Dolly Parton
Dolly Rebecca Parton is an American singer, songwriter, actress, philanthropist, and businesswoman. After achieving success as a songwriter for other artists, Parton's debut album, Hello, I'm Dolly, was released in 1967, commencing a career spanning 60 years and 50 studio albums. Referred to as the "Queen of Country", Parton is one of the most-honored female country performers in history and has received various accolades, including eleven Grammy Awards and three Emmy Awards, as well as nominations for two Academy Awards, six Golden Globe Awards, and a Tony Award.
Parton has sold more than 100 million records worldwide, making her one of the best-selling music artists ever. Her music includes Recording Industry Association of America -certified gold, platinum and multi-platinum awards. She has had 25 singles reach No.1 on the Billboard country music charts, a record for a female artist. She has 44 career Top10 country albums, a record for any artist and she has 110 career-charted singles over the past 40 years. Her 49th solo studio album, Rockstar, became her highest-charting Billboard 200 album, peaking at number three. Parton has composed over 3,000 songs, including "I Will Always Love You", "Jolene", "Coat of Many Colors" and "9to5". As an actress, she has starred in the films 9to5 and The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, for each of which she earned Best Actress Golden Globe nominations, as well as Rhinestone, Steel Magnolias, Straight Talk, and Joyful Noise.
She was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1984, the National Medal of Arts in 2004, the Kennedy Center Honors in 2006, the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2011 and the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award in 2025. In 1986, Parton was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame. In 2021, she was included on the Time 100, Times annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world. She was ranked at No. 27 on Rolling Stones 2023 list of the 200 Greatest Singers of All Time. In 2025, it was announced that Parton would be the recipient of the 2026 Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award.
Outside of her work in the music and film industries, Parton co-owns The Dollywood Company, which manages a number of entertainment venues including the Dollywood theme park, the Splash Country water park and a number of dinner theater venues such as The Dolly Parton Stampede and Pirates Voyage. She has founded a number of charitable and philanthropic organizations, chief among them being the Dollywood Foundation, who manage a number of projects to bring education and poverty relief to East Tennessee, where she was raised.
Early life
Dolly Rebecca Parton was born on January 19, 1946, in a one-room cabin on the banks of the Little Pigeon River in Pittman Center, Tennessee.She is the fourth of twelve children born to Avie Lee Caroline and Robert Lee Parton Sr.. Parton's middle name comes from her maternal great-great-grandmother Rebecca Whitted.
Parton's father, known as "Lee", worked in the mountains of East Tennessee, first as a sharecropper and later tending his own small tobacco farm and acreage. He also worked construction jobs to supplement the farm's small income. Despite her father's illiteracy, Parton has often commented that he was one of the smartest people she has ever known with regard to business and making a profit.
Parton's mother cared for their large family. Her eleven pregnancies in twenty years made her a mother of twelve by age thirty-five. Parton attributes her musical abilities to the influence of her mother; often in poor health, she still managed to keep house and entertain her children with Smoky Mountain folklore and ancient ballads. Having Welsh ancestors, Avie Lee knew many old ballads that immigrants from the British Isles brought to southern Appalachia in the 18th and 19th century. Avie Lee's father, Jake Owens, was a Pentecostal preacher and Parton and her siblings all attended church regularly.
Parton has long credited her father for her business savvy and her mother's family for her musical abilities.
When Parton was a young girl, her family moved from the Pittman Center area to a two-room cabin and farm up on nearby Locust Ridge. Most of her cherished memories of youth happened there. A replica of the Locust Ridge cabin is displayed at Parton's namesake theme park Dollywood. The farm acreage and surrounding woodland inspired her to write the song "My Tennessee Mountain Home" in the 1970s. Years after the farm was sold, Parton bought it back in the late 1980s. Her brother Bobby helped with building restoration and new construction.
Parton has described her family as being "dirt poor". Parton's father paid missionary Dr. Robert F. Thomas with a sack of cornmeal for delivering her. Parton would write a song about Dr. Thomas when she was grown. She also outlined her family's poverty in her early songs "Coat of Many Colors" and "In the Good Old Days ".
For six or seven years, Parton and her family lived in their rustic, one-bedroom cabin on their small subsistence farm on Locust Ridge. This was a predominantly Pentecostal area located north of the Greenbrier Valley of the Great Smoky Mountains.
Music played an important role in her early life. She was brought up in the Church of God, in a congregation her grandfather, Jake Robert Owens, pastored. Her earliest public performances were in the church, beginning at age six. At seven, she started playing a homemade guitar. When she was eight, her uncle bought Dolly her first real guitar.
The Parton family was well-fed despite their poverty and her 2024 cookbook, Good Lookin' Cookin', recalls numerous family meals.
After graduating from Sevier County High School in 1964, Parton moved to Nashville the next day.
