During her summer vacations growing up, Dolly Parton used to stay with her Aunt Estelle and Uncle Dot Watson in Knoxville, Tennessee. It was in Knoxville that she realized she could play guitar with her case on the ground and get money from people walking by. She also realized that the more “pitiful” she looked, the more money she got.
How Dolly Parton unknowingly started busking
One day, Parton got off the bus in Knoxville a little early. So she sat down with her guitar and started to play.
“I was just playing for myself, but after a while a few people started to gather around,” Parton wrote in her 1994 memoir, Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business. “This one couple, who looked like they were from out of town, stopped and heard one whole song and part of another.”
The woman told Parton, “You sing real purty, honey.”
“Thanks,” Parton responded, without missing a strum.
“Isn’t she good, Hubert?” the woman asked who was seemingly her husband, while giving him a good nudge in the ribs.
He nodded and grunted in response.
“Well, aren’t you going to give the child a quarter?” the woman insisted.
“The man must have been used to this, because he obediently took out a quarter and dropped it into my guitar case like a setter trained to drop a quail at a hunter’s feet,” wrote Parton.
Parton wanted a Jiffy burger
The first thought the “Jolene” singer had after she made her first quarter was: “Daddy wouldn’t want me beggin’.”
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“Then a couple of other suckers dropped coins in the case, and I thought, ‘Daddy’s back home, and I want a Jiffy burger,’” wrote Parton.
A place near Parton’s aunt’s house sold “wonderfully greasy little sliders” called Jiffy Burgers and the young singer was hooked.
“I wanted them more than anything,” wrote Parton. “To me, they represented everything that mountain life wasn’t. The problem was I only made twenty dollars a week (I had gotten a raise) and gave Aunt Estelle half of that for my board. And I had already been caught taking Aunt Estelle’s laundry money to buy these burgers.”
Playing for money and using it to buy Jiffy burgers seemed like a perfect solution to the “Two Doors Down” singer.
The ‘Coat of Many Colors’ singer altered her appearance to make more money
Parton was initially uncomfortable with the idea of people giving her money because they “thought I was needy.” But she soon embraced it.
“As the coins kept dropping, however, I found myself taking steps to enhance my waif image,” she wrote. “I would carry an old ragged shirt inside my guitar case, to put on for effect. I have to admit I could look plumb pitiful.”
Anything for a Jiffy burger.
Years later, Parton wrote a song with her brother Floyd called “Nickels and Dimes” that was based on her experience busking.
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