Dolly Parton Was Afraid to Tell Her Family Band What to Do, but They Ordered Her Around
In the 1970s, Dolly Parton toured with her Traveling Family Band, a group made up of her relatives. Parton liked having them on the road with her, but their presence in her touring life caused problems. Her guitarist, who was not related to her, said Parton seemed to be afraid to make requests of her family members. They didn’t feel the same way about making demands of her.
Dolly Parton felt bad telling her family band what to do
Parton’s Uncle Louis ran her business affairs for a time, but quickly proved he wasn’t capable of carrying out the job. Parton’s band leader, Bill Rehrig, took over Louis’ responsibilities. When he did, Parton asked him to take some duties away from her, too.
“Dolly didn’t know how to deal with the family without putting them off,” guitarist Tom Rutledge said in the book Dolly by Alanna Nash. “Instead of going to them, she would go to Bill and say, ‘Bill, tell them to do this or that.’”
Rehrig struggled to assert authority over the band.
“Bill would tell ’em, and they’d ignore him some of the time, partly because they didn’t respect him,” Rutledge said. “He was in a real bad position.”
The problem was that Parton’s family members didn’t show her much respect either. To them, she was their sibling, not a celebrated musician.
“They felt like it was just their sister, not Dolly Parton,” Rutledge said. “They gave her a rough time. There was no business there. Dolly would say, ‘I want to do this and that,’ and if they wanted to do it, OK, but if they disagreed with her, they let her know.”
Dolly Parton’s guitarist believed she treated non-family members better than relatives
Though Rutledge said Parton appeared to be afraid to stand up to her family members, he believed she treated non-relatives better.
“[B]eing the kind of person she is, in an effort to keep those of us who weren’t family members from feeling like we were second-class citizens, she may have treated us better in some instances,” he said. “And that in turn could create hard feelings with the family.”
Still, he said most of the time they spent on the road was enjoyable, not contentious.
She eventually fired her family band
Parton said that when her family was around, she constantly felt she had to fill a maternal position and take care of them. This was a major distraction from her music. She also began to feel she needed a different sound in order to move forward with her career. She came to the difficult realization that she had to fire her family band.
“They are all talented, and I love each of them dearly. They are not at all at fault for what happened,” she wrote in the book Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business. “I had made a huge mistake. Here I was trying to listen to another voice, trying to move in a new direction, and my falling back into my family was grounding me in my past. Their music is wonderful and pure and does reflect the truest, deepest part of me, but I was hearing a different drummer.”
The decision devastated her, and she held onto hope that they could all work together in the future.
“It was crushing to me too,” she wrote. “I have always had dreams of all of us working together in big-time show business that not even watching the Jacksons could dim. It may happen one day yet. The talent is certainly there.”
