Travel: Well, hello, Dolly...You’re looking swell in Tennessee

I grew up listening to Dolly Parton, singing along to Jolene and 9 To 5, loving her music, in awe of her philanthropy, her Southern twang, her glitzy guitars and her rhinestone-embellished costumes.

She may have done Glastonbury but I haven’t done Nashville, so I join the Dolly trail in Tennessee.

This landlocked state is famous for its country music and Tennessee whiskey, where distilleries make throat-searing moonshine, the once illegal hooch during Prohibition times.

But it’s Dolly I’m here for so I head for Nashville, known as Music City, the state capital where she lives and where Nashvillians and tourists flock to hear a symphony of sounds in honky tonk bars on the famous Broadway, from country and jazz to bluegrass and pop. Here, even crossing the road is a musical interlude, as unobtrusive speakers in the street pump out country tunes.

Heaving with folk during the day, party buses carry dancing bachelorettes in flashing cowboy hats and mock cow-hide jumpsuits, while other revellers pedal the party bikes, relishing the blaring beats while slurping a variety of drinks. At dusk, downtown becomes a neon-lit hub of eating, drinking, country music, pop, blues, jazz and everything in-between.

Dolly may be absent from these regular local night-time festivities, but she’s very much present once you start exploring the musical history of the place at the Country Music Hall Of Fame And Museum, where there are walls of gold and platinum albums, plus memorabilia from a Who’s Who of country stars, including Johnny Cash, Patsy Cline and Garth Brooks.

Elvis’s gold-plated 1960 Cadillac is parked up near cabinets of stage costumes embellished with metallic embroidery, tassels and rhinestones.

A Taylor Swift Education Centre has also opened, featuring artwork inspired by songs, and a multicoloured mural inspired by Dolly Parton’s Coat Of Many Colors. A short bus ride away at RCA Studio B, opened in 1957, we discover more snippets about Dolly’s journey, the fact that she turned down Elvis’s request to record her 1973 song I Will Always Love You (famously covered by Whitney Houston for The Bodyguard movie in 1992) when Colonel Tom Parker, Elvis’s manager, reportedly asked for half of her publishing rights for the song, in order for the deal to be struck.

But the Dolly Parton trail spreads far wider than Nashville. As one of 12 children brought up “dirt poor” in rural Tennessee, the Parton clan is large throughout the state.

Her famous theme park, Dollywood, complete with rides, theatres, an eagle sanctuary and even its own chapel with resident chaplain and Sunday services, employs some of her wider family, particularly performers.

Travelling east to her home county of Sevierville, where she was born, we come upon Shine Girl, an out-of-the-way stylish wooden-clad distillery and bar owned and opened earlier this year by Dolly’s niece, Danielle. Downtown Sevierville nearby is the place to stay if you want a sense of history and old-town charm. This is also the place where Dolly grew up.

Our guide, Sevierville county historian Carroll McMahan, went to the same school as Dolly and knew her, as did everyone, he tells us with a chuckle, showing us new murals of the child Dolly enjoying a burger at Red’s Café, her favourite former local eatery, and another of a butterfly, a nod to her hit song Love Is Like A Butterfly.

Hotels including The Tennessean offer guests a calmer, quieter experience to Nashville, with a charming market square and nearby Urban Wilderness, All too soon, my Tennessee trail is over, but in the words of Dolly, ‘I will always love you…’

P.S.

Fans flock to Dollywood’s DreamMore Resort and Spa, a large family resort awash with memorabilia including a Dream Box housing her wishes for the future, and a final song, to be opened on her 100th birthday in 2046. Another resort, HeartSong, is due to open later this year.