The Grand Ole Opry devoted its entire Saturday performance to Dolly Parton, honoring the country legend and longtime Opry member following her death at age 80.
Carly Pearce, a one-time Dollywood performer who joined the Opry family in 2021 on Parton's own invitation, opened the tribute with a rendition of "Those Memories of You." "It only feels right that I get to honor the queen tonight. Dolly, we love you," Pearce told the crowd.
The night's lineup also included Kathy Mattea performing "Jolene," Ketch Secor and Molly Tuttle teaming up on "Just Someone I Used To Know," Channing Wilson delivering "My Tennessee Mountain Home," and Parton's own niece, Jada Star, playing "The Orchard."
The evening closed with all the Opry's musicians joining together onstage for "9 to 5," which included a surprise cameo from Jelly Roll. Throughout the show, footage of Parton's past Opry appearances played on the video screen, with the night ending as the full cast of performers gathered onstage to watch archival video of Dolly singing "I Will Always Love You."
The sold-out show's proceeds were donated to Parton's Imagination Library.
Earlier in the week, the Opry reflected on Parton's history with the venue, recalling how Johnny Cash introduced her in 1959 as "a little girl from East Tennessee" when she took the stage at just 13 years old. She performed George Jones' "You Gotta Be My Baby" that night and earned three encores — an early glimpse, the Opry noted, of the career that followed.
"It's hard to put into words what Dolly Parton meant to the world—and to the Grand Ole Opry. The legacy she leaves, and the lessons she taught us, have made an indelible mark. Her music revealed a profound belief in the goodness of others and a witty, fiery insistence on remaining true to herself. Dolly had a gift for turning her personal stories into songs that belonged to everyone, leaving us a little wiser, a little kinder, and a lot more willing to be ourselves," the Opry wrote on its website this week.
Photo: Movieguide®, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
