Why Dolly Parton calls Husband Carl Dean ‘Scrooge

Dolly Parton and Carl Dean have been married for 56 years. The couple got together shortly after Parton moved to Nashville to pursue her dream of becoming a famous singer/songwriter. They married two years later. In those two years, and for many years to come, Parton learned a lot about the mystery man that is Carl Dean. Sometime early on, she started lovingly referring to him as “Scrooge.” Her reasoning had nothing to do with Christamas and everything to do with how cheap she realized her new partner was. 

Carl saves and Dolly spends  

Dean and Parton quickly figured out that they have different philosophies when it comes to money. 

“Carl would rather have his body hair painfully pulled out than spend money,” Parton wrote in her 1994 memoir, Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business. “I call him Scrooge. He’s so tight he squeaks when he walks.”

The “Light of a Clear Blue Morning” singer, on the other hand, “can’t get rid of the stuff quick enough.” 

Dean would always say to his wife: “I could take the money you waste and have more than Donald Trump.” 

Parton makes her money from show business and her various businesses, of course. Back then, Dean made his own money in a variety of ways. But the couple always shared the understanding: “our money is our money.”

Carl Dean the investor 

Dean always had an eye for investment, particularly in real estate. 

“Carl is one of those people with a knack for buying property at a cheap price, in some unlikely location, and then having the interstate go through there a few months later,” wrote Parton. “I thought he was nuts when he bought property a few years back that seemed like it was in the middle of nowhere. That nowhere is now where the Saturn plant in Tennessee is located.”

He also loved to “horse trade,” but not with actual horses. He’d trade “tractors, trucks, or whatever, and come out with something better than he started with.” 

“I sometimes feel lucky that nobody ever came along with a trashy-looking blond country singer with fewer miles on her and lower maintenance,” the “Don’t Make Me Have to Come Down There” singer wrote.

Carl’s ‘treasures’  

Dean’s passion for saving often led him to the dump to do his “shopping.”

“Here is this man with all of the money and material things he could ever want or need, and he still loves to dig around in dumps for what he calls ‘treasures,’” wrote Parton, adding that she doesn’t mind. “I’ll sit in the camper for hours and read or write while he’s roaming around.” 

Dean has never been afraid to get his hands dirty—at the dump or otherwise. 

“Carl’s mother told me that he always loved the dirt, and he still does,” wrote Parton. “He used to sit for hours on an ash pile, digging around. She said she’d have to literally run him down to feed him or change his diaper.”