tonight, it's a wild tail of booze, pills and shock therapy. but enough about me. it's actress and author carrie fisher who joins me to reveal how she turned personal pain into career gain. then "gma's robin roberts" gives us the scuttlebutt on who will replace diane sawyer. maybe she'll even tell me what scuttlebutt means. and i'll talk to dolly parton about fame, faith and why she is known as the iron butterfly. all that coming up now.

i'm excited today because this woman has had an extraordinary career. seven grammys, two oscar nominations, ten country music association awards and sales of more than 100 million records. the list goes on and on. it's hardly over. her latest, a dvd and cd combo called "dolly, live from london" was just released this week. dolly, how are you? it's a pleasure to have you with us here today. >> well, thank you. i was so excited. i love your show. i've been watching you, and you've been doing a great job. >> thank you. we always get along with you at "the view." and now you're here and i have you all to myself without anybody interrupting me. >> yeah, let's just do it all by ourselves. we like that. >> let me start with the country music awards and we'll get to the cd and the dvd. we'll get there. >> oh, i know.

>> taylor swift just made history as the youngest winner of the country music association awards and as entertainer of the year. now you won that award, right? what do you think -- >> oh, i did. i did. a long time ago. >> you've won every award but the nobel peace prize. i think i'm going to nominate you for that. >> thank you. i was so very proud of taylor. she is very young and very talented. she deserved every bit of it. she has had an unbelievable last several months, year, year and a half. she just killed them. i wasn't surprised that he is won that last night and all the other things he is won. we all love her, and we think she is really representing herself as well as nashville and country music very well. so we were excited for her. >> she is adorable. what did you think of the incident with kanye west? >> oh, i think that's always silly when people show their

butts like that. i feel like he probably was embarrassed about it later. but i thought she handled it really well, and i think everybody just wanted to smack a knot on his head. but i think it was all -- you know, what can you say? it was what it was, you know. >> you know, you've had so much success in your career. did you ever just -- and you made a lot of money at this point. let's tell the truth here. did you ever think of maybe just giving it up and rolling around in your money? >> no, i never just wanted to roll around in my money. i always said i count my blessings more than i count my money. but i have had a great career. but i really like what i do. like you, i really enjoy the people. i enjoy the performing. i love making things happen and seeing things happen. so i've been at it since i was a little bitty kid. i hope to be doing this from now on. and i have enough money to do what i need and want to do, but i still love to work.

>> what was the first thing you bought when you made money in the beginning? because you didn't start out with a lot of success? what did you do when you first got that big check? i always like that question. >> well, actually, i bought a cadillac. i think every country music star back in those days, back when i started out, i thought if i didn't have a cadillac, i definitely was not a star. so that was the first thing i bought. and -- for myself. and when my little coat of many colors song became a hit, the first money i got from that, i bought my mother a mink coat. that was back when it was still okay to wear it. and my mother didn't know what to do with it. i think he is probably resold it and used the money on something else. >> you know, it's always interesting to read that in the beginning, people were telling you to change your look, which you never did. you were always so original in the way you look and the way you act. it certainly is something -- we

always know what dolly parton is going to look like and how beautiful you have been all these years. what did you say to them when they said dolly, you've got to change your hair. you look a little too whatever. i don't know what they said to you? >> cheap. cheap would be a good word. actually, i really did kind of pattern my look after the town tramp. and i always was overexaggerated. but i always felt like the way i look kind of felt the way i felt inside. because i didn't want to be plain and ordinary. i wanted a little more pizazz. the way i started out looking was a country girl's idea of glamour. that's exactly what i still do. i just feel more like myself, and i just feel happier when i'm overdone. >> you see, we have in common that i admire the neighborhood tramp also for some reason. i don't know why. i just do. i just didn't model myself after her because she was homely. the one in my neighborhood. yeah, will this lady, he is wore

her skirts all short, and showed her legs, and she wore high heeled shoes, red nails, red lipstick and piled her peroxided hair on her head and i thought she was absolutely beautiful. so that was just kind of the look. i did. and that's what i said. everybody said she is just trash, and i always tell the story, and i thought when i was little that that was what i was going to grow up to be, trash. and that's how you and me both look! >> you know, the wonderful song that you wrote "i will always love you" that whitney houston has recorded and was a big hit for her, i understand that you -- i understand elvis wanted to record that. you said no to elvis. why? >> well, i didn't say no to elvis. i loved elvis presley, and he loved my song, and he had intended to sing it. he had been working it up, and i had been invited to the session,

