Dolly Parton

Dolly Parton (born January 19, 1946, Locust Ridge, Tennessee, U.S.) is an American country music singer-songwriter, guitarist, and actress who pioneered the interface between country and pop music styles and became one of the most iconic entertainment figures of the late 20th century. Equal parts sensitive songwriter and savvy businesswoman, Parton crafted timeless tunes such as the touching and autobiographical “Coat of Many Colors” (1971) and the crossover hit “9 to 5” (1980), a critique of workplace inequality set to a bouncy melody. She went on to build a successful theme park called Dollywood and develop a wide range of philanthropic projects. Fans and critics alike have often described her as a “national treasure.”

Appalachian upbringing

Parton was born in Appalachia, in the Great Smoky Mountains of eastern Tennessee, into a poor farming family. She was the fourth of 12 children born to Robert Lee Parton, a sharecropper and construction worker, and Avie Lee Parton, a homemaker. She displayed an aptitude and passion for music at an early age, having learned church songs and traditional folk ballads from her mother. Parton told People magazine in 2020, “All my mother’s people were very musical, so I was always around people playing instruments and singing, and my mom singing the old songs.” As a child Parton was a featured singer and guitarist on local radio and television shows in Knoxville, Tennessee. In 1964, immediately following her high-school graduation, she set out for Nashville to pursue a career in music.

Beginnings in Nashville with Porter Wagoner and first hits

In Nashville Parton became the protégée of country music singer and Grand Ole Opry star Porter Wagoner. Through repeated appearances on Wagoner’s syndicated television show, Parton gained coast-to-coast recognition. She soon attracted the attention of the music industry moguls at RCA Records and subsequently recorded more than a dozen hit songs—together with Wagoner—on the RCA label. Owing much to her association with Wagoner, Parton rapidly emerged as one of country music’s most popular singers.

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During this time she also released solo albums and several singles that proved her undeniable songwriting talent. Many of Parton’s early songs tell poignant stories that present love and life from a woman’s perspective, such as “Just Because I’m a Woman” (1968). In 1970 she scored her first number-one hit on the Billboard country chart with the bouncy “Joshua.” The next year saw the release of “Coat of Many Colors,” featuring intimate lyrics that blend the biblical story of the many-colored coat given to Joseph with Parton’s recollections of childhood poverty and her mother’s love. In 1973 she had another country chart-topper with “Jolene,” in which Parton pleads with the titular heartbreaker, “I’m begging of you please don’t take my man.”

Parton began to cultivate a “blonde bombshell” image early in her career, and she soon became famous for her towering bouffant hairstyle, buxom physique, and glitzy dresses. She often played up the camp appeal of her image, commenting, “It costs a lot of money to look this cheap!” Another of her famous witticisms dismantles a stereotype concerning blonde women and her public persona (one that Parton first addressed in her 1966 hit “Dumb Blonde”): “I’m not offended by dumb blonde jokes because I know I’m not dumb. I also know I’m not blonde.” At the same time, Parton wrote and recorded songs that expressed pride in her Appalachian roots, such as the heartfelt “My Tennessee Mountain Home” (1972).

Solo career and pop crossover

Parton had intended to stay with Wagoner’s show only five years, but she had difficulty convincing him to let her go out on her own, even after another two years with the program. In 1974 Parton parted ways with Wagoner; she captured the poignancy of their split in her song “I Will Always Love You.” Many years later Parton told The Tennessean:

I said, “Porter, sit down. I’ve written something I think you need to hear.” I started singing “I Will Always Love You,” and he started crying. When I finished, he said, “Well, hell! If you feel that strong about it, just go on—providing I get to produce that record because that’s the best song you ever wrote.”

“I Will Always Love You” went to number one on the country chart that year. It would become one of Parton’s most popular and enduring songs.

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Fully solo, she enjoyed immediate success: in both 1975 and ’76 she was chosen female singer of the year by the Country Music Association (CMA) on the strength of such songs as “Jolene” and “Love Is Like a Butterfly” (1974).

About the same time, Parton began to cross over to the pop music market, without losing her country music credibility. In 1978 she won a Grammy Award for her song “Here You Come Again” and was named entertainer of the year by the CMA. As her career developed, Parton received more Grammys, both for her songs, including “9 to 5” (1980; her first song to top the Billboard pop chart) and “Shine” (2001), and for her albums, including Trio (1987; with Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris) and The Grass Is Blue (1999). She garnered two Academy Award nominations for best original song, for “9 to 5” in 1981 (from the movie of the same name) and “Travelin’ Thru” in 2006 (from Transamerica).

