Very few people have actually met Carl. Fans haven’t even seen him. The husband of one of the most famous women in the US has always been happy to be the one she comes home to. Dolly Partons husband Carl Dean is dead at age 82.
Dolly would often joke about Carl, or make remarks about the blessed lives, but he is most famous for being one half of the inspiration for her mega hit “Jolene” (see below)
“[The] song was loosely based on a little bit of truth,” she said during the 2014 Glastonbury Festival, per The Independent. “I wrote that years ago when my husband… was spending a little more time with Jolene than I thought he should be.”
“She got this terrible crush on my husband,” Parton told NPR in 2008. “And he just loved going to the bank because she paid him so much attention. It was kinda like a running joke between us — when I was saying, ‘Hell, you’re spending a lot of time at the bank. I don’t believe we’ve got that kind of money.’ So it’s really an innocent song all around, but sounds like a dreadful one.”
“She had everything I didn’t, like legs — you know, she was about 6 feet tall. And had all that stuff that some little short, sawed-off honky like me don’t have,” Parton told NPR. “So no matter how beautiful a woman might be, you’re always threatened by certain… You’re always threatened by other women, period.”