because felton jarvis, a good friend of mine, and he was also a great producer in nashville at the time. so elvis loved it and had planned to do it, and it was only like the day of or the day before that colonel tom parker, who is a brilliant man, and i don't blame him for doing it. he called and said you know, we don't record any songs that elvis and i don't get half the publishing on. and i thought, well, that's already been a hit by me. it's one of my most important copyrights. so i just didn't -- i didn't let them have it. and i broke my heart because i still think what it would have been like to hear elvis sing the song there is no work tapes of it anywhere that i'm aware of. but it was just a decision i had to make, one of my first big business decisions i guess. and it was only after that whitney recorded it and it did so well that i was really happy that i had made that. >> no wonder they call you the iron butterfly. as a businesswoman, you're really very good at that, aren't you. people don't know that about you, i don't think. >> well, i love the business end of the business. i had to learn that early on because when they say you're in

the music business, you have to think about those things, about your contracts, about the money you have to make to keep a band on the road and the expenses and to have a bus or a way to travel. so you have to kind of start thinking early on that yourself until you can afford to hire people that will help you out with that. but i enjoy that part of it as well. >> you know, during your live shows, you banter with the fans quite a bit, don't you? >> yeah, i love the fans. it feels more like a reunion to me, like a family reunion. they're out there. i know they've paid money to come see me. i appreciate that, because they're the ones that keeps me, you know, in cheap clothes and hair. but seriously, i do have a wonderful, warm relationship. and i see in their faces. i sense how the people are. i can look out in that audience and see all the different faces, and i really feel like i can kind of perceive what their moods are. and i'm out to kind of work with that, and to cater to that person.

so it's a lovefest, if you're a true entertainer and you really like the audience. i'm not afraid of the stage. i'm not stage fright. if i mess up, i mess up, and try to make that part of my show. >> when you were a kid, i'm just wondering, were you -- you grew up with 12 other kids, right? you were one of 12? >> yes. six girls and six boys. >> wow. so how did you get attention for yourself? >> well, actually learned early on that there was not a lot of attention in that family of that many kids. and to have special attention, unless you were in trouble or you were sick or something. so i learned early on that by playing my guitar and writing songs, it was fascinating to my mother and to a lot of my relatives, although we were all very musical. all my mother's people played and sang. but i realized that early on i was getting a lot of attention. so i thought that was something i wanted to do because i needed a lot of attention. and i still do. so it served me well in my

lifetime. >> do you think the talent, the kind of talent you have is genetic? >> yes. i know that all of my mother's people are very, very musical. some of my big musical heroes are uncles and aunts. and even my mother was a great singer. they were country people. a lot of them sang in church or just sat around and just enjoyed the music. but i definitely inherited the music from my mother's side. i'd like to think i get my business sense from my daddy, even though he was not an educated man, he was a brilliant, intuitive, wonderful person. and i have his work ethic. i know most creative people will sleep all day and get up and write songs when they feel like it and sing when they want to. but me, i'm up early, early, just like i'm going to work. i never think of myself as a star. i'm just a working girl in my own mind. >> you're a working girl to us too, but a good one. don't move. we're going to come back with more with dolly parton.

♪ jolene, jolene, jolene, i'm begging of you please don't take my man ♪ ♪ jolene, jolene, jolene

♪ tumble out of bed and stumble to the kitchen pour myself a cup of ambition ♪ ♪ yawn and stretch and try to come to life ♪ ♪ jump in the shower and the blood starts pumping ♪ ♪ out on the streets the traffic starts jumping but folks like me on the job from 9:00 to 5:00 ♪

♪ working 9:00 to 5:00 what a way to make a living ♪ ♪ barely getting by it's all taking and no giving ♪ ♪ they just use your mind and they'll never -- >> i'm back with the legendary dolly parton. you've got me moving over here, dolly. >> i know. are you singing along? ♪ 9:00 to 5:00 i can see you now. >> your music is very hummable. you don't walk away from your shows not humming your tunes. that's a great thing, i think. >> it is. it's always a big thrill or the me to be on stage. i used to think when i used to work with other people that we're stars and have hit songs and have the whole audience singing along. i thought that must be the neatest thing it in the world to have the crowd singing your songs. when we do songs like "9 to 5" and "i will always love you" and they sing along, it is a major, major thrill. >> i was reading your grandfather was a pentecostal preacher and said to you at some

point in your life you were going to hell in a hand basket. what is a hand basket? >> oh, that's just an old expression. it just means you're going to hell. it just means you're going to get there quicker, like satan's going to carry you there, i guess, in a basket. i don't know. but my grandfather was, like you say, a holy roller preacher. it was a very strict religion. it was not in the rules to be wearing makeup and tight clothes and all that, but my grandfather was very, very proud of me. he lived to see me become a big star and see people really did care about me and i wasn't as bad as i looked. i looked like jezebel but he got over that after he saw that -- after i wrote a song about him called "daddy was an old time preacher man." he was really proud of that. that smoothed it over for me. >> the other thing, you have a very big gay following, dolly. why do you think that is? what do they like about you so much? >> i think it's because they know i'm different, too, and it

