Dolly Parton, the beloved nation music celebrity often called a lot for her philanthropy and theme park enterprise as she was for her chart-topping hit songs, has died at 80.
Parton’s demise on Tuesday was introduced by her publicist. No reason behind demise was supplied.
“As a lot of you already know, I’ve been coping with some well being challenges, and my docs inform me that I will need to have just a few procedures,” Parton wrote on Instagram in September 2025, although she by no means specified the character of her well being points. Practically six months later, on the seasonal opening of her Dollywood theme park, she said that she was nonetheless coping with “just a few little well being points” from which she was taking time to get better.
Parton additionally shared that she was nonetheless navigating her grief over the March 2025 demise of her husband of almost 60 years, Carl Dean, saying that she had been taking time since to rebuild herself “spiritually, emotionally and bodily.”
Dolly Parton Performs at Agua Caliente On line casino, Jan. 24, 2014, in Rancho Mirage, Calif.
Valerie Macon/Getty Photos
President Donald Trump referred to as Parton “one of many best Nation singers, and much past, EVER” in a social media publish reacting to her passing. “There has by no means been anybody like her, and by no means will. In her honor, I’m reducing the American flag all through the US for a one week interval starting tonight at 6:00PM.”
In a music profession that started when she was nonetheless a toddler, born into poverty within the tiny mountain group of Pittman Middle, Tennessee, Parton went on to turn out to be one of many world’s most profitable and admired entertainers, considered a rustic music dwelling legend. Her trademark model – huge blonde hair, flamboyant garments and make-up – was cultivated early in her profession, whereas she was nonetheless in her teenagers.
“I take my negatives and attempt to make them into positives, and I all the time really feel higher being extra flamboyant,” Parton wrote in her 2023 ebook “Behind the Seams: My Life in Rhinestones.” “Possibly I seemed low-cost, however I knew I wasn’t low-cost.”
Parton’s model helped her get observed however her musical items made her unforgettable. She wrote and recorded a lot of nation and pop’s most enduring songs, together with the hits “Jolene,” “Coat of Many Colours” – added to the Library of Congress Nationwide Recording Registry in 2011 – “Right here You Come Once more,” “Love Is Like a Butterfly,” “9 to five” and extra.
Parton’s largest hit, nevertheless, was inarguably “I Will All the time Love You,” which topped the charts thrice, most notably when Whitney Houston’s 1992 cowl grew to become a world smash. Houston’s efficiency stays the best-selling music by a feminine artist of all time.
In 2014, the Report Trade Affiliation of America acknowledged Parton for gross sales of over 100 million models worldwide, together with 19 RIAA-certified gold, platinum and multi-platinum albums out of the greater than 100 studio, reside and compilation albums she launched throughout her six-decade-plus recording profession.
Parton was additionally an actress, making her big-screen debut within the 1980 hit comedy “9 to five,” reverse Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin, and wrote and carried out the movie’s chart-topping, Grammy-winning theme music. Not together with cameos as herself, she appeared in some 9 movies in all, amongst them the enduring 1989 comedy-drama “Metal Magnolias.”
A savvy businesswoman, Forbes journal in June 2025 estimated Parton’s net financial worth at $450 million, putting her No. 78 on their checklist of America’s wealthiest self-made ladies. Along with her in depth publishing catalog – Parton was cautious to retain possession of the songs she wrote, the recordings of which quantity over 1,000 – the majority of her wealth got here from her Dollywood theme park and different leisure and hospitality holdings underneath her Dollywood Firm.
Dolly Parton was additionally beneficiant together with her cash. By means of her nonprofit Dollywood Basis, “Saint Dolly,” as her followers dubbed her, supported schooling by offering scholarships and monetary help to folks in want. Her Creativeness Library, begun in 1995, has supplied almost 308 million books without cost to youngsters within the U.S., the U.Ok., Eire, Canada and Australia, in keeping with its official website.
Dolly Parton on the 2022 Rock & Roll Corridor of Fame Induction Ceremony held on the Microsoft Theatre, Nov. 5, 2022 in Los Angeles.
