From Rags to Wishes

Some 60 years ago, a little girl in the Tennessee mountains poured herself a cup of ambition and, with an inimitable voice and incisive lyrics, conquered the airwaves. Dolly Parton is not just one of the top-selling recording artists of all time—she’s penned thousands of songs. And each one tells a story. Audiences will hear them in Dolly Parton’s Threads: My Songs in Symphony, currently on a national tour at orchestras through Spring 2026. The concert, which premiered on March 20 with the Nashville Symphony Orchestra conducted by Enrico Lopez-Yañez, mines Parton’s vast catalogue, from hits like “Jolene” and “9 to 5” to her most recent single, “If You Hadn’t Been There,” released in March as a tribute to her late husband, Carl Dean. They’ve been arranged for orchestra by David Hamilton—arranger for Andrea Bocelli, Renée Fleming, and Lang Lang—given voice by a new generation of singers and augmented by a crackerjack band of country music’s finest. And Parton—on video—will be presiding over it all.

ANN LEWINSON: How did this concert come about?

DOLLY PARTON: I got a call from Robert Thompson—he’s the president of Schirmer [Theatrical]—and I thought, wow, that’d be an amazing thing to hear my songs done with an orchestra. So, we just started talking and it was over a period of years before it ever came to be on stage. Between [Schirmer Theatrical Vice President and Creative Director] Betsey Perlmutter and Robert, we kind of pulled the whole thing together.

LEWINSON: You’ve done pretty much everything it’s possible to do, in every medium. What interested you about doing a concert like this?

PARTON: Well, I thought, why not? I could just picture my little songs done with that big orchestra and I thought, man, that’d be bone-chilling. And so of course I jumped at the opportunity. I just thought, wow, that’s gonna be amazing, to take my songs as they are, and then add that rich, amazing element to them. Because I had had some songs that I used an orchestra on—just a song on an album here and there, now and then—and even when we use strings, I get excited about the difference it makes. It just makes you feel like you’re a part of something bigger.

LEWINSON: What was it like the first time you heard these songs performed by the orchestra?

PARTON: It was bone-chilling. I actually didn’t see them rehearsing and all of that. I didn’t see it until the night, and whew, I was in tears. To think, those are my songs, those are my children that got all dressed up so pretty. So it was an amazing feeling. It just went all through me.

LEWINSON: Did you hear anything new in your songs?

PARTON: I thought they seemed so much more important. I’ve been doing them for years, but to hear them like that, it just gives you a sense of pride that I hadn’t had before. And I was also very humbled by the fact that the symphony wanted to play my songs.

LEWINSON: How did you select the songs?

PARTON: Robert felt very strong about doing songs that I had written. Some of them are not even that famous, but they made beautiful orchestrations. “Down from Dover,” “The Bridge,” those songs never were singles. But he wanted to do that. There’s only two songs in the whole show that I didn’t write, “Here You Come Again” and “Islands in the Stream.” That wasn’t in the original show [in Nashville]. I thought, you can’t do a show without two of the biggest songs I’ve ever done. So they’ve added those now.

LEWINSON: Did you have other requests?

PARTON: Well, the song “Travelin’ Thru,” I felt real strong about that. That’s a song from a movie called Transamerica [a 2005 drama about a transgender woman]. I think it’s one of my better songs and I love the melody. And I just thought that that was a good song to do for the times.

LEWINSON: Why is this show called Threads?

PARTON: It kind of played off of the [1971 single] “Coat of Many Colors,” but it was more like the threads of my life, weaving my life story into this whole thing. I do a video where I talk about where I was, what made me want to write the song. I think it’s interesting to people to know why you wrote a song, what state of mind you were in. And then they go to the singers. We thought it was kind of clever, weaving my life together like that.

LEWINSON: Is there a particular story that you can share with us?

PARTON: Well, there’s the story of the little coat of many colors. We were very poor. There was 12 of us kids, mountain country people. People used to send Mama scraps and rags for her to make quilts. She made our clothes with all the things that people would send her. I needed a coat for winter, it was coming on and she didn’t have enough cloth of one color to make me a solid-colored coat, so she just sewed the rags together. And in order to make me not feel like I was wearing rags, she told me the story of Joseph and the coat of many colors. And that made me feel special. So I tell that story and then they sing the song. I think it adds so much depth and meaning to all the songs, knowing where they came from.

LEWINSON: And you also do some conducting?

PARTON: Of course, I’m no conductor. I dressed up in my beautiful little outfit, a conductor’s tuxedo with the long tails, and I had my little rhinestone baton. They got me from the back, and then I turn to the audience and say, “Don’t worry, I’m not the conductor tonight.” It was just a clever way to introduce the video.

LEWINSON: What do you hope audiences will take away from this concert?

PARTON: I hope they just feel good, about the songs, about the show and about me. I think it’s kind of like watching a good documentary, ‘cause it’s really watching my life played out a song. I’d like to think they’ll whistle some of the songs, hum them for a few days, and say, “Which one was your favorite?” or, “I didn’t know that about that,” or “Wasn’t that funny when she said that?” So I hope I give ‘em some good conversation pieces. And I just hope they go away feeling good.

This article originally appeared in the Summer 2025 print issue of Symphony magazine.