Dolly Parton has a big family full of nieces and nephews and godchildren. Though she does not have children of her own, Dolly and her husband Carl are surrounded by family. But how many siblings does Dolly have?
How many brothers or sisters does Dolly have?
Dolly Parton is one sibling in a huge family, as she has 11 brothers and sisters.
Dolly was the fourth in her family, and her mother had given birth to 12 children by the time she was 35-years-old, though one of her pregnancies was twins.
The country singer did not have a plush life and has spoken about how her family did not have much money growing up, meaning Christmas and other festivities had to be done on a shoestring.
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However, Dolly revealed one of the most precious gifts she ever received was her younger brother, Randy, who is the eighth of the 12 children.
Speaking on Instagram’s #TakeABreak series, Dolly talked of the Christmas when Randy arrived, giving his siblings their own ‘walking, talking doll.’
She said: “We always got in the mail, like most people did back then, Daddy called it the wish book but it was the catalogue.
“Over in the toy section they had a walking, talking doll, and it was one that you could feed it water and it would pee, and you can change its diaper, and it had tears and all of that.
“We wanted one of those dolls so bad. So my brother Randy, who was our December baby, he was born so close to Christmas.
“Mama said, ‘Hey, y’all wanted a walking, talking doll, that peed and did all that stuff? Come over here, I want you to see your new walking, talking doll.’
“And we had our own baby that year, our own walking, talking doll who cried real tears and he created a lot of them.
“We’d have to rock him, take care of him, we had to diaper him too, which wasn’t as much fun as a doll would have been I don’t think. But we loved him.”
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While another baby may have been a precious gift for the family, Dolly has made that moment even more special by immortalising it in a song, which she has sung with her brother Randy.
Her new album A Holly Dolly Christmas includes a track Dolly wrote for her brother, You Are My Christmas, which he takes part in as well.
She continued: “I wrote a song this past Christmas, it’s on my new album called A Holly Dolly Christmas.
“It actually says you are my Christmas, I wrote it about my brother, and my brother Randy is singing with me on it, so that made that real special to me.”
The Parton children are Willadeene, David, Denver, Dolly, Bobby, Stella, Cassie, Randy, Larry, Floyd, Frieda and Rachel.
Two of Dolly’s siblings are no longer alive, with Floyd, one of the twins, dying in 2018.
Larry, one of Dolly’s younger brothers, died in 1955, which Dolly spoke about in her autobiography.
But Dolly has worked with her musician siblings in the past, which are Randy and Stella, while Rachel is an actress.
