Dorothy

Parton, whose accolades included 11 Grammy awards, an Emmy, the Oscars’ Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, and recognition from sources as diverse as Ms. Magazine and the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, was born in 1946 in the small community of Pittman Center, Tennessee, near the Great Smoky Mountains. The family soon moved to a one-bedroom cabin in the nearby town of Locust Ridge, a dwelling that figures proudly in Parton’s rags-to-riches lore. She was one of 12 children; Parton’s father worked as a sharecropper and tobacco planter, and her mother entertained the large family with Appalachian stories and music.

Beyond music, Ms. Parton built a business empire anchored by Dollywood, the Tennessee theme park near her childhood home in Sevierville, and her Imagination Library, a children’s literacy charity that has distributed millions of free books worldwide. The family, in its statement, asked that donations be made to the Imagination Library in lieu of flowers.

So gifted that she wrote two of the 20th century’s greatest songs – Jolene and I Will Always Love You – in a single day, 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.

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.

In 1980 Parton co-starred in the feminist comedy 9 to 5 with Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda, and also recorded its theme song. A monumental success, the song remains so ingrained in American culture that many people still quote from it without even realizing it. The song won two Grammys in the country categories, but lost song of the year to “Bette Davis Eyes”—which is a good song, but come on.

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 from Trio II in 1999, featuring a Grammy-winning cover of Neil Young’s After the Gold Rush.