There are few artists who felt as much like a warm hug as Dolly Parton. Born into a family of twelve children in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains, she turned a childhood of poverty and hand-me-down clothes and toys into one of the most beloved careers in American music. This week, the world said goodbye to her—she passed peacefully in Nashville at 80, surrounded by loved ones—but a voice and a spirit like hers doesn’t really leave. It just settles into the songs, the stories, and the millions of lives she touched along the way.

What made Dolly so precious wasn’t just her voice or her songwriting, it was the generosity that ran through everything she did—from her music to Dollywood to the millions of books she mailed to children through her Imagination Library. She had that rare gift of making an audience of thousands feel like she was talking to each one of them individually.

We are honoring Dolly Parton by playing “My Tennessee Mountain Home.” Released as a single in late 1972, the song paints Dolly’s rural Tennessee childhood life. Listening to it now feels less like a snapshot of her past, and more like a fitting way to picture her at rest, back among those same mountains she never really left in her heart.

With a career of 60 years built on talent, voice, and an enormous heart, she leaves behind not just a catalog of songs but a genuine role model for how to be famous without ever losing your warmth. She really was one of a kind, and the mountains she sang about will keep her name for a long time yet.