Dolly Parton, country music icon, dies at 80 after battle with cancer
Dolly Parton, the country music legend known for hits like «Jolene» and «I Will Always Love You,» has died in Nashville at 80 after a brief battle with cancer. Her career spanned more than six decades, from a Tennessee log cabin to global stardom.
Dolly Parton, the country music icon whose soaring vocals, poignant songwriting and sparkling costumes defined her rise from a Tennessee log cabin to global stardom, has died in Nashville. She was 80 years old. Her publicist, Marcel Pariseau, said in a statement Tuesday that Parton died at the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center surrounded by loved ones after bravely facing a brief battle with cancer.
Parton was among the most beloved figures in American music, a rare celebrity whose appeal crossed generations, geography and politics. Known for her massive blond wigs, tight-fitting outfits and self-deprecating wit, she wrote hundreds of songs, including classics like «Jolene,» «Coat of Many Colors» and «I Will Always Love You,» which together sold more than 100 million copies worldwide and generated more than 1 billion online streams.
Her career was shaped by her upbringing as one of 12 children in what she called a «dirt poor» family in rural Tennessee. She performed in church, where her grandfather preached, and by age 10 was learning guitar and singing on local television. At 13, she appeared on the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, where Johnny Cash introduced her as «a little girl here from up in East Tennessee.» After graduating high school in 1964, she followed her uncle, songwriter Bill Owens, to Nashville with a suitcase of songs.
Producer Fred Foster, who worked with Roy Orbison and Willie Nelson, recognized her potential and helped get her songs recorded by other artists while also releasing her own material. By the mid-1970s, Parton was a Nashville queen. Her partnership with Porter Wagoner, a rhinestone-clad star with a syndicated TV show, proved pivotal. He advocated for her RCA record deal, and their first duet, «The Last Thing On My Mind,» was released in 1967, the same year she started her own publishing company.
With Wagoner as co-producer, Parton adjusted her country warble to a more polished, pop-leaning style. She earned her first No. 1 solo single with «Joshua» and reached the Top 5 with «Coat of Many Colors,» a ballad about her mother sewing together scraps of cloth to make a coat Parton wore proudly even as peers mocked her poverty. The song, rich with Biblical references and maternal love, later became a children’s book and a TV movie.
In 1973, she released «Jolene,» the song that made her career. Its steady, churning rhythm and Parton’s pleading delivery of the title as she begs another woman not to steal her man topped the country charts and crossed over to pop audiences internationally. «Jolene» became one of the most covered songs in modern music, recorded by artists including Miley Cyrus, Parton’s goddaughter, Olivia Newton-John and The White Stripes.
She followed with «I Will Always Love You» in 1974, an ode and farewell to Wagoner that helped her win the Country Music Association’s female vocalist of the year award back-to-back in 1975 and 1976. She famously turned down Elvis Presley, who wanted to record it, because she would not share publishing rights. Decades later, Whitney Houston’s version for the 1992 film «The Bodyguard» became a smash and broke sales records, earning Houston a Grammy in 1994 that Parton presented to her.
Parton’s crossover success continued with «Here You Come Again,» one of the few songs she didn’t write, which brought her first Grammy in 1979. She also scored hits with the title song from «9 to 5,» the 1980 comedy starring Parton, Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin, and her duet with longtime friend Kenny Rogers, «Islands in the Stream,» written by the Bee Gees. In 1987, she collaborated with Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris on the million-selling «Trio» album.
Beyond music, Parton was a generous philanthropist and successful businesswoman. She founded the Imagination Library, a nonprofit that sends free books to children, inspired by her father, who quit school to work on the farm and struggled to read. She also built a theme park in the Smoky Mountain foothills near her birthplace. For millions of fans, she was simply «Dolly,» a blend of Southern charm, humor and glamour, and a feminist role model who held the reins of her own career in a male-dominated industry.
