Cindy Morgan has revealed the wonderfully chaotic story of how Dolly Parton helped launch her music career-all because a determined friend secretly entered her in a talent contest.
In an emotional tribute to the late country icon, Morgan recalled working as an assistant manager at a Claire's boutique in Middlesboro, Kentucky, shortly after graduating from high school. Her friend and frequent collaborator, Jimmy Bryant, urged her to enter a competition at Silver Dollar City, but Morgan wanted no part of it.
She had apparently grown tired of small-town talent shows where, as she cheekily remembered, "the cloggers in short skirts always won." Bryant refused to accept her answer and entered them both anyway.
Weeks later, Morgan learned that they had made the cut for the Smoky Mountain Music Festival, staged during the celebrations marking Silver Dollar City's transformation into the newly opened Dollywood. With nothing glamorous enough for the occasion, the aspiring singer borrowed a silky blue dress from her friend Crystal Brooks and reluctantly joined the competition.
Although Bryant had entered her in the country category, Morgan boldly performed two gospel songs: "I Go to the Rock" and "Holy Ground." Between rounds, however, the Tennessee heat created a decidedly less glamorous backstage crisis. Morgan admitted that she developed enormous sweat marks under the borrowed dress and rushed to the restroom to stuff paper towels beneath her arms.
The improvised solution apparently worked. Morgan advanced to the final by a tiny margin, while Bryant was eliminated. After singing her gospel numbers for the third time that day, she waited before a packed crowd as the event was broadcast on WIVK in Knoxville.
Then came the moment that changed everything.
Dolly Parton and songwriter Hoyt Axton walked onto the stage to reveal the winner. To Morgan's disbelief, Parton announced her name. Still trembling-and presumably still wearing those strategically placed paper towels-Morgan climbed the steps as Dolly stretched out her arms and exclaimed, "You won, you won! Congratulations!"
The prize was far bigger than a trophy. Parton awarded Morgan a year-long contract to perform at Dollywood, arranged a Nashville recording session with top musicians and invited her to sing background vocals during several of her own shows.
"Dolly made a way for me to find a path to music," Morgan reflected. The connections she formed during that sweltering night eventually led her into a professional recording career in Nashville.
Morgan later wrote Parton a private letter thanking her for changing the direction of her life, although she was never completely certain that Dolly received it. In her public farewell, the acclaimed Christian singer remembered Parton as both tender and formidable-"strong like steel, but fragile as a bird"-and praised her for planting peace, showing kindness and writing songs that reached into people's deepest places.
"Dolly, you are a pearl of great price," Morgan wrote. "All you gave is all I'm taking with me."
She concluded with a faith-filled farewell to the woman who once reached out her arms and welcomed a frightened young gospel singer into the music business: "Rest well, and sing in that high heavenly way that only you can."
