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.

Born in 1946 in rural Sevier County, Tennessee, Parton grew up in a large, poor family in the Smoky Mountains. She began singing in church as a child and started writing songs at a young age.

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.

Parton was born dirt poor in1946 to a loving family in the mountains of Tennessee. Her father couldn’t read or write and often worked two jobs to make ends meet but inspired her strong work ethos. It was her mother who instilled in young Dolly her love of music.

The song, written and recorded by Parton in 1973, wasn’t about the end of a romantic love but rather the end of a long-standing professional relationship with country star Porter Waggoner. He gave Parton her break in show businesses, signing her to a long-term deal on his nationally syndicated musical variety show. The two enjoyed great success together, creating a succession of country hits.

How Dolly Parton Stood on Business With ‘I Will Always Love You’ When Elvis Presley wanted to record the song, Parton made the hard-nosed decision to protect her ownership of her work.

Moreover, she famously turned down Elvis Presley’s overtures to record the heart-rending song she wrote about the duo’s split, I Will Always Love You, when Presley’s manager indicated he wanted a cut of the songwriting royalties in return.

And that’s where Elvis Presley comes into the story. Parton’s song had come to the rock legend’s attention through his manager, Colonel Tom Parker. “[Elvis] loved the song and wanted to do it,” Parton told BBC Radio. “They’d already called me to come down to the studio to hear part of the song.”

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.

In 1986, Parton took partial ownership of a pre-existing amusement park in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee and renamed it Dollywood. In addition to thrill rides and savory foods, the park includes a replica of the small cabin where Parton once lived in nearby Locust Ridge.

In lieu of flowers, the family asked that donations be made to Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, the literacy program she founded in 1995.

When Was Dollywood Established? Dollywood, Parton's theme park in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, opened under its current name in 1986 after Parton partnered with the existing Silver Dollar City attraction.

In 2025, Parton spoke to People about how she was able to not only maintain a country music career, but crossover to Hollywood successfully and find the time for her charitable efforts.

"I don’t try to tell other people how to do it, how to be, but I know who I am. I’m a star to everybody but me. I’m just a working girl. I always just say that I’m a workhorse that looks like a show horse," she said at the time.

Those interviews captured a Parton who could be funny and self-deprecating but also clear-eyed about who she was and what she wanted.

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.

Parton’s performance in the film 9 to 5 is good too—she hog-ties Dabney Coleman!—and while movie-making remained a side gig, she followed it up with the musical The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas opposite Burt Reynolds, and Rhinestone opposite Sly Stallone. During this peak stretch Parton also recorded “Islands in the Stream,” a Gibbs Brothers-penned tune, with Kenny Rogers.

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.

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.