Dolly Parton’s late husband, Carl Dean, was a very private person, but his superstar wife still celebrated him in her music — and occasionally ribbed him too.
One of the country icon’s most famous songs, “Jolene,” was inspired by an incident where a bank teller developed feelings for Dean, who wed Parton in 1966.
“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.”
Dean, who died in March 2025 at age 82, also inspired several of Parton’s numerous love songs. And while he stayed out of the public eye, he was a big fan of his wife’s music. In 2023, she told the Associated Press that “My Blue Tears” was “one of my husband’s favorite songs that I ever wrote.”
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The track originally appeared on her 2001 album, Little Sparrow, but she recorded a new version with Duran Duran’s Simon Le Bon for her 2023 rock album, Rockstar. “I thought, ‘Well, I better put one of Carl’s favorites of mine in here,’” she explained.
Keep scrolling for a breakdown of the songs Parton wrote about Dean during their marriage:
‘Just Because I’m a Woman’ (1968)
This famous cut isn’t a love song, but it’s one of Parton’s biggest hits — and it was directly inspired by a conversation she had with Dean early in their relationship. “My husband doesn’t particularly like for me to tell this, but he’s old enough now, so he don’t really give a big s—,” she told Rolling Stone in 2003. “See, I had had sex before we met, but I hadn’t mentioned it, and he hadn’t asked. We were married for eight months, happy as we could be, and all of a sudden he decides to ask. I told him the truth, and it broke his heart. He could not get over that for the longest time. I thought, ‘Well, my goodness, what’s the big damn deal?’”
Parton subsequently wrote “Just Because I’m a Woman,” which begins with the lines, “I can see you’re disappointed / By the way you look at me / And I’m sorry that I’m not / The woman you thought I’d be.”
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‘Tomorrow Is Forever’ (1970)
Parton originally recorded this song in 1969 for a 1970 duet album with Porter Wagoner titled Porter Wayne and Dolly Rebecca. She rerecorded it for her 2016 album, Pure & Simple, which was full of love songs both old and new.
“When I decided that I wanted to write a love album — you know, I’ve been married 50 years this year to my husband, Carl — I had two songs that I had written in our early days, early in our marriage,” she told Cosmopolitan in 2016. “I had recorded them I guess in the late ’60s, early ’70s. … I remembered those two songs as being two of my favorite love songs that I’d ever written, so I just thought, ‘Well, it’s been so many years, many of my fans have never even heard those songs.’”
‘Say Forever You’ll Be Mine’ (1975)
This song originally appeared on her 1975 duet album with Wagoner of the same name and is the second vintage track she brought back for Pure & Simple. “I wrote those back in the early, early days of our marriage,” she told Rolling Stone in 2016. “So I just pulled those out again because I thought they were precious.”
‘From Here to the Moon and Back’ (2012)
Parton wrote this track for her 2012 movie, Joyful Noise, which also starred Queen Latifah — and she based it on her real romance with Dean. “When I wrote ‘From Here to the Moon and Back,’ I needed to write a beautiful love song,” she explained to The Boot in 2012. “I picked my husband, who I love, and I thought, ‘Well, I’ll write some beautiful song about him.’ It was about my husband in the movie, played by Kris Kristofferson, so I thought in order to make it really real and really touching, I would write it about my real, true emotions about someone I really do love and have loved for more than half of my life.”
A duet version with Willie Nelson later appeared on Parton’s 2014 album, Blue Smoke.
‘Forever Love’ (2016)
For Pure & Simple, Parton wrote “Forever Love” in honor of her and Dean’s golden wedding anniversary. “That’s the one I considered our wedding song because we got remarried on May 30th, on our 50th anniversary,” she told Rolling Stone in 2016. “I thought I’d have to have a little wedding song, so that was the one. I purposely tried to write a wedding song and I thought it would be a good wedding song for anybody’s wedding.”
And Some Covers in His Honor
While his wife is a country legend, Dean was also a huge rock fan — and her discography includes a few nods to his taste. Her 2002 album, Halos & Horns, included a cover of Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven,” which was one of Dean’s favorites.
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“My husband has such an odd taste in music, and he loves Led Zeppelin. He’s been a Led Head from day one and also loves bluegrass and big-band music. ‘Stairway to Heaven’ was always Carl’s favorite,” she explained in an interview. “It was kind of like ‘our song’ because at romantic times or sweet times, we’d just be riding around in the car and if that would come on, Lord, he’d just knock us out of the car turning it up full blast.”
Parton included another version of “Stairway to Heaven” on her 2023 rock album, Rockstar. The LP also featured a cover of “Magic Man” with Heart’s Ann Wilson that Parton cheekily titled, “Magic Man (Carl Version).”
