Dolly Parton Tickled Pink Over Cracker Barrel

Dolly Parton's 2008 CD, Backwoods Barbie. Photo courtesy of Dolly Records.

March 30, 2009 — It’s been 13 months since Dolly Parton released her Backwoods Barbie album, but the CD found new life when she added three more songs for a collector’s edition that’s being sold exclusively at Cracker Barrel.

Dolly being Dolly, you figure she could’ve found lots of places to put her music, but the Tennessee-based Cracker Barrel — which has also had exclusive projects with Sara Evans, Josh Turner and Kenny Rogers, among others — was a really great fit for the Tennessee-based owner of Dollywood.

"You think about it," Dolly told Suzanne Alexander on the national radio show GAC Nights: Live From Nashville. "They love a lot of the same things I do: family — I had two uncles that owned country stores back home — and the fact that they have that great country food. I’ve been eatin’ at Cracker Barrel for years and years and years, and everyday — or at least every week — I send somebody over there to get some cornbread and muffins or somethin'."

"Of course," she continued, "they sell a lot of music at Cracker Barrel, along with some other wonderful things that I’ve bought through the years, and it just seemed to be the perfect thing for kind of the way that I grew up, that mountain flavor, country-people flavor, and so it made a nice coupling."

Dolly upped the ante on the deal when Cracker Barrel rolled out a special Dolly edition pink rocking chair. Only 1,350 copies were made, and Dolly figures they’re going to run out very quickly.

"Pink is more a Barbie color," she told The Asheville Citizen-Times. "People are buying them up just to get them off the [Cracker Barrel] porches!"

Some of the songs featured on Backwoods Barbie are also part of Dolly’s theatrical production of 9 To 5: The Musical. Previews for the show begin on Broadway April 7.