Dolly Parton: 2020 Country Power Players Cover Story Dolly Parton: 2020 Country Power Players Cover Story

On the morning of March 13, Dolly Parton arrived at her Dollywood theme park, the crown jewel in her multimillion-dollar empire, for an annual preview day for season-pass holders. Located in the town of Pigeon Forge in eastern Tennessee, not far from where Parton grew up, the park had introduced a number of changes in reaction to the coronavirus pandemic, including the installation of over 300 hand-sanitizer stations. The event was also supposed to show visitors how prepared Dollywood was to open the next day. Parton stayed all day to monitor the park and meet with Dollywood staff to talk about the latest news of the pandemic. By the time she left that night though, she was no longer convinced opening was a good idea. “We came to the conclusion that COVID trends were getting too extreme,” says Craig Ross, president of the Dollywood Company, which co-owns Splash Country water park, the DreamMore Resort & Spa and Dollywood’s Smoky Mountain Cabins, as well as eight dinner theaters and restaurants in Tennessee, Missouri and South Carolina. Many people depend on the Dollywood Company, which is the largest employer in the rural, tourism-dependent Sevier County and whose main attractions — its flagship park and Splash Country — draw over 3 million visitors annually. Keeping people employed and paid is a particular priority for Parton, who continues to pay her band, even though she hasn’t toured since 2016, as well as her personal staffers, during the pandemic. But without money coming into the park, the Dollywood Company put all but a small team of the properties’ 4,000 full-time and seasonal workers on furlough. By June, most of those furloughed full-time employees went back to work as Parton properties reopened with limited capacities, mandatory mask requirements and other social distancing measures; most of the dinner theaters and restaurants reopened in July as state laws allowed. But Parton is frank about the situation, even as she dispenses some of her trademark optimism. “We certainly are not going to have a great year this year,” she says over Skype from Nashville one morning in early July. “Hopefully by coming back, we’ll pick up some stuff that we’ve lost. All of the things that I’m involved in are on hold, even my production companies and the movies — everything [took] a big hit. But I still believe, still trust God, and I’m still hoping for the best.” Making tough calls — about her companies, her employees and her brand — is how Parton, 74, spends much of her time. She has a schedule resembling that of a tech CEO with a cult following: Often starting at 4 a.m., Parton and her longtime manager, Danny Nozell, review what her team calls the “Ask Dolly” list, a log of opportunities and decisions for Parton to weigh in on that Nozell keeps to no more than 50 items to present in one sitting. Before the pandemic, they would often discuss the list over breakfast at her Nashville home, trading off cooking duties to prepare the usual menu of cheesy grits, bacon, eggs and country ham. Now, Nozell faxes Parton the list to discuss by phone — the first of half a dozen phone conversations the two have on any given day.

With a company that employs thousands, the country icon is making hard choices, expanding her slate of music, screen and branding projects — and even planning for a world without her.

BY MELINDA NEWMAN PHOTOGRAPHED BY MILLER MOBLEY

In the 56 years since she took a bus to Nashville to pursue stardom the day after her high school graduation, Parton has shaped the history of country music. She has 25 No. 1 singles on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart — the most of any female artist — and is also the only artist to have a top 20 hit on that chart in every decade from the 1960s to 2010s. Since Nielsen Music/MRC Data began tracking U.S. sales electronically in 1991, she has sold over 11 million albums, and her songs have received over a billion on-demand streams. Yet her legendary body of music is just the start of what makes her Dolly — it’s the bedrock for the business that has made her the atypical icon who never stops working or thinking of new ways to reach people. In addition to music and the Dollywood Company (at which her official title is “Dreamer-in-Chief”), she’s also the author of five books and the owner of Sandollar Productions, which co-produced the cult-hit Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV show and this year earned an Emmy Award nomination for an episode of Dolly Parton’s Heartstrings, a Netflix anthology series inspired by her songs that she also executive-produces. And then there are her numerous branding and licensing deals, which span from the endearingly quaint to the eye-catchingly hip: In March, she reimagined “9 to 5” as a birthday song and spent two days recording 847 names for personalized e-cards as part of a deal with American Greetings, which is also selling a line of Parton-themed cards at Walmart. This summer, she became the first female country artist to partner with Peloton for a series of workouts celebrating her life and music. Last year, she inked an unprecedented deal — at least for Parton’s career — with international licensing company IMG for a series of Parton-branded goods that kicks off this fall with a line of bakeware and specialty foods for Williams-Sonoma and could include everything from cosmetics and clothing to wines and wigs. At the heart of her empire is, of course, music, and Parton has more of that on the way, too. On Oct. 2, she’ll release A Holly Dolly Christmas, which will include both holiday classics and originals — and duets with Michael Bublé, Willie Nelson and her goddaughter Miley Cyrus — and mark her first album for 12Tone Music Group (which licenses the music from Parton’s own Butterfly Recordings). “When [Nozell] told me she was putting together an album, I said, ‘I’d like to be first in on that,’ ” says 12Tone founder Doug Morris, who oversaw Parton’s previous joint venture with Sony Music Nashville. “Dolly is an authentic American treasure.” The music leads to new business ventures, which lead to a greater appetite for more music, creating a chicken-or-the-egg cycle of opportunity: A Holly Dolly Christmas will accompany a Netflix Christmas movie called Christmas on the Square that shares its name with one of the album’s original songs. And while the laundry list of projects might suggest there’s nothing Parton will say no to — according to Nozell, the only things that are automatically off limits are hard liquor and “anything sexual” — the team is very selective. Nozell turns down 90% of the opportunities she’s offered, he estimates, pursuing the ones that offer “minimal Dolly time and maximum exposure.”

