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Dolly Parton, the legendary American country singer, songwriter, and actress, died on Tuesday at 80, her family said. She wasn’t just a star—she really shaped country music, selling over 100 million records worldwide.
Parton won 11 Grammy Awards too, including a Lifetime Achievement. People everywhere know songs like “Jolene,” “Coat of Many Colors,” and “I Will Always Love You.”
She was born on January 19, 1946, in Tennessee to a poor family—one of twelve kids. Even as a child, she was writing songs. Her first, “Little Tiny Tasseltop,” was about a corncob doll with corn-silk hair.
She wrote, years later, “I loved that little doll. I expressed myself and my feelings through writing—I guess I just thought, well, Tasseltop needs her own song.”
Parton got her first guitar at eight. By eleven, she was already singing on local radio and, at thirteen, she appeared at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville. After school, she headed straight for Nashville, chasing her dream.
She became a regular on Porter Wagoner’s television show, and together, they recorded fourteen top-ten duets. She wrote “I Will Always Love You” as she left Wagoner’s show to go solo.
The song blew up all over again when Whitney Houston sang it for “The Bodyguard.”
Dolly didn’t stop at music. She acted too—appearing in films like “9 to 5,” “Steel Magnolias,” and “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.” She landed Oscar nominations for writing songs for “9 to 5” and “Travelin’ Through.”
Over her whole career, Parton wrote around 3,000 songs, with 25 of them hitting #1 on the Billboard Country chart. She joined the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2001 and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2022.
She built a business empire, too, with Dollywood—her theme park in Tennessee. She cared about giving back, running a children’s literacy program that reached families not just in the U.S. but around the world.
In 2020, she donated $1 million to Vanderbilt University for COVID-19 vaccine research, which helped fund the work behind Moderna’s vaccine.
Dolly married Carl Dean in 1966, and they stuck together until he passed away in 2025. He never liked the spotlight much.
“I love to write poetic songs and sing flowery words,” she wrote in her book, “Songteller.” “I want you to see something, to paint a picture with words. And I love clever lines—for me, it’s about being a poet as much as a songwriter.”
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