Dolly Parton’s ebullient personality makes it seem like little gets her down, but things still bother the singer. 

According to one of her backup singers, three things deeply disturbed the Queen of Country. Outside one show in Atlanta, a woman upset her by touching on two of these things.

Parton has been famous for decades and has often leaned into gossip about her as a way to promote her projects. 

She admitted that while tabloids often overblow news, there is typically a grain of truth in the stories they run. 

It bothers her deeply when there is not, and magazines run outright lies about her.

Even worse than this is when someone doubts her talent, or calls her songwriting into question. 

Parton rightfully takes immense pride in her work and she finds it incredibly hurtful when people try to damage her professional reputation. 

Much to her dismay, a woman did this outside of a show in Atlanta.

“There was this crazy lady in the street with a sign — something about ‘I wrote Dolly Parton’s songs,’ or ‘She stole her songs from me,’” her backup singer Mary Fielder recalled in the book Dolly by Alanna Nash. “She was really deranged — claiming that Dolly was a fake. That really upset her.”

According to Fielder, Parton’s dismay went deeper than just the plagiarism accusations. It always upset her to see someone in need.

“She acted like it was no big deal, but I could tell it really disturbed her,” Fielder said. “Seeing anybody less fortunate always disturbed her. So did being misquoted.”

Not long after this, Parton faced weighty plagiarism accusations. Songwriting duo Neil and Jan Goldberg filed a $1 million copyright infringement suit against her, saying she based “9 to 5” off their song “Money World.” The suit devastated Parton.

“So degrading,” Parton said in an interview with Ladies’ Home Journal, per the book Dolly on Dolly: Interviews and Encounters with Dolly Parton. “One of the most painful things I’ve ever gone through. It damaged my reputation, I think, because there’ll always be people out there who think I would stoop so low as to steal from working people.”

The couple refused to settle out of court, so Parton endured a 12-day trial. In the end, the jury cleared her after a music plagiarism expert testified that there were few similarities between the two songs.

“The jury was out for twenty minutes, and we won,” Parton said. “The court awarded me attorney’s fees, which is a lot of money. Then the couple who sued me tried to get a retrial, claiming I charmed the jury because I played songs on the witness stand. The retrial was denied, and then they actually started trying to get me to record some of their songs.”

Parton also showed how she cared for those less fortunate than her on the set of her 1984 film, Rhinestone. She noticed a man shivering on the street between takes and walked over to give him her shawl. Her co-star, Sylvester Stallone tried to stop her. 

“Just as I wrapped the shawl around the man, Stallone walked up and jerked it away,” she wrote in her book Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business. “‘Don’t you put that good shawl over that scum!’ he said. ‘He could have made something of himself. We did.’”

Parton considered Stallone a friend, and his behavior appalled her.

“Well, you could have knocked me over with an angel feather,” she wrote. “I couldn’t believe what a man I considered a friend was saying. I grabbed the shawl back from him and wrapped it back around the man. Then I stood up right in Sly’s face and said, ‘Hey, look! That could have been you, you ungrateful son of a b****! Except by the grace of God. Who knows. It could be an angel sent to show you what an a** you really are. At least he’s one of God’s creatures, and that’s good enough for me.’”

Her words sunk in. She later heard from a crew member that Stallone brought the man a blanket.

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Source: The Wall Street Journal