The breadth of her offerings is staggering, but fitting: Parton’s cross-cultural, multigenerational fandom is unlike that of any other celebrity. (Nielsen ranked her the No. 1 most marketable country artist in the world in 2017, the last year of its N-Score survey.) “How can she appeal to so many different kinds of people who we’re told should really hate each other, but they all agree on her? That’s really the big question that we tried to figure out,” says Jad Abumrad, host of WNYC Studios’ nine-part 2019 podcast Dolly Parton’s America. “We talked to these fervent Dolly fans, from Appalachian queer kids to Brooklyn hipsters to [conservative] people in the South. Everyone sees her as theirs.” His ultimate explanation? “I say this with humility and as someone who is not a believer: There’s something very Christ-like about her.” That has never felt more true than in 2020. During the pandemic, Parton has also taken on the role of comforter-in-chief: She donated $1 million to Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s COVID-19 research fund, recorded handwashing videos and bedtime stories for children, released a soothing new song called “When Life Is Good Again” and offered social media pep talks about standing together. Over Skype, she is warm and quick to crack a joke, decked out in full Dolly glam: a flowing blond wig with bangs and tendrils, a custom-made, high-collared black top with gold buttons running along the side. Yet she becomes gravely serious when she talks about her mission to make as many people as she can feel as good as possible. “As the scripture says, ‘To whom much is given, much is required.’ So I look at my life with that every day and think that God expects it of me,” she says. “I expect it of myself, and I think people expect it of me. If I can be an inspiration, then I want to be that. That makes me feel good.”

Parton photographed July 6 in Nashville.

Do we think our little white asses are

“Of course Black lives matter.

the only ones that matter? No!”

—PARTON

Steers Her Empire Through the Pandemic

Parton

— and Keeps It Growing

the making of Gaslighter,

Styling and wardrobe design by Steve Summers Hair by Cheryl Riddle.

MILLER MOBLEY

This is Dolly Parton, Businesswoman, in a nutshell: Her sweetness and toughness coexist, never masking or diminishing the other. “[In meetings], she’s tactful in her approach, but she also will lay down what she will and won’t do,” says Nozell. “You’ll know immediately in a room that one thing you won’t be doing is taking advantage of Dolly Parton.” In the early ’80s, as her acting career blossomed in movies such as 9 to 5 and The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, Parton became more serious about expanding her business empire, even as she continued to rack up No. 1s on the country charts. In 1986, eager to invest in her Smoky Mountains home county, she partnered with amusement park company Herschend Family Entertainment and rebranded Pigeon Forge’s existing park, Silver Dollar City, as Dollywood. “I had no notion of how to run a theme park,” says Parton, “but I knew that I would find the right people, as you always do.” Last year, an April Fools’ Day headline claiming that Kanye West was buying Dollywood for $130 million circulated online. The news was quickly debunked, but Parton questions why more entertainers haven’t similarly broadened their holdings. She has always known what the pandemic has forced many in the industry to realize: that diversifying your income streams is one of the smartest things an artist can do. “I often wonder why more artists don’t do more things like that to have something to fall back on if things don’t work out the way they’d hoped — or just to have something more,” she says. “I feel like even if I wasn’t popular anymore, I could always sing at Dollywood.”