Music career
1956–1966: Early work and songwriting
Parton began performing as a child, singing on local radio and television programs in the East Tennessee area. By 10 years old, she was appearing on The Cas Walker Show on both WIVK Radio and WBIR-TV in Knoxville, Tennessee. At 13, she recorded the single "Puppy Love" on a small Louisiana label, Goldband Records, and appeared at the Grand Ole Opry, where she first met Johnny Cash, who encouraged her to follow her own instincts regarding her career.Parton's initial success came as a songwriter, having signed with Combine Publishing shortly after her arrival. Along with her frequent songwriting partner, uncle Bill Owens, she wrote several charting singles during this time, including two Top10 hits for Bill Phillips: "Put It Off Until Tomorrow" and "The Company You Keep". She also wrote Skeeter Davis's number 11 hit "Fuel to the Flame". Her songs were recorded by many other artists during this period, including Kitty Wells and Hank Williams Jr. At 19, She signed with Monument Records in 1965, where she was initially pitched as a bubblegum pop singer. She released a string of singles, but the only one that charted, "Happy, Happy Birthday Baby", did not crack the Billboard Hot 100. Although she expressed a desire to record country material, Monument resisted, thinking her unusually high soprano voice was not suited to the genre.
After her uncredited composition of "Put It Off Until Tomorrow" with Bill Phillips went to number six on the country chart in 1966, the label relented and allowed her to record country. Her first country single, "Dumb Blonde", composed by Curly Putman, reached number 24 on the country chart in 1967, followed by "Something Fishy", which went to number 17. The two songs appeared on her first full-length album, Hello, I'm Dolly.
1967–1975: Country music success
In 1967, musician and country music entertainer Porter Wagoner invited Parton to join The Porter Wagoner Show, offering her a regular spot on his weekly syndicated television program and in his road show. As documented in her 1994 autobiography, much of Wagoner's audience was initially unhappy that Parton had replaced previous performer Norma Jean, who had left the show, sometimes chanting loudly for Norma Jean from the audience. With Wagoner's assistance however, Parton was eventually accepted. Wagoner convinced his label, RCA Victor, to sign her. RCA decided to protect their investment by releasing her first single as a duet with Wagoner. That song, a remake of Tom Paxton's "The Last Thing on My Mind", released in late 1967, reached the country Top10 in January 1968, launching a six-year streak of virtually uninterrupted Top10 singles for the pair.Parton's first solo single for RCA Victor, "Just Because I'm a Woman", was released in the summer of 1968 and was a moderate chart hit, reaching number 17. For the next two years, none of her solo effortseven "In the Good Old Days ", which later became a standardwere as successful as her duets with Wagoner. The duo was named Vocal Group of the Year in 1968 by the Country Music Association, but Parton's solo records were continually ignored. Wagoner had a significant financial stake in her future; as of 1969, he was her co-producer and owned nearly half of Owe-Par, the publishing company Parton had founded with Bill Owens.
By 1970, both Parton and Wagoner had grown frustrated by her lack of solo chart success. Wagoner persuaded Parton to record Jimmie Rodgers' "Mule Skinner Blues", a gimmick that worked. The record shot to number three, followed closely by her first number-one single, "Joshua" in February 1971. For the next two years, she had numerous solo hits in addition to her duets, including her signature song, "Coat of Many Colors". Further Top20 singles included "The Right Combination" and "Burning the Midnight Oil" ; "Lost Forever in Your Kiss", "Touch Your Woman", "My Tennessee Mountain Home" and "Travelin' Man".
Although her solo singles and the Wagoner duets were successful, her biggest hit of this period was "Jolene". Released in late 1973, the song topped the country chart in February 1974 and reached the lower regions of the Hot 100. It also eventually charted in the U.K., reaching number seven in 1976, representing Parton's first U.K. success. Parton, who had always envisioned a solo career, made the decision to leave Wagoner's show and she stopped appearing in mid-1974. The pair performed their last duet concert in April 1974, although they remained affiliated, with Wagoner helping to produce her records through 1975. Their final release as a duo was 1975's Say Forever You'll Be Mine.
In 1974, her song, "I Will Always Love You", written about her professional break from Wagoner, went to number one on the country chart. Around the same time, Elvis Presley indicated that he wanted to record the song. Parton was interested until Presley's manager, Colonel Tom Parker, told her that it was standard procedure for the songwriter to sign over half of the publishing rights to any song recorded by Presley. Parton refused. That decision has been credited with helping to make her many millions of dollars in royalties from the song over the years. Parton had three solo singles reach number one on the country chart in 1974, as well as the duet with Porter Wagoner, "Please Don't Stop Loving Me". Parton again topped the singles chart in 1975 with "The Bargain Store". In a 2019 episode of the Sky Arts music series Brian Johnson: A Life on the Road, Parton described finding old cassette tapes later on in her career and discovered that she had composed both "Jolene" and "I Will Always Love You" in the same songwriting session. As she told Johnson, "Buddy, that was a good night!"