How Dolly Parton’s First Love Was Different From the Boys Back Home
When Dolly Parton was 12 years old, she got the opportunity to record her first record in Louisiana. For Dolly, who constantly dreamed of exploring the world outside of East Tennessee, it was a huge trip. While there, she got to know the son of the label’s executive, Ed Schuler. His name was Johnny and he wasn’t like anyone the “Two Doors Down” singer had ever met before.
Dolly Parton’s first record, ‘Puppy Love’
Dolly’s uncle found a recording studio in Louisiana, where he lived, that would record the singer’s first record, “Puppy Love.” He told her he’d pay for her bus ticket there, she just needed to figure out a way to get to Lake Charles, where the recording studio was. No one could take Dolly except for her grandmother, who’d seen better days. Though they got lost along the way and had to spend one night hungry and scared at the bus station, the two eventually reached their destination.
In Lake Charles, Dolly met the executive of Goldband, the record label, and his son, Johnny.
“I fell in love with the little boy that was [Goldband executive] Ed Shuler’s son, Johnny,” she wrote in her 2020 book Songteller: My Life in Lyrics. “He was the prettiest thing I had ever seen. We were about the same age, and that was my first big crush. My first big love and my first record.”
How Johnny differed from the ‘country bumpkins’ Dolly knew back home
Dolly was immediately taken with Johnny. He was so different from the rough country kids she knew back home.
“He was dark with what I would later come to know as ‘bedroom eyes,’” she wrote in her 1994 memoir, Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business. “I had never seen anything like him. I had known boys back home, but they were for the most part rough country bumpkins. This boy was so handsome and well kept. And the way he talked was so different, with a hint of a Cajun accent.”
Dolly admits she was “really taken with” Johnny. And, apparently, he was with her. They spent a lot of time together while Dolly was in Lake Charles. She considers him her “first real love.”
The time Dolly spent with Johnny
Recording her first-ever record was of course exciting to Dolly, but the other thing that really colored her trip to Lake Charles was the time she spent with Johnny.
“Johnny and I spent every minute we could together, sometimes sneaking off and sitting under the big live oak trees behind the studio,” she wrote. “I had never seen trees like that, heavy with Spanish moss and with branches reaching out so far and coming so low to the ground.”
The whole trip opened Dolly’s eyes. She saw what was possible in her life. Johnny was a big part of that.
“Everything was so different from anything I had ever known, especially this boy,” she wrote. “He was so sweet and gentle with me—and he really knew how to kiss. He would hold my head in his hands and kiss me till my knees went weak. My life changed quite a bit on that trip.”