DollY

MILLER MOBLEY

This article originally appeared in the August 15, 2020, issue of Billboard.

FINAL TK

Her first hit may have been “Dumb Blonde” in 1967, but Dolly Parton has never been anyone’s fool. Her financial savvy has been the stuff of country legend for decades. In the mid-1970s — nearly 20 years before Whitney Houston’s cover of Parton’s “I Will Always Love You” lit up the Billboard Hot 100 — Elvis Presley famously expressed interest in recording the song himself. Parton was thrilled. But when Presley’s manager, Colonel Tom Parker, insisted that Presley also get half of the publishing, a brokenhearted Parton said no. “That was one of the hardest things I ever had to do because I loved Elvis,” says Parton. She credits her father, who was illiterate and scraped by to raise 12 children, with her business sense. “Even though my daddy didn’t get an education, my daddy was really smart in making deals and bargaining and how he raised a family like he did.” (He was also the inspiration behind her Imagination Library, which provides books monthly to children from birth to age 5 and has donated over 140 million books to date.) But Parton had scored a No. 1 country hit with the song in 1974, so she knew its worth. “That was my most important copyright at the time,” says Parton, who was already a bona fide hitmaker with 15 previous solo top 10 country hits. “If it had been a new song, I might have considered it.” It was a smart bet: In July, BMI awarded Parton a plaque acknowledging 10 million radio and public performances of the song, which places it among the top 30 of BMI’s most-performed songs of all time. Still, all these years later, she almost swoons as she adds, “He would have sung it great. Can you imagine Elvis singing ‘I Will Always Love You?’ ”

She has also reached young fans through her social media accounts, which post throwback photos and Dollyisms (“If you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain”) while participating in the memes of the day. In January, when Parton posted a collage of fake profile pictures for LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram and Tinder with the caption “Get you a woman who can do it all,” she launched what users dubbed “the Dolly Parton challenge” — mocking the way people curate different personas on different apps — and helped boost her Instagram following by 75% over the previous year, according to Marbaloo Marketing, which Nozell hired in 2019 to manage her accounts. When it comes to dealmaking, Parton and Nozell have two priorities: ownership and flexibility. Parton has owned the masters of all the albums she has released since 1999. She also avoids long-term contracts: Her new deal with 12Tone is for one album only, and she has a similar one-at-a-time policy for film and TV projects as well. “We’re never tied in for these massive deals that we can’t get out of,” says Nozell. “That way, if something does happen, we can take off.” Flexibility benefits Parton in other ways. In 2018 she renamed her Dixie Stampede dinner attraction Dolly Parton’s Stampede as she became more aware of how hurtful the term “Dixie” and its associations with the Confederacy could be — perhaps because of a 2017 Slate article that cast a critical eye on its rosy, family-friendly depictions of the Civil War. (At the time, the Dollywood Company said it was also eyeing an international expansion and noted that “Dixie” wouldn’t translate abroad.) “There’s such a thing as innocent ignorance, and so many of us are guilty of that,” she says now. “When they said ‘Dixie’ was an offensive word, I thought, ‘Well, I don’t want to offend anybody. This is a business. We’ll just call it The Stampede.’ As soon as you realize that [something] is a problem, you should fix it. Don’t be a dumbass. That’s where my heart is. I would never dream of hurting anybody on purpose.” The change came two years before the police killings of unarmed Black Americans like George Floyd sparked a reckoning with systemic racism in the United States — one that led country acts such as the Dixie Chicks and Lady Antebellum to change their names to similarly avoid glorifying dark chapters of history. Parton hasn’t attended any recent marches, but she is unequivocal in her support of protestors and the Black Lives Matter movement. “I understand people having to make themselves known and felt and seen,” she says. “And of course Black lives matter. Do we think our little white asses are the only ones that matter? No!” This is perhaps one secret to Parton’s widespread appeal: Just because she wants to be for everyone doesn’t mean she doesn’t stand for anything. Offending as few potential customers as possible is just good business. But when Parton explains the philosophies that drive her life and career, her answers are hardly corporate. “First of all, I’m not a judgmental person. I do believe we all have a right to be exactly who we are, and it is not my place to judge,” she says. “All these good Christian people that are supposed to be such good Christian people, the last thing we’re supposed to do is to judge one another. God is the judge, not us. I just try to be myself. I try to let everybody else be themselves.”

