Reba Brings Dolly’s Mountain Song Back to the Emmys

Reba McEntire sang Dolly Parton’s 1983 ballad Appalachian Memories at the 78th Primetime Emmy Awards on September 14, 20 days after Parton died at 80.

Before she sang, the Peacock Theater screens rolled Parton’s own introduction of the same song from the 1983 Emmys. McEntire finished with a line that was not in the lyric: “I love you, Dolly. So much.”

The Emmys Played Dolly’s 1983 Introduction First

The tribute sat on NBC’s live broadcast from Los Angeles, ahead of the yearly In Memoriam reel, and it treated Parton as a television figure rather than a guest from country radio. McEntire, who headlines the NBC sitcom Happy’s Place, walked into a number the Academy had already heard from Parton herself.

Parton had brought Appalachian Memories to the 35th Primetime Emmy Awards the year she put it on record. The 2026 show used that old tape as a cold open, so McEntire was covering a performance, not only a catalog cut.

I’m very very proud of the fact that I had the kind of parents that I did and grew up in the Smoky Mountains, the Appalachian Mountains, and I’ve written a song that touches me very deep, and I’m sure that in your own way, that you certainly will relate to this. This song, like I say, is very important to me, and I hope you like it. And if you don’t like it, well, if you don’t mind, I would rather not hear about it later. OK? It’s a song that I call ‘Appalachian Memories.’

Dolly Parton, 1983 Primetime Emmy Awards

That joke at the end is the tell. She was handing a mountain hymn to a Hollywood room and asking it not to write her later if the room stayed cold.

Why This Ballad Instead of a Hit?

Appalachian Memories is track five on Burlap & Satin, released May 2, 1983, written by Parton and produced by Gregg Perry. It never landed as a hit on Billboard’s Hot Country Singles chart. Jolene would have been the easy cue. This one is a family story about leaving home and failing to find the promised land.

McEntire said the song has always been one of her favorite Dolly records, and that Parton wrote it about her family. “I think it’s just so beautiful and perfect to honor who she was and where she came from,” she said. “She always carried her upbringing with her, and I admired that. There will never be another Dolly Parton.”

The lyric is blunt about the bargain. Somebody told a farm family to go north because “the air is filled with gold dust,” so they “hitched our station wagon to a star,” then watched the dream fall in. The chorus that McEntire had to get through on live television is the part that names the medicine:

Oh and these northern nights are dreary / And my southern heart is weary / I wonder how the old folks are back home / And I’ll keep leaning on sweet Jesus / I know He’ll love and guide and lead us / Appalachian memories keep me strong

Dolly Parton, Appalachian Memories, 1983

Those last four words, Appalachian memories keep me strong, are why the deep cut belonged on this stage. Parton spent a career selling sparkle so she could smuggle the mountain in. McEntire sang the mountain and left the hits in the vault.

Piano and strings sat under her. Old pictures of Parton and the Appalachian range rolled on the screens. The clip people kept overnight is the spoken goodbye, but the verses did the quieter work: a migration hymn the country chart declined to make famous, sung back to the same awards show that first heard it.

A White Gown and Dolly’s Butterfly Ring

McEntire refused black. She asked for sparkle because that is what Parton would have worn, and she pointed to a specific night in 1983, Dolly’s Live in London television special, when Parton sang Appalachian Memories in a white fringed gown. The Emmys dress was the echo: a sequined long-sleeve white gown with ruching and a deep V, made by designer Michael Schmidt.

WHAT SHE CARRIED ONSTAGE

• The color: White sequins instead of mourning black, aimed at Parton’s own 1983 television look.
• The earrings: Rhinestones loaned by Parton’s niece Rebecca after manager Justin McIntosh asked the family.
• The ring: A butterfly, the other half of Parton’s public uniform, worn so a piece of her was on McEntire’s hand.

“There’s nothing that says Dolly more than rhinestones and butterflies,” McEntire said. The costume was an argument in fabric: do not bury her in black when she spent 50 years refusing to dim the lights.

September 17, 1977, at the Grand Ole Opry

McEntire can still date the first time she stood in the same room as Parton. It was September 17, 1977, her Grand Ole Opry debut, and she was down for two songs until the house cut her to one because Parton had come in the back door.

“I said, ‘Heck, you can have both of them if I can just meet Dolly!’” McEntire recalled. “I will never forget her walking through in this beautiful black chiffon outfit with rhinestone butterflies. She looked just like an angel!” The Monday night tribute landed 3 days before the 49th anniversary of that meeting.

