton told WHYY News.
Parton visited more than 60 cities on the Pure & Simple Tour in 2016. She never returned to a Philadelphia stage. But between the Spectrum, the Mann Center, the radio studios and the library shelves, her presence in the region lasted four decades and outlived any single performance.