I visited Dolly Parton's Nashville exhibition. Here's what surprised me

In Nashville, music is impossible to escape. Wander downtown - cowboy boots, mandatory, thank you very much - and almost every doorway releases the dulcet tones of another astonishingly good singer.

Can everyone in this town hit perfect pitch?

But few have loomed larger over Music City than Dolly Parton.

At Nashville's Country Music Hall of Fame, I visited Dolly Parton: Journey of a Seeker, an exhibition exploring more than six decades of her extraordinary career. Rather than simply cataloguing the hits, rhinestones and fabulous costumes, it focuses on the moments when Parton ignored the doubters and pushed beyond what others thought possible.

And that's what stayed with me.

Yes, there are those wonderfully glamorous frocks, guitars, movies, awards and reminders of songs including Jolene, 9 to 5 and I Will Always Love You. Walking through the exhibition, another Dolly emerges: a woman who repeatedly backed herself, made smart business decisions and refused to be confined by other people's expectations of her. Dolly's story is also one of formidable entrepreneurship, philanthropy and generosity.

She turned her fame into a business empire that includes Dollywood, while her Imagination Library has given hundreds of millions of books to children. She also famously encouraged other performers: when Whitney Houston's recording of I Will Always Love You became a global phenomenon, Dolly celebrated rather than resented another artist making her song their own.

Then there's her great love story. She met Carl Dean on her first day in Nashville; they married in 1966 and remained together until his death in 2025.

Dolly was still building. Her new 12-storey, 245-room SongTeller Hotel, conceived as a love letter to Nashville, is set to launch downtown in a few weeks, alongside Dolly's Life of Many Colors, billed as the world's largest exhibition devoted to her life.

My own Dolly pilgrimage naturally also included the gloriously sparkly Butterfly Bar in the Academy Food Hall, where I sampled a lovely, buttery Dolly Wines Chardonnay.

Because with Dolly, apparently even a glass of wine needs a little glamour.