Dolly Parton, one of the greatest
singer-songwriters in country music who was also much cherished for her
philanthropy, has died aged 80. Her death was announced
by nephew Brian Seaver on Instagram. "I have imagined the heaviness of
this moment but haven't truly felt it until now," he said. "It is an
honour, an honour that is mixed with absolute pride and great sadness."
Parton's songwriting was characterised by its vivid
storytelling, emotional acuity and melodic strength, all sung with
strident clarity. From an eventual catalogue of hundreds of songs, she
scored a record 25 US country No 1 singles and 47 albums in the country
Top 10 . She crossed over into the pop charts with 9 to 5, a US No 1 in
1980; balanced her music career with acclaimed acting, twice earning
Golden Globe nominations for her roles; and her Imagination Library
literacy scheme donated more than 150m books to children.
This
was all done with considerable panache, rhinestoned glamour and
towering hairdos, with her immortal assertion regarding her appearance – "it takes a lot of money to look this cheap" – the most quoted example
of Parton's ready wit. Parton was born in poverty in a one-room cabin in Tennessee,
the fourth child to a mother who would have 12 children by the age of
35, and a father who was a farmer and construction worker. One of her
best-loved songs, Coat of Many Colours, was about her mother creating
patchwork clothes; Parton's first guitar was cobbled together from a
mandolin with bass guitar strings. Her first proper guitar was given to
her aged eight by her uncle, and she went from singing in church, to
appearing on local television aged 10, to cutting her first record aged
13. That year she appeared at the Grand Ole Opry, the concert hall in
Nashville at the centre of country music, and her performance was
introduced by Johnny Cash.
After graduating high school in 1964 she moved to
Nashville and started out as a songwriter rather than performer. The
following year she was signed as an artist and initially moulded as a
pop singer, without success; after she was allowed to switch to country,
she scored back-to-back hits and released her debut album Hello, I’m
Dolly. In 1966 she married Carl Dean – who died in 2025, with the couple
renewing their vows in 2016 to mark 50 years together.
Beginning
in 1967, a duet partnership with country singer and TV personality
Porter Wagoner helped her star continue to ascend, and she had her first
country No 1 in 1971 with the song Joshua. Then appeard "Jolene," her unforgettably raw and desperate plea to a rival lover, was released
in 1973 and became one of her first success, written at the same time, "I Will Always
Love You," written to Wagoner as a farewell after their creative
partnership, was a country No 1 in 1974 and again via a re-recorded
version in 1982, and would go on to be a huge pop success when revived
by Whitney Houston for the soundtrack of The Bodyguard in 1992: it is
still the bestselling single of all time by a woman, with an estimated
20m sales.
In the mid 1970s Parton broadened her sound,
embracing pop-rock arrangements on songs such as 1977’s Light of a Clear
Blue Morning – its accompanying album New Harvest … First Gathering was
her first entry in the pop album chart. Later that year its follow-up
Here You Come Again reached the Top 20 and was her first million-selling
LP, powered in part by its hit title track, which also won Parton the
first of her 10 Grammy awards.
1980 was a peak
in her success, with three back-to-back country No 1s, including 9 to
5, taken from the film of the same name which Parton starred in
alongside Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin, earning her an Oscar nomination
for best original song. Parton would later write songs for a stage
musical version of 9 to 5, in 2008.
Another
classic single came in 1983: Islands in the Stream, a duet with Kenny
Rogers, which topped the US pop charts, and a Christmas album with
Rogers in 1984 went two times platinum. There were more notable film
roles in the 1980s, too, opposite Burt Reynolds in the The Best Little
Whorehouse in Texas, Sylvester Stallone in Rhinestone, and an all-star
female ensemble in Steel Magnolias.
A landmark Parton album came in 1987 with "Trio," an exquisitely harmonised, springwater-clear collaboration with Emmylou
Harris and Linda Ronstadt, earning Parton her only nomination for album
of the year at the Grammys. Another all-star trio recording came in
1993, with Tammy Wynette and Loretta Lynn on the album Honky-Tonk
Angels, followed by a reunion with Harris and Ronstadt for Trio II in
1999, featuring a Grammy-winning cover of Neil Young’s After the Gold
Rush.
The turn of the century brought a
trilogy of acclaimed bluegrass albums, and Parton would release 10 more
LPs, the most recent being Rockstar in 2023. She was courted by a
younger generation of stars, appearing with country artists such as Brad
Paisley as well as pop singers such as Kesha, and her goddaughter Miley
Cyrus. There were fewer acting roles, but she lent her voice to
animated film Gnomeo and Juliet in 2011 and the following year appeared
alongside Queen Latifah and more in the musical film Joyful Noise.
Alongside
her music and acting, Parton was an astute businesswoman and
philanthropist. She founded the film and TV production company
Sandollar, with former manager Sandy Gallin, which went on to produce
hits such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the Father of the Bride film
series. In 1986, she took a stake in the Silver Dollar City theme park
in Tennessee and renamed it Dollywood, doubling its size over the next
two decades, and a Dollywood-branded spa, cabin complex,
theatre-restaurant concept and waterpark have since been opened.
The Dollywood Foundation, funded through these
business ventures and creative projects, was created in 1988, initially
awarding college scholarships and running a scheme to help children
complete high school in her native Sevier County, Tennessee. In 1995
Parton began her Imagination Library project, which sent an
age-appropriate book to every child in the county every month until they
were five. “My father could not read and write, and I saw how crippling
that could be,” she explained. It expanded nationwide in 2000,
internationally in 2006, and nearly 25m books are now distributed each
year across the US, Canada, Australia, the UK and Ireland.
Parton has also set up a reserve in 2003 to help
preserve the bald eagle; contributed $500,000 to the opening of a Sevier
county hospital in 2006; coordinated relief efforts for those affected
by the Smoky mountain wildfires of 2016; and contributed to an HIV/Aids
charity album. She supported Black Lives Matter and transgender rights,
opposing a North Carolina “bathroom bill” that restricted transgender
people’s access to toilets (Parton was also nominated for an Oscar for
her song in trans drama Transamerica, entitled Travelin’ Thru).
She
made a number of donations to Vanderbilt University Medical Center in
Nashville, Tennessee, where her niece was treated for leukaemia. The
most high profile of these was in 2020, when she donated $1m for
research into Covid-19, which formed the basis for the eventual Moderna
vaccine.
