Dolly Parton pays homage to late husband Carl Dean with ‘If You Hadn’t Been There’

Dolly Parton’s husband, Carl Dean, died on Monday. He was 82 years old. The two spent six decades together and on Friday at midnight, Parton released the song “If You Hadn’t Been There” in his memory.

In the emotional ballad, Parton thanks Dean for standing by her side. “You made me drеam / More than I dared,” she sings over piano and strings. “And I wouldn’t be hеre / If you hadn’t been there.”

“I fell in love with Carl Dean when I was 18 years old. We have spent 60 precious and meaningful years together,” Parton wrote on Instagram. “Like all great love stories, they never end. They live on in memory and song. He will always be the star of my life story, and I dedicate this song to him.”

Parton moved to Nashville when she was 18 years old. Her first day there, she went to the Wishy Washy laundromat that was up the street from her apartment.

“I had brought some dingy, dirty little clothes from home, and so I was just down there doing my laundry and walking around on the sidewalk,” she told NPR in 2014. “And Carl Dean came riding by, he pulled over and said something to me, and I said something to him. And 50 years later, we’re still talking.”

Dean owned an asphalt business in Nashville. He was known for staying out of the spotlight — so much so that there was a rumor that Parton made him up. But he was real, and he inspired her 1973 hit “Jolene.” In the honky-tonk, heartbreak anthem, Parton begs a red-headed, green-eyed woman not to take her man. In real life, Parton told NPR that the song was inspired by a bank teller who paid Dean a little too much attention.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Dolly Parton (@dollyparton)

“She got this terrible crush on my husband. And he just loved going to the bank because she paid him so much attention,” Parton said. “It was kind of like a running joke between us when I was saying, ‘Hell, you’re spending a lot of time at the bank. I don’t believe we’ve got that kind of money.’ So it’s really an innocent song all around, but sounds like a dreadful one.”

Throughout her career, Parton told the press that Dean was not the biggest fan of country music. He was more of a hard rock guy, with a love for Led Zeppelin. In fact, he’s part of the reason Parton took on a new sound with her 2023 album Rockstar, which featured nine original songs and 21 classic rock covers — including her rendition of Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven.”

“When it was all over, he said, well, I have to say that’s pretty damn good,” Parton told NPR in 2023. “So for him to say that would be like somebody else jumping up and down, you know, with pompoms. That was all I needed to hear because I knew he liked it.”