Though there is an air of immortality to Parton, thanks to her immutable image and lyrics like “You’re never old unless you choose to be,” she and Nozell have spent the past few years preparing for a world without her. Unlike Prince or Aretha Franklin, who died without wills, Parton has worked to get her estate in order, and Nozell says that most decisions now are made with Parton’s legacy in mind. (Parton and Carl Dean, her husband of 54 years, have no children.) “I would not want to leave that mess to somebody else,” Parton says, before offering a little advice. “A word to all the other artists out there: If you haven’t made those provisions, do that. You don’t want to leave that mess to your family for people to have to fight over. You need to take care of that yourself, even if it’s a pain in the ass — and it is.” That mission — making sure Parton maintains the icon status she has now for decades to come — partly explains why, after striking only a few branding deals in her career, Parton is leaning in with IMG. “You spend your whole life building your brand, and so you decide at a certain point, maybe it is time,” Parton says of the decision. It also provides a kind of security that allows her to keep her options open: “If I didn’t work anymore, [with] these kinds of projects, you get your royalties if your stuff does well. Danny calls it ‘mailbox money.’ ” The focus of the IMG deal is on building Parton’s brand through her own lines, as opposed to having the superstar endorse existing products. That’s in keeping with Parton’s stated values — and it’s a particularly lucrative strategy, says Brian Feit, founding partner of We Are BMF, a New York-based music-marketing agency. “She doesn’t need a check to slap her face and name on something,” says Feit. This approach “allows her to make more money and be in more control of the product. This could be an extremely profitable endeavor worth hundreds of millions if done right.” Beyond IMG, Parton’s next big deal could involve her voluminous publishing catalog — yes, even the woman who turned down Elvis says she might one day sell her catalog. With the exception of a few songs she’s in the process of reclaiming, Parton owns her entire roster of over 3,000 compositions. Nozell values Parton’s catalog, which is administered by Sony/ATV, in the “nine figures.” Publishing and financial sources suggest to Billboard that Parton’s catalog generates anywhere from $6 million to $8 million a year; with current catalog valuations for top songwriters hitting multiples between 16 and 23 times net publisher’s share, that would value the catalog between $96 million and $184 million. “At the right time, I probably would sell it to put more money in my estate or for my family and start all over again,” she says. “You still have to have some control. You don’t just say, ‘Here’s my whole life, my soul.’ You’re going to stay involved to a degree.” At any given time, Nozell and Parton operate on a three-year plan for her career, which includes ideas for books, movies, a musical and, of course, new music and touring — whenever that can resume. Prior to the pandemic, Nozell was working on a 75th-birthday celebration for next year that included what they’re calling Dollyfest: a series of shows at 12 stadiums around the world that would feature Parton as well as acts she had influenced. It’s something Nozell could see existing even if Parton decided to one day stop performing. But for Parton, that’s not happening anytime soon. She sounds surprisingly giddy as she talks about the next chapter of her career as if it’s her first. “I’m touched and honored that I’m still around and that I’m able to still be important in the business,” she says. “I honestly feel like I’m just getting started. I know that sounds crazy but I really feel like I might have a big music career, record career. Who knows?”

It is hard to imagine a world where Parton is not music royalty. But when Nozell first began working with her in 2004, her fame had outstripped her earning ability. She was coming off a trilogy of acclaimed but modest-selling bluegrass albums for Sugar Hill Records that had not been embraced by country radio. She had no website and little merchandise. She toured irregularly, and when she did, promoters were putting her in 18,000-seat venues they owned even when she was only selling around 2,000 hard tickets, says Nozell, adding, “I came in with a clean slate.” To reestablish Parton, Nozell studied her touring history and album sales to completely restructure her live business, partnering with new promoters to put her in 3,000- to 5,000-seat theaters. After a 2006 tour sold out, Nozell convinced her to tour Europe, which Parton had neglected, other than sporadic dates, for almost 30 years. “She goes, ‘I’m telling you one thing, if you lose me millions of dollars, you’re fired,’ ” he recalls. Instead, thanks in part to a promotion with the Daily Mail newspaper that gave away 1.8 million copies of a best-of compilation, her 2007 arena tour sold out. By 2009, she was selling out stadiums. In 2014, she played before an estimated 180,000 attendees at England’s Glastonbury Festival. This two-pronged approach — strategic touring and profile-boosting marketing efforts — helped put Parton back on the top of the charts, too. Ahead of 2016’s back-to-basics Pure & Simple album, released through a joint venture with Sony Music Nashville under the Dolly Records and RCA Nashville imprints, Nozell brought in a new marketing team to target her top global markets, lined up a week of performances on the Hallmark Channel and booked the biggest North American tour of her career. The LP became her first to debut at No. 1 on the Top Country Albums chart in 25 years.

