Dolly Parton - "Love is Like a Butterfly"

Dolly Parton passed three weeks ago.  She is an icon, a legend, one of the few universally revered artists, and her death marks the ends an era of popular music.  We had hoped to see her in Vegas in December, 2025, but that was postponed until September of 2026, and then in May 2026 it was cancelled.  

I grew up with country music in the house, so there are many of her songs that I know by heart, and could choose to mark her passing.  Look at the all-star line up that performed "Jolene" in 2022 at her induction in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.  And one can't not mention Whitney Houston's 1992 blockbuster cover of "I Will Always Love You", which reintroduced Dolly to a whole new audience.  Honorable mention to 1989's upbeat "Why'd You Come In Here".  

Instead, I'm choosing 1974's "Love is Like a Butterfly", which became a personal favorite for Danette's and mine, when she performed this with Stephen Colbert in 2012 on the Colbert Report.  Stephen becomes self-conscious that he's performing with a legend, and his various errors and false-starts are endearing. 

Comedy Central pulled all of the Colbert Reports from the web, presumably when he went to CBS, so the original URL no longer works, and while the page is archived in the Wayback Machine, the embedded video is not.  Fortunately, the Internet Archive has more than just the Wayback Machine, and the broadcast is saved in a completely different collection.*

Dolly is gone, and that makes the world a less kind place.  We are deeply saddened at her passing, and regret that we never got to see her.  

"He's just scared. You calm down now, we'll get through this thing."

Dolly Parton - "Love is Like a Butterfly" (1974 studio, 1976 TV show)

* A serendipitous confluence of my research and entertainment interests.