Billy Kennedy: ​Family was very important to Dolly Parton, and especially her mentor uncle Bill

​Dolly, brought up in relative poverty in a family of 12 – seven sisters and five brothers – in the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee, was a gifted singer and multi-instrumentalist who emerged as a child radio entertainer in Knoxville city in East Tennessee in the mid-1950s, before reaching iconic status over decades to her career peak..

She was married to Nashville builder Carl Dean for 59 years. Sadly, Carl died on March 5, 2025, after an illness, aged 82.

Whatever her stature as a singer/songwriter, movie star, American public figure, businesswoman, humanitarian and philanthropist, “Dolly was just Dolly” to all who encountered her in wider entertainment circles and across her fan base, an extremely modest person with a unique musical talent and love of life that radiated wherever she went.

The global shock of her death this week at her home in Nashville, Tennessee is enormous and has been sincerely felt.

I met Dolly once after a show at the Grand Ole Opry, Nashville back in the 1990s and attended two shows she had at the SSE Arena in Belfast.

Most important, Dolly's closest relatives are deeply mourning right now, just as Dolly did back in April 2021 when her much-loved uncle Bill Owens died aged 85. He was an ordinary East Tennessean, but an exceptional musician, one who fully realised Dolly's musical talents as a child.

When Bill died, Dolly, then 75, penned a sweet farewell to him, describing him as a “funny, friendly and generous” person with a “kind word for everybody”.

Dolly said then: “I knew my heart would break when he passed away and it did.”

She wrote: “I'll start this eulogy by saying I wouldn't be here if he hadn't been for my uncle Bill. He was there, there in my young years to encourage me to keep playing my guitar, to keep writing my songs, to keep practising my singing.

“Uncle Bill was there to help build my confidence standing on stage where he was always standing behind me or close beside me with his big ol' red Gretsch guitar,” she wrote.

Dolly recalled memories of some of her first few shows – and her first job on the Cas Walker radio show in Knoxville and moments he took her “back and forth to Nashville” to knock on publishing companies' doors and to seek an audition at the Grand Ole Opry show.

“It's really hard to say or to know for sure what all you owe somebody for your success,” she wrote.

“But I can tell you for sure that I owe my uncle Bill an awful lot.”

Dolly said her uncle Bill loved music, to write and sing. He wrote at least 800 songs, including some of Dolly's own, such as 'Put It Off Until Tomorrow'.

He wrote songs that were recorded by Loretta Lynn, Crystal Gayle, Ricky Skaggs, Kris Kristofferson and many others, she wrote.

“He also travelled the road with many major artistes playing his guitar, including playing on stage with me in my early years in Nashville.”

Dolly herself wrote more than 3,000 songs, including one very personal to her – 'Coat of Many Colors' in 1971.

Bill's father was the Rev Jake Owens, popularly known as an 'Old Tyme Preacher Man’ in East Tennessee, whose daughter Avie Lee was Dolly's mother. The song 'Old Tyme Preacher Man' was written and sung and recorded by Dolly and was a top hit on the Billboard country charts.

Bill Owens regularly performed at the Dollywood theme park's Back Porch theatre. He also had a lifelong interest in the restoration of the endangered American chestnut tree native to the Great Smoky Mountains region.

Upon his death, Dolly said in her eulogy that Bill Owens and his wife Sandy planted 70,000 trees on Dollywood estate property over his lifetime. The Bill Owens American Chestnut Fund was established by the American Eagle Foundation at Dollywood to continue conservation efforts.

I had the pleasure of meeting Bill Owens and his brother Louis at the Dollywood theme park in Pigeon Forge in June 1993 when I was on a Belfast News Letter-assigned trip to research 18th century Ulster-Scots/Scots-Irish migration to Southern Appalachian states like Tennessee.

Dolly was not at the theme park on the day of my visit arranged by Tennessee Tourist Board, but Bill, Louis, and other Dolly relatives made me and my tourist guides very welcome.

Music was our main topic of conversation and how the Scots-Irish were instrumental in lightening up the region with their singing and dancing in between developing life in harsh environmental conditions different what they had encountered back across the Atlantic.

Dolly's great-grandfather Rev Jake Owens taught music with old-tyme 'shape' notes in his little Pentecostalist wooden church in the Great Smoky Mountains.

“The singing there was a joy to behold,” Bill and Louis Owens told me.

“The songs we sing and play in this region are essentially mountain music. It was music that was brought to these parts 200 years ago by the Scots, Irish, Welsh and German peoples.

“When Dolly started her musical career as a child singer she was following a family tradition. Our people came from Scots-Irish descent and we even have a little native American Cherokee blood in our veins.”

The Owens brothers said they had a particular love of Irish fiddle tunes, some of which were played in the Smokies since the 18th century.

At Dollywood theme park, visitors from all parts of America and beyond are entertained and informed with a short musical reminder with the specific narrative, confirming the Scots-Irish link to the region.

"And so they came – a strong-willed people who forged their homes out of this region and brought their love and beauty with them. The deeds of our Scots-Irish ancestors are blended with the skills of the musicians who seized the Smokies' fiery spirit and this heritage has been passed on from generation to generation.”

This was Dolly Parton's heritage and love and the culture which she grew up with and proudly proclaimed on the world stage as a singer/songwriter supreme.

• Former senior News Letter journalist Billy Kennedy is author of the 'Scots-Irish in the Hills of Tennessee'.