Dolly Parton Recalls Her Band Gifting Her A Vintage Guitar For Christmas After Her Childhood Guitar Got Destroyed In A House Fire: ” Treasure To Me”

When you think back on some of your most beloved Christmas memories, I think a lot of us don’t even think about the gifts we received any given year.

If you’re like me, you might recall going to pick out the perfect Christmas tree with your family, or a certain dish your grandma makes around the holidays, but every now and then, you might receive a present that you remember forever.

I would imagine that if you do have a favorite present you received either in childhood or as an adult, it probably had some sort of sentimental value attached to it either because of who gave it to you, the meaning behind the item, or both.

And country music’s most famous lady, Mrs. Dolly Parton, has an incredible gift that she got from her band back in the day which holds a ton of sentimental value. She explained that the very first guitar she ever got as a little girl was a Martin, which is what she learned to play on. It’s where she first got the spark and desire to play country music, something that has stayed with her through decades and made her one of the world’s most iconic and beloved musicians.

She had planned to have it restored as an adult, but a house fire got to it first, and Dolly lost that imperative piece of her childhood. I can’t imagine how devastating that was… it represented so much about where she came from and how she was able to realized dreams beyond her wildest imagination.

So one year for Christmas, her band decided to go in on a very expensive collectors item in a vintage Martin guitar, similar to the one she played growing up, that had been restored and was in great condition. She was so taken back they would do that, and she called it a “treasure”:

“The best gift I’ve ever gotten is probably a little Martin guitar that my band saved up, or pitched in and bought for me.

I’m sure is cost a lot, because it’s a collectors item, but my first guitar when I learned to play was a little Martin, and it got burned in a house before I could have it restored, so that was just a treasure to me to get that. It was like having my little guitar back.”

Dolly could by herself any guitar in the world now, but it’s sweet that her band new how much that original guitar meant to her and did so much to try to give her something as close as possible to the original.

In a video with Williams Sonoma, Dolly also recalled one of her favorite Christmas memories, the year her little brother Randy was born:

“I have so many precious memories, but probably my favorite Christmas memory is the fact that we used to only get the magazines, the catalogs, and we loved all the things in there that we couldn’t have.

And so this one particular year, we were crying for a walking, talking doll. We wanted that so bad, but we couldn’t afford it. It just so happened that my mama had a baby, another baby, there were so many of us. So that was my brother Randy, and he was our Christmas baby.”

She also explained how grateful she is for some of the biggest moments in her professional career:

“I have so many things that I’m grateful for in my life. Probably one of the greatest things is when I became a member of the Grand Ole Opry, that was always my childhood dream when I was standing on the porch singing in a tin can on a tobacco stick on that little cabin.

So when I got to actually be a member of the Grand Ole Opry, that was very special.”

Dolly was inducted to the Grand Ole Opry in 1969, and considering how instrumental the influence of so many artists before her were that she listened to on the radio at the Opry, it’s not surprising to hear how important that was to her.

Like many of us, her favorite things about Christmas are as follows:

“Faith, food, fun, family, it’s all great.”

Amen to that…

The full video is available below.

The post Dolly Parton Recalls Her Band Gifting Her A Vintage Guitar For Christmas After Her Childhood Guitar Got Destroyed In A House Fire: ” Treasure To Me” first appeared on Whiskey Riff.