THE Team

CTK MANAGEMENT Danny Nozell, owner/CEO Kyle McClain, senior vp Steve Ross, vp

management

label

12TONE MUSIC GROUP Doug Morris Steve Bartels Pat Monaco

Agent

WME NASHVILLE Greg Oswald

Parton stayed all day to monitor the park and meet with Dollywood staff to talk about the latest news of the pandemic. By the time she left that night though, she was no longer convinced opening was a good idea. “We came to the conclusion that COVID trends were getting too extreme,” says Craig Ross, president of the Dollywood Company, which co-owns Splash Country water park, the DreamMore Resort & Spa and Dollywood’s Smoky Mountain Cabins, as well as eight dinner theaters and restaurants in Tennessee, Missouri and South Carolina.

Many people depend on the Dollywood Company, which is the largest employer in the rural, tourism-dependent Sevier County and whose main attractions — its flagship park and Splash Country — draw over 3 million visitors annually. Keeping people employed and paid is a particular priority for Parton, who continues to pay her band, even though she hasn’t toured since 2016, as well as her personal staffers, during the pandemic. But without money coming into the park, the Dollywood Company put all but a small team of the properties’ 4,000 full-time and seasonal workers on furlough.

By June, most of those furloughed full-time employees went back to work as Parton properties reopened with limited capacities, mandatory mask requirements and other social distancing measures; most of the dinner theaters and restaurants reopened in July as state laws allowed. But Parton is frank about the situation, even as she dispenses some of her trademark optimism. “We certainly are not going to have a great year this year,” she says over Skype from Nashville one morning in early July. “Hopefully by coming back, we’ll pick up some stuff that we’ve lost. All of the things that I’m involved in are on hold, even my production companies and the movies — everything [took] a big hit. But I still believe, still trust God, and I’m still hoping for the best.”

Making tough calls — about her companies, her employees and her brand — is how Parton, 74, spends much of her time. She has a schedule resembling that of a tech CEO with a cult following: Often starting at 4 a.m., Parton and her longtime manager, Danny Nozell, review what her team calls the “Ask Dolly” list, a log of opportunities and decisions for Parton to weigh in on that Nozell keeps to no more than 50 items to present in one sitting. Before the pandemic, they would often discuss the list over breakfast at her Nashville home, trading off cooking duties to prepare the usual menu of cheesy grits, bacon, eggs and country ham. Now, Nozell faxes Parton the list to discuss by phone — the first of half a dozen phone conversations the two have on any given day.