Later music career and honors

Parton was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1999 and the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2001. She received a lifetime achievement award from the Recording Academy in 2011. That same year the U.S. Library of Congress added her song “Coat of Many Colors” to the National Recording Registry, a list of audio recordings deemed “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.” Several of her recordings have been inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.

She continued to release hit albums, including Blue Smoke (2014) and Pure & Simple (2016). She later released an album for children, I Believe in You (2017), and she has also recorded several gospel and Christmas albums. In 2022 Parton was selected for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Although she had earlier asked to be removed from consideration—she did not believe she had “earned the right,” because she was not a rock performer—she accepted the honor.

Acting and producing career

In the 1980s Parton appeared in several successful films, most notably the comedy Nine to Five (1980; also called 9 to 5), in which she starred with Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin as three women who plot revenge on their male chauvinist boss (Dabney Coleman). For her role in the Burt Reynolds-vehicle, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (1982), she revived her 1974 hit “I Will Always Love You.” (Whitney Houston later recorded the song for the film The Bodyguard [1992], and it went on to sell millions of copies.) In 1989 Parton played a principal role in the comedy-drama Steel Magnolias, a weeper about a close-knit group of Southern women who rally around a friend (Sally Field) whose daughter (Julia Roberts) dies after complications from diabetes. Parton had a short-lived television variety show called Dolly from 1976–77 and again in 1987–88, and in the 1990s and 2000s she guest-starred in many TV series and appeared in several feature films and TV movies.

In 2009 Parton wrote the music and lyrics for a Broadway musical adaptation of the film 9 to 5; the score was nominated for a Tony Award. Three years later she starred with Queen Latifah in the film Joyful Noise. She served as producer on many TV projects, including a TV movie about her early life, Dolly Parton’s Coat of Many Colors (2015), followed the next year by a Christmas-themed sequel, in which Parton appeared. She provided the music and was the guiding spirit behind the movie Dumplin’ (2018). Her music also inspired Dolly Parton’s Heartstrings, an anthology series that debuted on Netflix in 2019; she was featured in the program and served as executive producer. She later produced and portrayed an angel in Dolly Parton’s Christmas on the Square (2020), which won an Emmy Award for outstanding television movie.

Dollywood, the Imagination Library, and other projects

Aside from her stage and screen activities, Parton has been involved in a broad array of entrepreneurial and charity projects. In 1986 she opened Dollywood—a theme park centered on Appalachian traditions—in the Great Smoky Mountains of eastern Tennessee. Two years later she created the Dollywood Foundation, an organization with the aim of providing inspiration and educational resources to children. The foundation’s Imagination Library was created in 1995; inspired by her father’s inability to read and write, Parton launched the project as an effort to promote children’s literacy in her home county in Tennessee. By the 21st century the Imagination Library had expanded throughout the United States and to other countries and had donated hundreds of millions of children’s books.

Parton’s other philanthropic efforts include helping to fund the development of the Moderna vaccine for COVID-19 in 2020. She donated $1 million to Vanderbilt University Medical Center, explaining to fans in April 2020 that she was a friend of Naji Abumrad, a doctor and researcher at Vanderbilt. After Moderna’s vaccine was approved, Abumrad told The Washington Post, “Without a doubt in my mind, [Parton’s] funding made the research toward the vaccine go 10 times faster than it would be without it.” Receiving her vaccine shot the following year, Parton encouraged others to get inoculated and shared a video on social media of her singing “Jolene” with the title lyrics changed to “Vaccine.”

Books and other honors

In 1994 Parton published the autobiography Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business, which was a best seller in the United States. The memoir Dolly Parton, Songteller: My Life in Lyrics (written with Robert K. Oermann) was published in 2020. She later wrote, with best-selling author James Patterson, Run, Rose, Run, a thriller about a young country music singer with a mysterious past. It was published in 2022, just days after the release of a companion album.

Parton’s contributions to the arts and culture of the United States have earned her numerous awards from organizations beyond the music and film industries. She was named a Living Legend by the Library of Congress in 2004 for her enrichment of the American cultural heritage. In 2005 she received the U.S. government’s National Medal of Arts, and in 2006 she was recognized at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., for her lifetime artistic achievement.

Personal life

In 1964 Parton met Carl Dean outside a laundromat in Nashville. He owned an asphalt-paving business. The couple married two years later. Although he maintained a low profile, Dean was influential in Parton’s career, and he inspired the song “Jolene.” Parton once said, “God has been good to me. He gave me Carl Dean. And that was the perfect man that I needed.” Parton and Dean were together until his death in 2025, when he was 82.