Christopher Polk/Getty Photos
When wildfires in 2016 ravaged the Nice Smoky Mountains in Jap Tennessee, the place she grew up, Parton created a fund that gave $1,000 a month for six months to some 900 households affected by the fires to assist them get again on their ft, and likewise organized a telethon to boost cash for the fires’ victims. 4 years later, Parton donated $1 million to Tennessee’s Vanderbilt College Medical Middle to assist fund the seek for a COVID-19 vaccine, and later urged Individuals to get vaccinated towards the virus in a video that confirmed her receiving the shot as she sang her hit “Jolene,” with the chorus up to date to “vaccine.”
Parton was certainly one of solely 17 folks to be inducted into each the Nation Music Corridor of Fame and the Rock and Roll Corridor of Fame, a rarified checklist that additionally contains fellow greats Elvis Presley, Johnny Money, Willie Nelson and Ray Charles; with Brenda Lee, Parton was certainly one of solely two feminine artists so honored. She was certainly one of fewer nonetheless artists inducted into the Nation, Rock and Roll and Songwriters Halls of Fame.
In 2004, the Library of Congress honored Parton with its Dwelling Legend Award in recognition to her contributions to American tradition. The next yr, she obtained the Nationwide Medal of Arts, the U.S. authorities’s highest honor for an artist, in addition to the Kennedy Middle Honors in 2006.
Parton obtained a Lifetime Achievement Grammy in 2011, along with her 10 Grammy wins out of greater than 50 nominations. Moreover, her songs “Jolene” and “I Will All the time Love You” have been inducted into the Grammy Corridor of Fame. In 2024, Billboard magazine placed Parton in the No. 1 spot on their checklist of the “100 Best Nation Artists of All Time.”
Born in January 1946, the fourth of 12 youngsters born to Avie Lee Owens Parton and Robert Lee Parton, a sharecropper, Dolly Parton attributed her musical skills to her mom’s affect and her enterprise acumen to her father who, regardless of being illiterate, Parton usually stated had the most effective enterprise sense of anybody she’d ever recognized.
Her youth and hardscrabble however loving upbringing impressed her songwriting all through her profession, however Parton’s early hits notably mirrored these years, together with 1972’s “My Tennessee Mountain Residence” and “Coat of Many Colours,” launched the yr earlier than. The latter music, written when she was 23 and which tells the true story of her mom stitching Parton a winter coat made from scraps of material out of necessity, grew to become certainly one of her most adorable and enduring hits. It was added to the Library of Congress National Recording Registry in 2011 and is taken into account certainly one of her signature compositions.
Nation singer Dolly Parton and her collaborator Porter Wagoner carry out onstage circa 1967.
Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Photos
By age 10, Parton was already a neighborhood star, acting on radio stations in Knoxville, Tenn. She made her debut on the storied Grand Ole Opry simply three years later, launched by Johnny Money, and moved to Nashville when she was 18, the day after she graduated from highschool. She discovered preliminary success as a songwriter, touchdown a publishing deal and penning hits for nation stars of the day together with Kitty Wells and Skeeter Davis. Her first album launch – 1967’s “Howdy, I am Dolly” – featured two nation top-40 hits, together with her first charting single, the tongue-in-cheek “Dumb Blonde.”
The success of “Howdy, I am Dolly” was boosted by her becoming a member of the forged of TV’s “The Porter Wagoner Present” simply two weeks earlier than the album’s launch. Parton, then 21, and Wagoner, 20 years her senior, remained TV co-stars and recording companions for the following seven years. They launched 12 duet albums, all however two of which have been nation top-10 hits and 4 of which have been Grammy nominated, and scored 12 top-10 singles, together with the 1974 No.1 hit “Please Do not Cease Loving Me.”
Wagoner’s mentorship was instrumental in getting Parton signed to nation big label RCA. She launched 13 solo albums throughout their partnership, together with her 1967 debut disc, all to rising chart success. Her first solo nation No.1 single got here with the Grammy-nominated title monitor from 1971’s “Joshua, “which was adopted up that very same yr with the top-five hit “Coat of Many Colours,” from the album of the identical identify.
However Parton’s star skyrocketed with the discharge of 1974’s “Jolene.” The album was a top-10 nation smash, whereas the Grammy-nominated title monitor – impressed, Parton usually recounted, by witnessing a red-headed financial institution teller flirting together with her husband – topped the nation singles chart and went on to be RIAA-certified triple-platinum for gross sales of greater than three million models. Within the many years since, “Jolene” has been recorded by dozens of artists in a number of genres, together with a top-10 2024 cowl by R&B celebrity Beyoncé, and is broadly thought-about one of many best nation songs ever written.
