100 free Dolly Parton trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
59 free Dolly Parton trivia questions with answers. Dolly Parton has written more than 3,000 songs, starred in 9 to 5 and Steel Magnolias, built a theme park in the Smoky Mountains and mailed out over 100 million free children's books. This quiz covers all of it: her childhood as the fourth of twelve kids, the Porter Wagoner years, the stories behind 'Jolene', 'Coat of Many Colors' and 'I Will Always Love You', her film career, Dollywood, the Imagination Library, her awards and the honors she has famously turned down. The questions run from easy warm-ups any fan will get to genuinely tough deep cuts about her early singles, her production company and the salaries on The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. It works for a solo play, a pub quiz round or a themed trivia night. Every answer has been checked against Wikipedia and the primary sources it cites, and each explanation adds one more thing worth knowing.
30 of 100 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01How soon after graduating from high school in 1964 did Dolly Parton move to Nashville?
The very next day
She arrived on a Saturday morning and met her future husband before the day was out.
Q 02Parton has said 'Jolene' was inspired by a red-haired woman with what job who flirted with her husband?
A bank clerk
Onstage in 1988 she told an audience the song was a true story, which is why she did not like to sing it too often.
Q 03How many weeks did Whitney Houston's 'I Will Always Love You' spend at No. 1 on the Hot 100?
14
The stay was a record at the time, and the single became the first diamond-certified single of Houston's career.
Q 04What did Parton use to create the typewriter-clacking rhythm heard on '9 to 5'?
Her acrylic fingernails
The song's credits list her contribution as 'lead vocals, nails,' and she has said the idea came to her backstage on the film set.
Q 05In The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, Parton's character Miss Mona runs a brothel known by what name?
The Chicken Ranch
The plot has the winners of the annual Texas–Texas A&M football game traditionally visiting the place to celebrate.
Q 06Which character does Parton play in Steel Magnolias?
Truvy Jones
The cast list describes her as a 'Glamour Technician,' the town gossip who runs a home-based beauty salon.
Q 07In what year did the Pigeon Forge park formerly called Silver Dollar City Tennessee reopen as Dollywood?
1986
Attendance doubled to more than a million guests during that first season under the new name.
Q 08Dolly Parton's Imagination Library was founded as a tribute to which member of her family?
Her father
He never learned to read or write, and Parton has said that inability probably kept him from fulfilling all of his dreams.
Q 09Why did the Roslin Institute name Dolly the sheep after Dolly Parton?
The donor cell came from a mammary gland
Ian Wilmut quipped that the team 'couldn't think of a more impressive pair of glands than Dolly Parton's.'
Q 10Which pop star is Dolly Parton's real-life goddaughter?
Miley Cyrus
Parton played 'Aunt Dolly' in three episodes of Hannah Montana, but the character was cut from the 2009 movie.
Q 11Parton's acclaimed 1987 album Trio was a collaboration with which two singers?
Emmylou Harris and Linda Ronstadt
The three had first tried to record together in the mid-1970s, but being signed to different labels helped scuttle the project.
Q 12Who wrote 'Islands in the Stream,' Parton's 1983 chart-topping duet with Kenny Rogers?
The Bee Gees
Barry Gibb produced the track, and in 2005 it topped a CMT poll of the greatest country duets of all time.
Q 13Who played Franklin Hart, the 'sexist, egotistical, lying, hypocritical bigot' boss in 9 to 5?
Dabney Coleman
Q 21According to Parton, the name and look of 'Jolene' were borrowed from whom?
A young fan who came on stage for an autograph
She sang 'Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene' to herself to remember the name, and that is how it became the chorus.
Q 22Dolly Parton refused to let Elvis record 'I Will Always Love You' after Colonel Tom Parker demanded what?
Half of the publishing rights
She later joked that Whitney Houston's version made her enough money to buy Graceland.
Q 23Which Scottish singer's unrelated '9 to 5' hit No. 1 in 1981 months after Parton's did?
The film's postscript has Hart abducted by a tribe of Amazons in the Brazilian jungle, 'never heard from again.'
Q 14Dolly Parton was the fourth of how many children born to Avie Lee and Robert Lee Parton?
12
Her mother had eleven pregnancies in twenty years, the tenth producing twins, and was a mother of twelve by age thirty-five.
Q 15Where did Parton meet her future husband Carl Dean on her first day in Nashville?
Outside a laundromat
She had just started her laundry at the Wishy Washy when he pulled up along the sidewalk where she stood with a cold drink.
Q 16Parton was born in a one-room cabin on the Little Pigeon River in which Tennessee community?
Pittman Center
The family later moved to a two-room cabin on nearby Locust Ridge, the farm that inspired 'My Tennessee Mountain Home.'
Q 17How old was Parton when she recorded her first single, 'Puppy Love,' for Goldband Records?
13
That same year she appeared at the Grand Ole Opry and first met Johnny Cash, who told her to follow her own instincts.
Q 18In what year did Porter Wagoner invite Parton to join his syndicated television show?
1967
Wagoner also convinced his label, RCA Victor, to sign her, and released her first single there as a duet with him to protect the investment.
Q 19Unable to find paper on Wagoner's tour bus, Parton wrote 'Coat of Many Colors' on the back of what?
A dry-cleaning receipt
The receipt was for one of Wagoner's suits, and once the song became a hit he had it framed; it now hangs in her museum at Dollywood.
Q 20As she sewed the coat in 'Coat of Many Colors,' Parton's mother told her the Bible story of which figure?
Joseph
Parton has repeatedly named it her personal favorite of all the songs she has written.
Sheena Easton
Easton's record had been released a few months earlier in the UK than Parton's, and it topped the U.S. chart three months after Parton's left the spot.
Q 24Parton was paired with which action star in the 1984 comedy Rhinestone?
Sylvester Stallone
The plot has a country star trying to mold an unknown into a music sensation, and Parton wrote the film's songs.
Q 25Which honour has Dolly Parton repeatedly turned down, once to avoid appearing political?
The Presidential Medal of Freedom
She accepted all three of the others, receiving the Kennedy Center Honors in 2006 and the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2011.
Q 26In 2022 Parton tried to decline a nomination to which institution, saying its genre was not hers?
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
After learning the hall was not rock-only she agreed to accept if chosen, and was inducted on November 5, 2022.
Q 27Parton co-wrote the 2022 novel Run, Rose, Run with which best-selling author?
James Patterson
She released a companion album of 12 original songs the same week, and Reese Witherspoon's company signed on to adapt the book.
Q 28How did the Parton family pay Dr. Robert F. Thomas, the missionary doctor who delivered Dolly?
With a sack of cornmeal
Later in life Parton wrote a song about Dr. Thomas, and she pledged $500,000 toward a Sevierville hospital named for him.
Q 29Whose hit 'Please Please Please' featured Parton on a February 2025 deluxe edition?
Sabrina Carpenter
The track appeared on the deluxe edition of Short n' Sweet along with an accompanying music video.
Q 30Whose 2024 cover of 'Jolene' rewrote the lyrics so the singer warns Jolene rather than begging her?
Beyoncé
The album track just before it, 'Dolly P,' has Parton herself introducing the cover with a nod to 'that hussy with the good hair.'