Since imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, I am told, I was not surprised to hear Dolly Parton say in an interview that she once entered a “Dolly Parton lookalike” drag queen contest in Los Angeles unannounced — and lost.

Parton, who died Tuesday at age 80, enjoyed telling that story, which illustrated, among other things, that it wasn’t always easy to be Dolly, even for Dolly.

“Nobody applauded,” she said in a May 2025 radio interview, “like a little trickle that was probably David, my hairdresser.”

Go figure. Maybe she looked too much like the real thing for anyone to believe she really was.

Either way, that little story tells us a lot about Dolly. She was more than merely tolerant of different people, her fans will say. She was welcoming.

The “Queen of Country,” as many called her for her musical talents, won me over with her soulful voice and inspired storytelling in song and verse.

She also showed impressive skills as an actress, businesswoman, fashion icon and philanthropist, all without losing any of her engaging down-home wit, grace and charm.

And she never forgot where she came from, as the old saying goes. In fact, that’s where she got some of her best material, as the fourth of 12 children growing up in a tiny cabin in rural Tennessee, now reproduced in an exhibit at Dollywood, her amusement park in her Pigeon Forge, Tennessee.

My appreciation for her was renewed with Whitney Houston’s super hit “I Will Always Love You,” popularized on the soundtrack for the 1992 thriller “The Bodyguard.”

Parton wrote the song as she was preparing to leave her working partnership with fellow country star Porter Wagoner.

Although many think of the powerful love ballad as a world-class break-up song, both Parton and Wagoner denied there was any romance involved in their writing partnership. Dolly actually was married to Carl Dean for nearly 60 years until........

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