Yet her legendary body of music is just the start of what makes her Dolly — it’s the bedrock for the business that has made her the atypical icon who never stops working or thinking of new ways to reach people. In addition to music and the Dollywood Company (at which her official title is “Dreamer-in-Chief”), she’s also the author of five books and the owner of Sandollar Productions, which co-produced the cult-hit Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV show and this year earned an Emmy Award nomination for an episode of Dolly Parton’s Heartstrings, a Netflix anthology series inspired by her songs that she also executive-produces. And then there are her numerous branding and licensing deals, which span from the endearingly quaint to the eye-catchingly hip: In March, she reimagined “9 to 5” as a birthday song and spent two days recording 847 names for personalized e-cards as part of a deal with American Greetings, which is also selling a line of Parton-themed cards at Walmart. This summer, she became the first female country artist to partner with Peloton for a series of workouts celebrating her life and music. Last year, she inked an unprecedented deal — at least for Parton’s career — with international licensing company IMG for a series of Parton-branded goods that kicks off this fall with a line of bakeware and specialty foods for Williams-Sonoma and could include everything from cosmetics and clothing to wines and wigs. At the heart of her empire is, of course, music, and Parton has more of that on the way, too. On Oct. 2, she’ll release A Holly Dolly Christmas, which will include both holiday classics and originals — and duets with Michael Bublé, Willie Nelson and her goddaughter Miley Cyrus — and mark her first album for 12Tone Music Group (which licenses the music from Parton’s own Butterfly Recordings). “When [Nozell] told me she was putting together an album, I said, ‘I’d like to be first in on that,’ ” says 12Tone founder Doug Morris, who oversaw Parton’s previous joint venture with Sony Music Nashville. “Dolly is an authentic American treasure.” The music leads to new business ventures, which lead to a greater appetite for more music, creating a chicken-or-the-egg cycle of opportunity: A Holly Dolly Christmas will accompany a Netflix Christmas movie called Christmas on the Square that shares its name with one of the album’s original songs. And while the laundry list of projects might suggest there’s nothing Parton will say no to — according to Nozell, the only things that are automatically off limits are hard liquor and “anything sexual” — the team is very selective. Nozell turns down 90% of the opportunities she’s offered, he estimates, pursuing the ones that offer “minimal Dolly time and maximum exposure.”

And then there are her numerous branding and licensing deals, which span from the endearingly quaint to the eye-catchingly hip: In March, she reimagined “9 to 5” as a birthday song and spent two days recording 847 names for personalized e-cards as part of a deal with American Greetings, which is also selling a line of Parton-themed cards at Walmart. This summer, she became the first female country artist to partner with Peloton for a series of workouts celebrating her life and music. Last year, she inked an unprecedented deal — at least for Parton’s career — with international licensing company IMG for a series of Parton-branded goods that kicks off this fall with a line of bakeware and specialty foods for Williams-Sonoma and could include everything from cosmetics and clothing to wines and wigs. At the heart of her empire is, of course, music, and Parton has more of that on the way, too. On Oct. 2, she’ll release A Holly Dolly Christmas, which will include both holiday classics and originals — and duets with Michael Bublé, Willie Nelson and her goddaughter Miley Cyrus — and mark her first album for 12Tone Music Group (which licenses the music from Parton’s own Butterfly Recordings). “When [Nozell] told me she was putting together an album, I said, ‘I’d like to be first in on that,’ ” says 12Tone founder Doug Morris, who oversaw Parton’s previous joint venture with Sony Music Nashville. “Dolly is an authentic American treasure.” The music leads to new business ventures, which lead to a greater appetite for more music, creating a chicken-or-the-egg cycle of opportunity: A Holly Dolly Christmas will accompany a Netflix Christmas movie called Christmas on the Square that shares its name with one of the album’s original songs. And while the laundry list of projects might suggest there’s nothing Parton will say no to — according to Nozell, the only things that are automatically off limits are hard liquor and “anything sexual” — the team is very selective. Nozell turns down 90% of the opportunities she’s offered, he estimates, pursuing the ones that offer “minimal Dolly time and maximum exposure.”

At the heart of her empire is, of course, music, and Parton has more of that on the way, too. On Oct. 2, she’ll release A Holly Dolly Christmas, which will include both holiday classics and originals — and duets with Michael Bublé, Willie Nelson and her goddaughter Miley Cyrus — and mark her first album for 12Tone Music Group (which licenses the music from Parton’s own Butterfly Recordings). “When [Nozell] told me she was putting together an album, I said, ‘I’d like to be first in on that,’ ” says 12Tone founder Doug Morris, who oversaw Parton’s previous joint venture with Sony Music Nashville. “Dolly is an authentic American treasure.” The music leads to new business ventures, which lead to a greater appetite for more music, creating a chicken-or-the-egg cycle of opportunity: A Holly Dolly Christmas will accompany a Netflix Christmas movie called Christmas on the Square that shares its name with one of the album’s original songs. And while the laundry list of projects might suggest there’s nothing Parton will say no to — according to Nozell, the only things that are automatically off limits are hard liquor and “anything sexual” — the team is very selective. Nozell turns down 90% of the opportunities she’s offered, he estimates, pursuing the ones that offer “minimal Dolly time and maximum exposure.”

