Twenty artists. One songwriter. Two hours. CMA Presents I Will Always Love You: A Celebration of Dolly Parton” aired live from Belmont University’s Fisher Center for the Performing Arts in Nashville on Oct. 21 — on ABC and Disney+, with next-day availability on Hulu — and what emerged wasn’t a conventional tribute show. It was a stress test of a catalog. The catalog passed.
Following the broadcast, the CMA, Belmont, Disney, and the Nashville Convention & Visitors Corp. announced a combined $1 million donation to Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, the children’s book-gifting program she founded.
A Setlist That Reads Like a Syllabus
The song selection mapped Parton’s distinct songwriting modes — each performance a different chapter of the same remarkable body of work.
Ella Langley took “Jolene” — the character study, the jealousy narrative, the song that makes you feel complicit just by listening. Ashley McBryde delivered “Coat of Many Colors,” deeply personal material where the writing is so specific it becomes universal. These weren’t cover songs chosen for familiarity. They were chosen because they reveal how Parton operates across completely different registers as a writer.
Standout performances from the night:
- Ella Langley — “Jolene”: Raw and unsparing, foregrounding the song’s psychological intensity
- Ashley McBryde — “Coat of Many Colors”: Autobiographical storytelling anchored by precision and restraint
- Carly Pearce and Kristin Chenoweth — “9 to 5”: Country and musical theater discovering they share the same bones
- Reba McEntire with Belmont singers — “He’s Alive”: Gospel scope, with student performers connecting professional legacy to music education
- Carrie Underwood with the full cast — “I Will Always Love You”: The emotional peak of the night, closing on Parton’s songwriting rather than just her vocal legend
The most unusual moment belonged to Zac Brown. His performance of “Butterfly” took the form of a vocal duet with Parton herself — according to the CMA’s official listing, credited as a duet with Dolly Parton — two voices from different points in time sharing the same song. It shouldn’t have worked. It absolutely did.
Books, Not Just Songs
The Imagination Library gave the evening a social purpose that ran deeper than retrospective entertainment.
The $1 million donation — announced by the CMA following the broadcast — connected the night’s biggest names to Parton’s most enduring off-stage commitment. Reba McEntire performing “He’s Alive” alongside Belmont’s student singers made that connection tangible without stating it outright.
Vince Gill, Béla Fleck, and Ricky Skaggs paired with Lainey Wilson and Molly Tuttle on “Train, Train” illustrated what the night kept proving: Parton’s influence doesn’t belong to one generation. It moves across all of them — from bluegrass veterans to contemporary headliners — without losing momentum or meaning. That’s not nostalgia. That’s reach.