The album “Jolene” additionally included the primary recording of “I Will All the time Love You.” Written as a loving farewell to Wagoner after telling him she was ending their partnership in favor of her solo profession, Parton recorded the music a number of occasions, twice topping the nation singles chart with it. But it surely was Whitney Houston’s 1992 recording for the soundtrack to the hit movie drama “The Bodyguard” that loved the best business success. A worldwide smash, it notched a then-record 14 weeks atop the Billboard Sizzling 100 singles chart and earned Houston two Grammy Awards.
“I Will All the time Love You” additionally spotlighted Parton’s enterprise savvy. Elvis Presley was set to report the music after its preliminary launch however Parton nixed the deal on the final minute after being knowledgeable by Presley’s supervisor, Tom Parker, that she must signal over 50% of the publishing rights to Elvis.
“I used to be so disillusioned as a result of I used to be going to have to inform my mates Elvis did not report it,” Parton later recalled of her determination. “However I simply knew that was not proper. …I could not give anyone half of a music that had already been primary.”
Practically 20 years later, that call paid off. It is estimated that Houston’s recording of “I Will All the time Love You” earned Parton over $20 million in royalties, with an extra $10 million pocketed from different recordings of the music, together with her personal.
“That is superb – you may give her the credit score,” Parton joked when addressing how the music in the end got here to be so carefully recognized with Houston. “I simply need the money!”
Parton’s recognition soared from the mid-Nineteen Seventies onward, together with her music and bubbly, over-the-top glam persona propelling her into mainstream attraction. She continued to write down and report hit albums and songs – almost 50 profession solo albums in genres together with pop, bluegrass and even rock, incomes her first Grammy win with the 1979 single “Right here You Come Once more” and a further 9 Grammys both solo or in collaboration with different artists, together with 1987’s Grammy-winning “Trio” collaboration with Emmylou Harris and Linda Ronstadt. Her largest business music success got here within the Nineteen Seventies and 80s, with standout singles together with “Right here You Come Once more” and the Kenny Rogers duet “Islands within the Stream,” each of which have been No.1 chart hits.
Parton additionally loved success in movie, starting with the 1980 office comedy smash “9 to five,” reverse Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin and Dabney Coleman, enjoying certainly one of three ladies who flip the tables on their overbearing boss. The movie was essentially the most commercially profitable by which she appeared, grossing over $103 million globally. It additionally spawned the Oscar-nominated, platinum-selling music “9 to five,” which grew to become certainly one of Parton’s biggest-ever hits, topping quite a few charts and successful two Grammys.
Not together with cameos as herself, Parton appeared in eight movies in all, essentially the most notable of which after “9 to five” was the 1989 comedy-drama “Metal Magnolias,” by which she was a part of an all-star forged that included Julia Roberts, Sally Area, Shirley MacLaine, Olympia Dukakis and Daryl Hannah.
As Parton constructed her music and leisure model, she was concurrently constructing a enterprise empire separate from her publishing and performing. In 1986, she bought a co-ownership in a small theme park in Pigeon Forge, Tenn., a brief drive from her Pittman Middle birthplace. The theme park’s identify was modified to Dollywood, whereas Parton created The Dollywood Firm to supervise the park and subsequent ventures, which in the end included extra parks, eating places and different sights in Tennessee, Missouri, Florida and South Carolina.
Parton was married however as soon as, to the person she met the day after she moved to Nashville at age 18. She described that meeting whereas talking with “Good Morning America” co-anchor Robin Roberts in 2019.
“There was a laundromat down from my little condo the place I used to be gonna be staying. So, the very day I am going right down to the laundromat, this handsome man simply drives by and he says one thing like, ‘Nicely, you are gonna get sunburned out right here.’ And I stated one thing silly like, ‘Nicely, what’s it to you?’ We begin speaking and, two years later, we married and we’re nonetheless married, and that was that.”
Although Dean shunned the highlight, Parton stated he was unfailingly supportive of her and her profession all through their almost 60 years collectively. When he died March 3, 2025, on the age of 82, Parton’s announcement was temporary however heartfelt: “Carl and I spent many fantastic years collectively. Phrases cannot do justice to the love we shared for over 60 years. Thanks in your prayers and sympathy.”
Parton and Dean had no youngsters collectively. She was godmother to singer Miley Cyrus.
