Dolly Parton obituary: The country music star who became a worldwide icon - and loved a South Yorkshire town
Dolly Parton, who has died at 80, was a star whose influence extended way beyond the world of country music in which she made her name.
A 10-time Grammy winner, she became one of the biggest-selling US musicians of all time, known for songs such as Jolene and 9 To 5.
After breaking into the music industry in the 1960s, she had hits throughout every subsequent decade, going on to achieve cult-like hero status in more recent years.
Parton was also a successful actress, starring in films including 9 To 5, Steel Magnolias and The Best Little Whorehouse In Texas.
Her 9 To 5 theme song and the track Transamerica’s Travelin’ Thru were both nominated for Academy Awards, while Jolene and I Will Always Love You were inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.
She wrote I Will Always Love You, one of the defining love songs of the 20th century, as a goodbye to her former creative partner Porter Wagoner, who hired her to be his sidekick on his long-running American TV show and helped her land a record deal.
The song became a worldwide hit when Whitney Houston recorded a cover for the 1992 film The Bodyguard.
Dolly was one of an elite group of individuals to have received at least one nomination from all four major American entertainment award organisations: Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony, and while she won the first three, she did not manage to secure a Tony so missed out on becoming an EGOT.
As well as being a huge presence in the entertainment industry, she was a savvy businesswoman, with an empire including a theme park to her name.
But another large part of her life was dedicated to charitable work and in 1988 set up the Dollywood Foundation to support high school students in her home state of Tennessee.
In 1995 she set up a literacy programme, Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, which gives books to younger children.
The programme was extended to Britain in 2007 with an event at the Magna Science Adventure Centre in Rotherham (which Dolly pronounced Rother-ham in her trademark southern drawl) and the Imagination Library became popular in the area, with thousands of local children signing up to receive books over the years.
In May 2025, Dolly Parton made it onto Time magazine’s list of the 100 most influential philanthropists, and she has also been the recipient of the Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy and the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award.
Dolly Rebecca Parton was born in a single-room cabin in Locust Ridge, Tennessee, in January 1946, the fourth of 12 children.
Her father, known as Lee, worked in the mountains of East Tennessee, first as a sharecropper and later on his own small tobacco farm.
Dolly’s mother cared for their large family. Her eleven pregnancies (the tenth being twins) in twenty years made her a mother of 12 by age thirty-five.
Dolly long credited her father for her business savvy and her mother’s family for her musical abilities.
She began her musical journey at the age of six, singing in the local church where her grandfather was the pastor.
By that time her family had moved from the Pittman Center area to a two-room cabin and farm at nearby Locust Ridge.
By 13, she had reached the pinnacle of country music success – an appearance at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville.
She credited her uncle Bill Owens, a successful country music songwriter, for helping her get started in the business.
Her debut album Hello, I’m Dolly was released in 1967 and was followed by a run of hits.
She continued to release music across the decades, and in 2014 attracted the biggest crowd of the festival when she played on Glastonbury’s Pyramid Stage.
Performing on the Sunday teatime legends slot, many fans dressed up as the diminutive singer, who was known for her rhinestone-encrusted outfits and big blonde mane of hair.
Her most recent solo studio album Rockstar was released in 2023, and included heavyweight British collaborators Sir Paul McCartney, Sir Ringo Starr, Sir Elton John and Sting.
Parton collaborated with Sabrina Carpenter on a duet of the American singer’s hit song Please Please Please in 2025, having requested a lyric be changed to avoid swearing.
They starred in a black and white Thelma & Louise-inspired music video together.
She had not toured since her Pure & Simple Tour ended in 2016. Carl Dean, her husband of nearly 60 years, died in March last year, aged 82.
The pair met outside the Wishy Washy Laundromat the day she moved to Nashville when she was 18 and he was 23.
They married on Memorial Day – May 30 1966 – in a small ceremony in Ringgold, Georgia.
Dean avoided the spotlight and inspired her timeless hit Jolene, about a flirty bank teller who seemed to take an interest in him.
She dedicated a new song – If You Hadn’t Been There – to her husband in May last year, and remained busy, but was affected by ill health, and in September 2025 announced the postponement of what would have been her first Vegas residency in more than 30 years.
She and Carl never had children but helped raise several of Dolly’s younger siblings in Nashville.