Dorothy

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 the fourth of 12 children. Raised in rural East Tennessee, the siblings grew up in a household where music was a constant presence. Parton often said she came from a deeply musical family, crediting her mother and extended relatives with helping foster her love of singing from an early age. Several of her brothers and sisters would later pursue careers in music themselves, while others chose lives far from the entertainment industry.

She turned that connection into a business, and I mean that as the highest compliment. The makeup, the food lines, the books, the Imagination Library that has put millions of books into kids' hands. And Dollywood, which became a destination not just for celebrating Parton but for celebrating what it feels like to be a fan of hers. Go ride something. Go eat something fried. Go stand in a place built entirely on the premise that you belong there.

Alongside her music and acting, Parton was an astute businesswoman and philanthropist. She founded the film and TV production company Sandollar, with former manager Sandy Gallin, which went on to produce hits such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the Father of the Bride film series. In 1986, she took a stake in the Silver Dollar City theme park in Tennessee and renamed it Dollywood, doubling its size over the next two decades, and a Dollywood-branded spa, cabin complex, theatre-restaurant concept and waterpark have since been opened.

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.