Dolly Parton Admitted Her Family Felt ‘Resentment’ Over Her Success
Dolly Parton is not the only member of her family with musical talent. Parton had a family band touring with her at one point, and she said most of her extended family had musical talent. She is, however, the most successful musical artist in the family. She admitted that members of her family resented her success and her inability to help them establish better careers.
Dolly Parton shared why some members of her family resented her success
Parton grew up in a musical family; she said nearly every member of both sides had some sort of musical talent. She’s the only one who found such a high level of success, though. Parton admitted that some members of her family resented her for this.
“Some of my family members wanted to be stars in their own right, and I felt like they resented me, either for having done it first or for not doing more to advance their careers,” she wrote in her book Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business. “They seemed to feel that they were just as talented and smart, and that I was just lucky.”
Parton admitted that this made her feel slightly guilty about her success. It began to wear on her.
“I tried to help them, and I’ve always felt a certain amount of guilt connected to my success, and now it loomed larger than ever,” she wrote. “It’s hard when you want the best for everybody but you also want it for yourself. When you care so much for people, you feel a sense of responsibility. It can drain the life right out of you.”
This stress contributed to a period of illness and depression Parton went through in the early 1980s.
Dolly Parton said some of her family members were more talented than her
Parton believed in the talent of her family members. While she thought they had the musical ability to make it, she didn’t think they had enough drive. She noted that her sisters didn’t have the same ambitious streak as her.
“Some of ’em sing, but they never really had the ambition to really make it in the music business,” she told Music City News in 1967. “I have two sisters that sing real well. In fact, I guess you’d say they’re the only ones that really sing. My older sister writes some. She never really did anything with it, but she writes some poetry and some songs.”
She joked that she wouldn’t encourage them to follow her into the industry.
“The three of us used to sing together in church and on the local radio stations some when I was home, but they don’t really have any ambition to really get in the music business,” she said. “And I wouldn’t try to encourage ’em to if that’s not what they want ’cause it’s a hard life. [Laughs].”
She once fired members of her family band
Parton once brought her family members on the road with her as her backing band. Eventually, though, she realized she wanted a different sound for her live performances, and decided to fire them.
“They are all talented, and I love each of them dearly. They are not at all at fault for what happened,” she wrote. “I had made a huge mistake. Here I was trying to listen to another voice, trying to move in a new direction, and my falling back into my family was grounding me in my past. Their music is wonderful and pure and does reflect the truest, deepest part of me, but I was hearing a different drummer.”
She said this wasn’t an easy decision, but she knew it was the right one.
