“I remember thinking, ‘This is such a beautiful dress, but the fabric is so delicate!'”
That was Dolly Parton, looking back for People magazine on the night of Oct. 9, 1978. She said she sat in the audience telling herself one thing: “I hope this all holds together!”
It did not hold together.
The story is going around again this week. Whiskey Riff retold it on Nov. 10, eight days before the 60th CMA Awards air on ABC on Wednesday, Nov. 18, with Lainey Wilson hosting. A tribute to the late Dolly Parton is planned for the show, and fans have been going back to her most famous night there.
In the fall of 1978, Dolly was 32. She had grown up one of 12 children in the Smoky Mountains of East Tennessee, and her hit “Here You Come Again” had carried her from country radio onto pop radio. The awards were held at the Grand Ole Opry House in Nashville, with Johnny Cash as host.
Entertainer of the Year is the top prize of the night. Before 1978, only one woman had ever won it. That was Loretta Lynn in 1972. Dolly was up against Crystal Gayle, Ronnie Milsap, Kenny Rogers and Mel Tillis.
She liked her clothes snug, and she had ordered a special gown just in case. Somewhere close to the big moment, the front of it gave way.
She told that part two ways over the years. On stage that night, she said it had happened “about five minutes ago.” Talking to People decades later, she remembered feeling it go right as her name was called.
Either way, she needed help fast. Marianne Rogers, who was married to Kenny Rogers, was sitting nearby in a fur stole. “I was sitting down there near her, so I grabbed her stole and held it up,” Dolly said, in a quote Whiskey Riff shared in 2023.
Cash and Milsap, the piano man behind “Smoky Mountain Rain,” announced the winner. Dolly walked up in front of about 5,000 people with the fur held to her chest, and she came clean right away.
“I had this dress made in case I won, and about five minutes ago, I was hoping I wouldn’t win,” she said. She told the crowd she had “busted the front out of it.”
By Whiskey Riff’s account of the broadcast, Cash did not miss a beat. “That’s alright… I just love watching you… talk,” he told her. Milsap added two words of his own: “Me too.”
Then Dolly passed along the verdict from home. Her father, Robert Lee Parton, was a Tennessee farmer who raised a dozen kids on very little, and she quoted him often.
“My daddy says that’s what I got for putting 50 pounds of mud in a five-pound bag!”
That is the wording Taste of Country, The Boot and the Opry’s own history page all print. A Toledo TV station, WTOL 11, posted her speech in a tribute to her. Whiskey Riff used the same clip to retell the story.
Dolly accepts Entertainer of the Year in 1978, borrowed fur and all
Kenny Rogers went home without the trophy that night. Five years later, he and Dolly had a No. 1 duet and sang it on the same awards show.
Dolly and Kenny Rogers sing “Islands in the Stream” at the 1983 CMA Awards
Dolly never did sound sorry about the dress. She told People that winning made her feel “like I was up there with the big boys.”
“I wanted to look good when I won the award,” she said, “but I did think, ‘Well, this is very entertaining!'”