Dolly Parton Mourns Her ‘Mr. Everything’

Dolly Parton has lost her “Mr. Everything.”

The country superstar is mourning the loss of her close friend and former manager Don Warden. She took to Twitter to share the heartbreaking news, writing, “A huge piece of my life is gone. Rest in peace Don and know for sure that I will always love you.”

A tribute on her website went into greater detail about the musician and manager extraordinaire.

Parton met Warden when they were both part of the Porter Wagner Show in the 1960s.

“He was like a father, a brother, a partner and one of my best friends,” Parton shared about the man she dubbed, “Mr. Everything.” “I feel like a piece of my heart is missing today. Certainly a huge piece of my life is gone. Rest in peace Don and know for sure that I will always love you.”

Long before his death, Parton gushed about him in her 1994 book, Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business.

“Anybody who knows him – and he knows everybody – looks up to him,” she wrote. “At one time there was even a T-shirt being sold around Nashville that read ‘I KNOW DON WARDEN.’ People are still calling me and asking, ‘How can I get one of those Don Warden T-shirts?’ Sometimes it feels like people are only using me to get to Don.”

This story first appeared at Womanista.