Dolly Parton's First Single Was Recorded in Louisiana

LAFAYETTE, La. — Dolly Parton, the Tennessee-born singer, actress and philanthropist known around the world as the “Queen of Country,” died Tuesday at 80, her family announced. Tributes are pouring in from across the music industry, but in Louisiana, and Lake Charles specifically, her story started decades before the fame did.

In 1959, a 13-year-old Parton boarded a bus bound for Southwest Louisiana to record the first single of her career. That trip, and the small studio that made it possible, connect one of country music’s most decorated performers to Louisiana.

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The Studio That Started It All

Parton recorded “Puppy Love” at Goldband Studio on Church Street in Lake Charles, an independent label built by Eddie Shuler. Goldband had already made its mark on the area’s sound, having pressed Boozoo Chavis’ “Paper in My Shoe” and Phil Phillips’ “Sea of Love,” which topped Billboard’s R&B chart, the same year Parton walked through its doors.

The Church Street building where Parton cut her first track no longer stands. Crews demolished the deteriorating Goldband complex in 2017, but the site remains a documented piece of Southwest Louisiana’s music history.

A 30-Hour Bus Ride to Lake Charles

Getting to Louisiana wasn’t easy for a young Parton and her grandmother, Rena Owens. The pair traveled roughly 30 hours by bus from East Tennessee to reach the studio. Parton later recalled the trip in her own words, describing the bus’s smell as a mix of diesel fuel, Naugahyde and people who seemed destined for bigger things.

“Puppy Love,” co-written when Parton was 11 with her uncle, Bill Owens, became the first record in a catalog that would eventually include multiple Grammy wins, an Emmy and songs like “Jolene,” “I Will Always Love You” and “9 to 5.”

More Than a Recording Session

Louisiana’s ties to Parton didn’t end at Goldband. She returned to the state repeatedly over the decades, filming her role as Truvy Jones in “Steel Magnolias” in Natchitoches ahead of the film’s 1989 release and riding on a float for the Krewe of Endymion in New Orleans in 1988. She also performed at the Louisiana Superdome in 1985 alongside Kenny Rogers, Lee Greenwood and Sawyer Brown in front of nearly 20,000 fans, a history recounted in coverage of her passing.

Her Imagination Library literacy program has distributed more than 37,000 free books to Louisiana children since its founding in 1995, with the program expanding statewide in Louisiana in 2023.

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