Growing up in Locust Ridge, Tennessee, Dolly Parton‘s family grew their corn on their farm, and she and her sister Rachel would often help their father Lee harvest the corn before it was taken to the mill to be ground into cornmeal.
“We had fresh corn on the cob, roasting ears, as they call ’em, cream-style corn that we would scrape off the cob, and we also shucked that corn when it dried in the wintertime, and Daddy would take it down to the gristmill to grind into cornmeal,” remembered Parton. “We had big barrels of our own cornmeal that Mama used to cook cornbread all through the winter.”
Parton’s parents even paid Dr. Robert F. Thomas, who delivered Dolly in 1946, with a bag of cornmeal. Parton later built a chapel and named it after him at her Dollywood theme park as a tribute to him in 1973, the year he died.
That year, Parton also wrote a song about the doctor who helped bring her into the world, which was released on her eleventh album, My Tennessee Mountain Home.
Dr. Robert F. Thomas
May his name forever stand
Dr. Robert F. Thomas
Was a mighty, mighty man
And he enriched the lives
Of everyone that ever knew him
And in my song I hope to sing
Some of the praise that’s due him
Dr. Thomas was a man
The Lord must have appointed
To live among us mountain folks
In eastern Tennessee
And he delivered more than half
The babies in those mountains
Among those babies
He delivered me
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Dolly’s First Song
As soon as Parton could speak in full sentences, she was ready to write songs. When she was 5, Parton was taken by one particular doll her mother and father had made for her out of a corncob. The corncob was used as the doll’s body, and her father burned into it with a hot poker to make the eyes, while her mother, Avie Lee, dressed it up with clothes and gave it a head of hair.
“She [Parton’s mom] put a little dress on it made out of corn shucks, and she made some corn silk hair,” said Parton. “So naturally, I named her Tassel Top.”
Parton loved the doll so much that she started singing a song about it, according to her official website, which her mother documented.
[RELATED: The Early Hit Dolly Parton Wrote with Her Uncle Bill, Later Covered by Kris Kristofferson, Loretta Lynn, and More]
‘You’re the only friend I’ve got.’
At the time, Parton couldn’t read or write, so her mother wrote down her lyrics as she sang them into a tin can microphone on top of a tobacco stick wedged into the boards of their front porch.
Little tiny tasseltop,
I love you an awful lot
Corn silk hair and big brown eyes
How you make me smile
Little tiny tasseltop
You’re the only friend I’ve got
Hope you never go away
I want you to stay
You’re my tiny tassel top
You’re my favorite-est doll
Even if you’re just a cob
I want you to stay
“Mama was so fascinated that I could rhyme, and she kept it [the song],” recalled Parton. “I didn’t remember it until years later. Of course, I know it now, but at the time, I faintly remembered it.”
Photo: Daily Mirror/Mirrorpix/Mirrorpix via Getty Images
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