Country icon Dolly Parton is one of the lucky few performers who can say that they’ve been pursuing their passion for their entire life: a decades-long career that Parton can trace back to a pivotal moment performing on the Cas Walker Farm and Home Hour at only ten years old. The titular host described Parton as the “youngest singing sensation” to appear on the popular radio program. And indeed, Parton hasn’t stopped being sensational ever since.
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Nearly 70 years later, during an appearance on The Bobby Bones Show, Parton described the performance that got her “addicted.”
Dolly Parton Got Her Start Performing On Local Radio
As one of many siblings in a Christian Appalachian home, Dolly Parton was no stranger to music. Both her regional and religious upbringings involved plenty of song sharing, whether it was the secular folk ballads passed down from British and Irish settlers in the eastern mountain range or countless sacred hymns and gospel songs. Parton often credited her mother for instilling a love of singing in the young girl, something she was able to share with her entire family before and after she became a country star.
But for her first professional performances, the “Coat of Many Colors” performer had her Uncle Bill Owens to thank for that. He helped Parton knock on doors and book gigs in the late 1950s when she was still a little girl. On the other side of one particularly fateful door was Cas Walker, a grocery store chain owner and host of the Cas Walker Farm and Home Hour, which he used to promote his stores and regional talent like Parton. Other notable performers included Chet Atkins, Bill Monroe, Carl Smith, and Carl Butler.
Even at ten years old, Parton commanded the audience—both the ones seated in the Knoxville, Tennessee, auditorium and the listeners at home who tuned in on their radios. Three years later, Parton was performing at the Grand Ole Opry. By the time she was eighteen and had just graduated from high school, Parton moved west out of her native Appalachian Mountains and into the big city of Nashville to pursue a full-time music career. The rest is country music history.
The Singer Knew Her Chosen Career Path At 10 Years Old
Not many people can say that they know exactly what their ideal career path is at only ten years old, but Dolly Parton is certainly one of them. During a 2023 appearance on the Bobby Bones Show, the country star described what it was like performing to an attentive and receptive audience for the first time. Even 67 years after her Cas Walker debut, Parton said she still remembered the performance well. “That’s when I got addicted to that feeling of the audience,” she explained. “It gave me confidence. It makes you feel like you’re doing something right. I always say that was not because I was so good. It was because I was so young. But that’s just like a shot of adrenaline.”
The “Jolene” singer said that feeling never went away. “You never get over that feeling,” she said. “You feel like you’ve done something right, and you feel like you’ve done something good. So, you’re proud of yourself, and you’re proud of them, you know, for making you feel good. They made me believe that I’m worth what they’ve paid to come to see me. The fans are everything. We all want to think we’re good at what we do, but if we didn’t have that following, if we didn’t have those people that believed in us to the point of buying records and all that, we wouldn’t have them. So, there’s something to be said about when people react in that way.”
Photo by Barr/Mediapunch/Shutterstock
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