They did not live on the phone. Parton preferred the fax machine, and McEntire once asked Kenny Rogers for a number; even he did not have one. Their visits happened when work put them in the same building, which, over the years, it did.

THE STAGES THEY SHARED

1. September 17, 1977: McEntire makes her Opry debut and loses a song when Parton walks in wearing rhinestone butterflies.
2. 1983: Parton releases Appalachian Memories and sings it on the Emmys; she also sings it on Live in London in a white fringed gown.
3. 1991: After a plane crash kills eight members of McEntire’s band, Parton calls and offers her own band.
4. 2005: Parton guest-stars on season 4 of the sitcom Reba as Dolly Majors, a cutthroat real estate agent.
5. 2021: McEntire recuts Does He Love You with Parton, their only song together; Parton also wins her first Emmy.
6. August 25, 2026: Parton dies at 80 at Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center in Nashville.
7. September 14, 2026: McEntire sings the 1983 ballad at the 78th Primetime Emmy Awards and says she loves her.

On the 2021 Does He Love You video set, McEntire tried to arrive first. Parton beat her there anyway, and they sat between takes. On the Reba soundstage 16 years earlier, McEntire said Parton was “so sweet to everybody,” the same manners she brought when the work was heavier than a sitcom cameo.

Dolly Called After the Plane Crash

In 1991, after a concert in San Diego, a plane crash killed eight members of McEntire’s band. Parton was among the first to call. She offered the band itself, and her bandleader later helped McEntire put a new one together when it was time to play again.

“I’ll never forget that,” McEntire said. The Opry night had been about who got the minutes. The crash was about who showed up with musicians when the roster was gone. Monday’s broadcast sat in that same pattern: McEntire giving Parton the minutes back, on a bigger stage, with Parton’s own song and Parton’s own ring.

They still only share that one released duet. Friendship in their lane often looks like that, long gaps, then a set, a fax, a borrowed band, a guest slot. The Emmy number was the last time McEntire could hand her the room.

Five Emmy Nods and One Christmas-Movie Win

Sally Field, Parton’s co-star in the 1989 film Steel Magnolias and a nominee on this same night, opened the segment. She called Parton genuine, humble, supportive, and “blisteringly funny,” with “a bawdy sense of humor that would send any rude guy looking for a place to hide.” She also said she had not seen, back on that film set, “what a real giant Dolly was.”

If there are truly angels on Earth, then we just lost one, Dolly Parton. God bless you, Dolly Parton, my friend. I am not the only one on earth that will love you forever and ever.

Sally Field, 78th Primetime Emmy Awards

Field added the work in Tennessee and across the country, the part of Parton that never needed a rhinestone. The broadcast itself stayed on the song and the friendship. It did not recite the television record that actually put Parton in the Academy’s house.

DOLLY PARTON’S PRIMETIME EMMY RECORD

That 2021 win, her first Emmy for Outstanding Television Movie as an executive producer of the Netflix musical Christmas on the Square, came with 14 original Parton songs attached. Debbie Allen took choreography the same night. The show was only the second holiday movie to win the category. Five nods, one win, and a career that started on television long before 9 to 5. The 2026 tribute finally sang the mountain song she had used, in 1983, to tell that same room where she was from.

Reba’s Last Line Was for Dolly Alone

Parton died on August 25 at Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center in Nashville, four days after she was admitted on August 21. She was 80. Publicist Marcel Pariseau said she died “after bravely facing a brief battle with cancer,” surrounded by loved ones. The family did not name the cancer.

On the day the news went out, McEntire wrote that there would “never ever be another you,” and that they would “remember and cherish every memory and every note you ever played and sang.” Before the Emmys she posted again: “Your love, your music and you gave so much with your huge huge heart.”

After the number, she put up an NBC still from the stage and spoke in the present tense of missing her, not of a television beat.

I will always love and miss you, Dolly.
What an honor to celebrate @DollyParton tonight.@TelevisionAcad #EMMYs

📸: Trae Patton/NBC via Getty Images pic.twitter.com/NCEH1sY0bm

— Reba McEntire (@reba) September 15, 2026

“I will always love and miss you, Dolly,” she wrote. “What an honor to celebrate Dolly Parton tonight.” The honor was specific. She gave the Emmys the song Parton had already given them, wore the butterfly, and spent the last bar on a sentence meant for one listener.