took me a long time to be accepted and i think that they just kind of relate to that and plus a lot of my gay guy friends, you know, they love to dress up or they're very sensitive and very creative. i think they relate to that side of me as well. i think they just appreciate the fact i just love everybody for who they are. we're not supposed to try to change people. we should allow people to be who they are and love them as they are. >> so then would you say you are pro-gay marriage? i'm curious. your background would say otherwise. >> oh, i know that's true. i always say, sure, why can't they get married? they should suffer like the rest of us do. >> that's good to know. what would we do without our gay audience? no back lighting. the studio would be barren. it would be terrible. we need them. >> that's true. >> here's a twitter question for you. dolly has a huge gay following. what are your thoughts on joel osteen's views on gays?

he says gays are not god's best work. that was his quote. >> i don't get into really talking this issue to those degrees, but i don't want to talk about him, i don't want to talk about them. like i say, i think god made us who we are and who we are. i don't think if he was a religious person he would be judging people. >> that's nice. that's good to say. you just released your double disk cd/dvd "live from london." are british fans different from your fans here in the united states? >> oh, we have wonderful fans in the united states. but we do have great, great fans in europe when we get a chance to go there, especially london we love to play. we had actually been on a five-week tour and just -- we were winding up our tour in london at the '02 arena and thought we're going to film this because this has been a wonderful trip. maybe we'll come back and put it together. we had such a great time, such a wonderful audience.

all the songs, of course, that they love and all the popular songs. then we do a lot of variety of other things. we do some interviews, talk to the band, show the rehearsal, show the town. this dvd is a wonderful thing to watch. it's colorful and entertaining, but you can see for yourself on the dvd how involved the audience really gets. they knew all the words and they were swinging their arms back and forth on all the songs, singing along. so it made for a wonderful experience for all of us, and i'm very proud of the dvd and cd. it's all in one package. i have it right here. i'm hawking my goods. i call it my double ds. it's like double disks here. on one side you've got the dvd and the cd -- it makes a nice little stocking stuffer, too. >> you don't get tired of those boob jokes, do you? you love those boob jokes, don't you? >> i might as well learn to love them. if i ain't telling them, somebody's telling them about me. it's not like i'm trying to hide them or anything.

>> no, you shouldn't hide them. a lot of people pay a lot of money for those boobs. >> i did! >> that was a good one. okay. now, one more question about the record. you now have your own label. the dolly records, right? >> yes. >> why did you do that? why do you need your own label? >> well, because -- well, the music business in general has totally changed since the early days with us and a lot of the major labels are not doing that well, so a lot of the artists are really starting their own labels and, of course, everything has changed since then. we thought it would be a smart move to make. i've been putting my own records out for a while now. i always say i will always do that even if i have to sell them out of the trunk of my car. i'll be writing songs and singing them. we've had actually three records on dolly records. we had the cast album from the "9:00 to 5:00 musical" and the "back woods barbie" one of the

songs from the "9:00 to 5:00" but also a cd of mine, the first one. we're doing good with our label. >> we'll be back more with more dolly parton. stay right there.

does she have a morbid streak? >> well, i think -- i think all country people have a morbid streak. i think that's sort of like country music in general because i know i have this one song that i wrote called "me and little andy" and it's about a little

girl with her dog and the little girl dies and the little dog dies, too, and somebody said i'm used to kids and people dying in these country songs but did you have to kill the damn dog? so -- >> there's a theme for a song. >> yeah. >> are you writing anything about a dead cat we can look forward to? >> no, i'm not. i'm not. i am still writing, though. anyway, to get back to -- in all sincerity, i think that's -- a lot of people you just write about things that happen. yeah, we have a morbid side but i have a happy side, too. >> it's funny you say that, because, you know, i'm italian and the italians love opera and it's also very sad and from the guts and morbid in many ways. and the grand ole opry. i just realized it. >> oh, yeah, it is similar. >> here's one more question before i have to go. what's the biggest misconception folks have about you?

>> well, lord, i can't even imagine. i've been so out there. i think people know just about everything there is to know about me. i always just say i want people to not just see the big hair, i want them to know that there's a brain under there. and not just to see the big boobs, that there's also a heart under there. maybe it's just to see me and just think that's all there is. hopefully there's a little more than that. >> i think everybody knows that you're as smart as you are beautiful and talented, dolly. to tell you the truth. everybody knows that at this point. don't worry about it. >> thank you. again, i wanted to tell you, i watch your show because i'm usually up that time of night and getting ready to do my things. you're doing a great job and i love your hair. >> thank you, darling. it was great to see you. it was great to see you. come back again whenever you can, okay? >> okay. >> all right. the cd and dvd, "dolly live from london" is available now. dolly parton, thank you for joining us. and we'll be right back.