When it comes to dealmaking, Parton and Nozell have two priorities: ownership and flexibility. Parton has owned the masters of all the albums she has released since 1999. She also avoids long-term contracts: Her new deal with 12Tone is for one album only, and she has a similar one-at-a-time policy for film and TV projects as well. “We’re never tied in for these massive deals that we can’t get out of,” says Nozell. “That way, if something does happen, we can take off.” Flexibility benefits Parton in other ways. In 2018 she renamed her Dixie Stampede dinner attraction Dolly Parton’s Stampede as she became more aware of how hurtful the term “Dixie” and its associations with the Confederacy could be — perhaps because of a 2017 Slate article that cast a critical eye on its rosy, family-friendly depictions of the Civil War. (At the time, the Dollywood Company said it was also eyeing an international expansion and noted that “Dixie” wouldn’t translate abroad.) “There’s such a thing as innocent ignorance, and so many of us are guilty of that,” she says now. “When they said ‘Dixie’ was an offensive word, I thought, ‘Well, I don’t want to offend anybody. This is a business. We’ll just call it The Stampede.’ As soon as you realize that [something] is a problem, you should fix it. Don’t be a dumbass. That’s where my heart is. I would never dream of hurting anybody on purpose.” The change came two years before the police killings of unarmed Black Americans like George Floyd sparked a reckoning with systemic racism in the United States — one that led country acts such as the Dixie Chicks and Lady Antebellum to change their names to similarly avoid glorifying dark chapters of history. Parton hasn’t attended any recent marches, but she is unequivocal in her support of protestors and the Black Lives Matter movement. “I understand people having to make themselves known and felt and seen,” she says. “And of course Black lives matter. Do we think our little white asses are the only ones that matter? No!” This is perhaps one secret to Parton’s widespread appeal: Just because she wants to be for everyone doesn’t mean she doesn’t stand for anything. Offending as few potential customers as possible is just good business. But when Parton explains the philosophies that drive her life and career, her answers are hardly corporate. “First of all, I’m not a judgmental person. I do believe we all have a right to be exactly who we are, and it is not my place to judge,” she says. “All these good Christian people that are supposed to be such good Christian people, the last thing we’re supposed to do is to judge one another. God is the judge, not us. I just try to be myself. I try to let everybody else be themselves.”

Flexibility benefits Parton in other ways. In 2018 she renamed her Dixie Stampede dinner attraction Dolly Parton’s Stampede as she became more aware of how hurtful the term “Dixie” and its associations with the Confederacy could be — perhaps because of a 2017 Slate article that cast a critical eye on its rosy, family-friendly depictions of the Civil War. (At the time, the Dollywood Company said it was also eyeing an international expansion and noted that “Dixie” wouldn’t translate abroad.) “There’s such a thing as innocent ignorance, and so many of us are guilty of that,” she says now. “When they said ‘Dixie’ was an offensive word, I thought, ‘Well, I don’t want to offend anybody. This is a business. We’ll just call it The Stampede.’ As soon as you realize that [something] is a problem, you should fix it. Don’t be a dumbass. That’s where my heart is. I would never dream of hurting anybody on purpose.” The change came two years before the police killings of unarmed Black Americans like George Floyd sparked a reckoning with systemic racism in the United States — one that led country acts such as the Dixie Chicks and Lady Antebellum to change their names to similarly avoid glorifying dark chapters of history. Parton hasn’t attended any recent marches, but she is unequivocal in her support of protestors and the Black Lives Matter movement. “I understand people having to make themselves known and felt and seen,” she says. “And of course Black lives matter. Do we think our little white asses are the only ones that matter? No!” This is perhaps one secret to Parton’s widespread appeal: Just because she wants to be for everyone doesn’t mean she doesn’t stand for anything. Offending as few potential customers as possible is just good business. But when Parton explains the philosophies that drive her life and career, her answers are hardly corporate. “First of all, I’m not a judgmental person. I do believe we all have a right to be exactly who we are, and it is not my place to judge,” she says. “All these good Christian people that are supposed to be such good Christian people, the last thing we’re supposed to do is to judge one another. God is the judge, not us. I just try to be myself. I try to let everybody else be themselves.”

