At the age of 80, legendary Dolly Parton, the singer who brought country music to audiences around the world, has died. Her death was announced by her nephew in a video posted on her official Instagram account.
Beyond her career as a singer, Parton also tried her hand at film. As she stated emphatically, however, “I will always be a country musician.” Her artistic career, which spanned approximately six decades, was marked by major hits such as the iconic “Jolene,” whose success crossed America’s borders.
Over the course of her long career, Dolly Parton won 11 Grammys, including the honorary Lifetime Achievement Award in 2011, and received a total of 55 nominations.
Just last Friday, Parton had spoken about her health, acknowledging that it had deteriorated in recent months, following the death of her husband, Carl Dean, in March 2025.
“As I’ve mentioned in videos over the past year, I’ve been dealing with some health issues that I simply didn’t pay attention to while I was taking care of Carl. You know, this isn’t the first time I’ve had to deal with something like this. In the early 1980s, I was out of commission for several months because of gynecological problems, and I was also dealing with weight issues at the time, so it’s not as though I haven’t been through difficult periods with my health before,” Parton told PEOPLE.
Continuing, she said: “I think, though, because we live in a world that operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with social media, everything gets magnified in a way that it didn’t in the past. I used to joke that I was the Queen of the Tabloids, but now I guess I can say I’m the Queen of Artificial Intelligence on Social Media! Seriously, though, even though I’m still recovering, I’m still working! You know me — as I’ve said many times — I’ve dreamed myself into a corner and I still have so many things I want to accomplish, so I’m going to keep working as long as I can, to see all those things become reality.”
Who was Dolly Parton?
With a remarkable career spanning decades, Parton was the best-selling female country singer of all time, having sold more than 160 million albums worldwide. Her debut album was “Hello, I’m Dolly” in 1967, and she went on to release a series of major hits, including “I Will Always Love You,” “9 to 5,” and “Jolene.”
Parton was born in 1946 in Pittman Center, Tennessee. She had 11 siblings. “We never really went hungry, but sometimes we didn’t have enough to eat,” she told PEOPLE in 1977. At the age of six, she began playing guitar and singing at her grandfather’s church. A year later, she began writing songs.
Although she became known for her glamorous appearance, in 2003 she told PEOPLE about her childhood: “I had freckles and a gap between my teeth. Everything was handmade or clothes that someone else had worn before me… I always wanted to be prettier. I started taking care of myself. I wanted my clothes tight, my makeup heavy, my nails long and my lips red. And I got carried away with it.” Throughout her career, her striking appearance attracted enormous attention, but she was always the first to joke about it herself.
After graduating from high school, she moved to Nashville in 1964. She performed in clubs and wrote songs for other artists. “My songs took me out of the mountains and took me everywhere I wanted to go,” she said years ago. Her big break came when country star Porter Wagoner hired her as his partner on “The Porter Wagoner Show.” He helped her secure a recording contract, although her first major successes were duets with her co-star.
“I will always be a country musician because I’m a country girl,” she once said. “My style is my soul and my feelings. I will tell people through my songs things that I wouldn’t tell even my mother.”
In 1971, she reached the top of the country chart for the first time with “Joshua.” “Coat of Many Colors,” released the same year, reached No. 4. In 1973, she released “Jolene,” which climbed to No. 1 on the country chart and also entered the Billboard Hot 100.
Parton stopped appearing on the television show in 1974 and wrote “I Will Always Love You” as a farewell to her longtime collaborator, Porter Wagoner. “When I was getting ready to leave, things were not good at all. So I went home and this song just came to me. The next morning I told him, ‘This is how I feel.’ Tears were running down his face,” she said in a 2012 interview.
The song reached the top of the country chart twice, but went on to become a worldwide hit when Whitney Houston performed it for the 1992 film “The Bodyguard.” In 2015, Parton described the first time she heard Houston’s version on the radio. “It was something global. It was in a movie, it was No. 1. I thought, ‘Wow. I wrote this little song,’” she said. “That’s when I realized my value as a songwriter. I thought, ‘This is my gift and I’m going to do the best I can with it.’”
Parton continued to enjoy major success with songs such as “Light of a Clear Blue Morning,” “Here You Come Again,” “Two Doors Down,” “It’s All Wrong, But It’s All Right,” and “You’re the Only One.”
By the late 1970s, her ambitions had expanded beyond Nashville, and some worried that she was abandoning country music. In 1977, she said: “I want people to know that there’s a whole lot more to me — good or bad — than what they’ve seen so far. All I ask is for a chance to prove it… I’m not leaving Nashville. Roots are important to me, and my roots are here.”
Parton’s film career began in 1980, when she starred in the movie “9 to 5” alongside Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda. The title song she wrote for the film became her first single to reach No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. The three co-stars remained friends throughout their lives, while Parton later also made a guest appearance on the Netflix series “Grace and Frankie.”
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