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Dolly Parton<\/a> has been writing songs and singing them for just about her entire life.<\/p>\n As a child, she appeared on local TV and radio stations near her home in Sevierville, Tennessee, with support from her family.<\/p>\n “My mama and her people had all of the musical genes in our family,” Parton explained to The Guardian<\/em><\/a> in 2016. “Mama would sing all of the time and my sisters and brothers loved to sing too. I always tried to get them to be my backup singers when I would pretend to be on stage but they had no interest in taking a back seat to me. Of course, my Uncle Bill was serious about music long before me and as I was growing up he’s the one who saw my potential and worked so hard to give me a chance in the business. He’s a great musician and songwriter in his own right so I know he sacrificed his own ambitions so I could have mine.”<\/p>\n Parton’s uncle was Bill Owens, who wrote and co-wrote over 800 songs in his career, won the 1966 BMI Song of the Year award and, perhaps most importantly, made sure to stoke his niece’s passion for music. He even helped write Parton’s debut single, “Puppy Love,” which she recorded at just 13 years old.<\/p>\n Her grandmother, Rena Owens, accompanied her on the 30-hour bus trip to a recording studio in Lake Charles, Louisiana.<\/p>\n “I don’t think I’ll ever forget the way the inside of that bus smelled,” Parton later recalled<\/a>. “It was a combination of diesel fuel, Naugahyde and people who were going places.”<\/p>\n There in Lake Charles, Parton recorded “Puppy Love” for a small label called Goldband Records. The single was released on April 20, 1959.<\/p>\n Listen to Dolly Parton’s ‘Puppy Love’<\/strong><\/p>\n Later that same year, Parton made her very first appearance at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, where she met and was introduced to the audience by the one and only Johnny Cash<\/a>.<\/p>\n “We’ve got a little girl here from up in East Tennessee,” Cash said<\/a> on the Ryman Auditorium stage. “Her daddy’s listening to the radio at home and she’s gonna be in real trouble if she doesn’t sing tonight, so let’s bring her out here.”<\/p>\n Parton could hardly believe it.<\/p>\n “I was thirteen years old. Johnny Cash introduced me, and I thought he was the sexiest thing that ever was,” she recalled in her memoir (via Far Out<\/a>). “That’s when I first felt hormones raging. It was his charisma and me being a growing girl. It was the first time a man had ever made me feel like a woman.”<\/p>\nA 30-Hour Bus Ride<\/h3>\n