The change came two years before the police killings of unarmed Black Americans like George Floyd sparked a reckoning with systemic racism in the United States — one that led country acts such as the Dixie Chicks and Lady Antebellum to change their names to similarly avoid glorifying dark chapters of history. Parton hasn’t attended any recent marches, but she is unequivocal in her support of protestors and the Black Lives Matter movement. “I understand people having to make themselves known and felt and seen,” she says. “And of course Black lives matter. Do we think our little white asses are the only ones that matter? No!” This is perhaps one secret to Parton’s widespread appeal: Just because she wants to be for everyone doesn’t mean she doesn’t stand for anything. Offending as few potential customers as possible is just good business. But when Parton explains the philosophies that drive her life and career, her answers are hardly corporate. “First of all, I’m not a judgmental person. I do believe we all have a right to be exactly who we are, and it is not my place to judge,” she says. “All these good Christian people that are supposed to be such good Christian people, the last thing we’re supposed to do is to judge one another. God is the judge, not us. I just try to be myself. I try to let everybody else be themselves.”

That mission — making sure Parton maintains the icon status she has now for decades to come — partly explains why, after striking only a few branding deals in her career, Parton is leaning in with IMG. “You spend your whole life building your brand, and so you decide at a certain point, maybe it is time,” Parton says of the decision. It also provides a kind of security that allows her to keep her options open: “If I didn’t work anymore, [with] these kinds of projects, you get your royalties if your stuff does well. Danny calls it ‘mailbox money.’ ”

The focus of the IMG deal is on building Parton’s brand through her own lines, as opposed to having the superstar endorse existing products. That’s in keeping with Parton’s stated values — and it’s a particularly lucrative strategy, says Brian Feit, founding partner of We Are BMF, a New York-based music-marketing agency. “She doesn’t need a check to slap her face and name on something,” says Feit. This approach “allows her to make more money and be in more control of the product. This could be an extremely profitable endeavor worth hundreds of millions if done right.”

Beyond IMG, Parton’s next big deal could involve her voluminous publishing catalog — yes, even the woman who turned down Elvis says she might one day sell her catalog. With the exception of a few songs she’s in the process of reclaiming, Parton owns her entire roster of over 3,000 compositions. Nozell values Parton’s catalog, which is administered by Sony/ATV, in the “nine figures.” Publishing and financial sources suggest to Billboard that Parton’s catalog generates anywhere from $6 million to $8 million a year; with current catalog valuations for top songwriters hitting multiples between 16 and 23 times net publisher’s share, that would value the catalog between $96 million and $184 million.

“At the right time, I probably would sell it to put more money in my estate or for my family and start all over again,” she says. “You still have to have some control. You don’t just say, ‘Here’s my whole life, my soul.’ You’re going to stay involved to a degree.”

At any given time, Nozell and Parton operate on a three-year plan for her career, which includes ideas for books, movies, a musical and, of course, new music and touring — whenever that can resume. Prior to the pandemic, Nozell was working on a 75th-birthday celebration for next year that included what they’re calling Dollyfest: a series of shows at 12 stadiums around the world that would feature Parton as well as acts she had influenced. It’s something Nozell could see existing even if Parton decided to one day stop performing.

But for Parton, that’s not happening anytime soon. She sounds surprisingly giddy as she talks about the next chapter of her career as if it’s her first. “I’m touched and honored that I’m still around and that I’m able to still be important in the business,” she says. “I honestly feel like I’m just getting started. I know that sounds crazy but I really feel like I might have a big music career, record career. Who knows?”

To reestablish Parton, Nozell studied her touring history and album sales to completely restructure her live business, partnering with new promoters to put her in 3,000- to 5,000-seat theaters. After a 2006 tour sold out, Nozell convinced her to tour Europe, which Parton had neglected, other than sporadic dates, for almost 30 years. “She goes, ‘I’m telling you one thing, if you lose me millions of dollars, you’re fired,’ ” he recalls. Instead, thanks in part to a promotion with the Daily Mail newspaper that gave away 1.8 million copies of a best-of compilation, her 2007 arena tour sold out. By 2009, she was selling out stadiums. In 2014, she played before an estimated 180,000 attendees at England’s Glastonbury Festival. This two-pronged approach — strategic touring and profile-boosting marketing efforts — helped put Parton back on the top of the charts, too. Ahead of 2016’s back-to-basics Pure & Simple album, released through a joint venture with Sony Music Nashville under the Dolly Records and RCA Nashville imprints, Nozell brought in a new marketing team to target her top global markets, lined up a week of performances on the Hallmark Channel and booked the biggest North American tour of her career. The LP became her first to debut at No. 1 on the Top Country Albums chart in 25 years.