Dolly Parton Admitted It Was Hard to ‘Keep a Job’ in Her Band

Dolly Parton cycled through many members of her band in the 1970s. She shared why she got a bad reputation in Nashville as a result.

In the 1970s, Dolly Parton and her band toured constantly. They lived on the bus and in hotel rooms as Parton attempted to reach broader and broader audiences. The members of her band agreed that touring with Parton was a good job, so long as they could hold their position. Parton herself admitted that it wasn’t always easy to keep a job in her band.

Dolly Parton admitted that she was a tough boss to her band

As Parton worked to hone her sound as a solo artist, she hired and fired a series of musicians to accompany her on the road. According to her guitarist, Don Roth, Parton was a tough boss.

“First of all, everybody’s afraid they’re gonna get fired; there’s no stability,” Roth said in the book Dolly by Alanna Nash. “Because if she doesn’t like you, and chances are she won’t, she will fire you. If she doesn’t like your attitude, if she doesn’t get ‘good vibes,’ as esoteric as that is, from you on or off the stage, she doesn’t care if you’re the best player in the world. She’s not going to keep you in the group.”

Parton acknowledged that she had gained a reputation as someone who couldn’t keep a band. She said it stemmed from her perfectionism.

“I’ve probably gone through more musicians than anybody, but it’s not personal, it never is,” she admitted. “I have a reputation in Nashville — you can’t keep a job with Dolly Parton — but that’s not so, really. I have to have the perfect sound for me, and I’ve nearly achieved that.”

Parton said she had high expectations and expected her band to meet them.

“I can’t work with squirrels or dope addicts or drunkards. I expect goodness from my people, and I expect them to be qualified for what I need, and I want to be proud of the band I’ve built.”

Dolly Parton angered many of the former members of his band

Parton insisted that the firings were never personal, but this did little to lessen the sting for the former members of her band. Many people felt very negatively toward her.

“A number of other people got fired and, of course, all the people that got fired say, ‘Oh, that [expletive] Dolly!’” Roth said. “‘She promised this and that —,’ and some people are very bitter.”

She passed the burden of firing people onto other people

While Parton knew when people didn’t fit into the sound she wanted to achieve, it didn’t make firing them easy. As a result, she typically passed the job off to her band leader, Gregg Perry.

“It really is too damned difficult for her to fire people when she loves them, and it may not be totally right for her to have somebody else do it, but Gregg was all too willing — always. But he just does his job,” Roth said. “A great deal of talk is going around town — ‘That son-of-a-b**** fired me.’ All the poor bastard did was make a phone call because he was told to. I like Gregg. He’s a good friend of mine. But to Dolly, he got to be a convenience. To the point of where she’ll say, ‘I think I’ll call Don,’ and he’ll say, ‘I’ll call him for you.’ His title is band leader, but he has taken it upon himself to always carry her suitcase for her and to do just about everything.”

Parton and Perry had a very close relationship for years.