While appearing on CBS's "The Early Show" recently, the 60-year-old singer said she likely inherited the musical abilities that have garnered her fame and fortune.

"My mother's people are very musical," said Parton, who was recognized by the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts on Dec. 5. "So I came by the gift of music naturally."

The singer also said her family was the influence behind her ongoing involvement with such charitable programs as the Imagination Library.

"One of the reasons I started that program, was because a lot of my own relatives -- my own father, who's dead now, and I miss him every day, but he, he couldn't read and write," she said of the program, that gives children books.

"He got to see the Imagination Library come, you know, to -- to be, and all the good things happening," she added. "And he was more proud of that than anything else I had done."