By Quendrith Johnson, Los Angeles Correspondent
Yes, Dolly Parton died at her home today in Nashville, TN, at age 80. Left us to bask in all her glory; but little Dolly wasn’t always a sex-symbol singer with a bouffant as high as Jiffy Pop. Her storied humble beginnings are about lack and a lackluster outlook from a shared wooden cabin bedroom window in the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee. Born January 19, 1946, the fourth of twelve children, we all know Parton grew up in a one-room cabin in Locust Ridge, where money was scarce, indoor plumbing was not a given, and one lonely childhood toy was a corncob doll with actual farm corn-silk hair. What we might not know in general is that at only six-years-old, she wrote a song about that tiny doll, Little Tiny Tasseltop. As a teenager already developing into a shapely young woman, Dolly performed at the Grand Ole Opry. In fact, lore goes, the morning after graduation, from Sevier County High School in 1964, Parton hopped on a bus headed for Nashville… with her own song ‘catalogue.’
There’s the story about she formed a publishing company with her ‘uncle’ Bill Owens, an early move that eventually gave her power over a back catalogue of some 3,000 diddies. Among them: Coat of Many Colors, Jolene, I Will Always Love You and 9 to 5. And twenty-five Parton singles reached No. 1 on Billboard’s country chart; not to mention she sold more than 100 million records, won 11 Grammys.
When Whitney Houston recorded I Will Always Love You, some 20 years later, for The Bodyguard, Houston’s version spent 14 weeks at No. 1, while Parton’s publishing windfall was estimated in the millions. The mountain girl who wrote it, and recorded a much tamer version, recalled how she had to “pull my car over” to hear Whitney sing her song on the radio. It gave her chills. Then Hollywood called more often, comfortable with Dolly Parton the Cross-over Artist, but her number came up in 1980 with her movie debut opposite Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin in 9 to 5, where they trussed up their boss for better pay.
This ‘little film’ crossed $103 million domestically; Parton’s title song hit No. 1, won two Grammys and earned an Oscar nomination. Next The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas with Burt Reynolds in 1982, then Sylvester Stallone and Rhinestone. Yet Steel Magnolias in 1989 alongside Sally Field, Shirley MacLaine, Olympia Dukakis, Daryl Hannah and Julia Roberts, won hearts and minds among female audiences like no other film since. Then there was Straight Talk, Joyful Noise, Broadway’s 9 to 5, bluegrass records, television and eventually 2023’s Rockstar with Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Elton John, Sting, and Miley Cyrus followed.
Goddaughter Miley Cyrus is grieving hard today, no doubt, for the patchwork denim wearing trailblazer who shaped her career as much as anyone else just by the example Dolly set.
Cut-out Dolly Parton dolls by Screenmancer Art Dept. (c) 2026
From Sevier County, Tennessee, then to all of America, then to Canada, Britain, Australia and Ireland, Dolly Parton’s The Imagination Library delivered its 100 millionth book in 2018, its 200 millionth in 2023, and by its thirtieth anniversary had distributed more than 270 million books. When the 2016 Great Smoky Mountains wildfires destroyed homes around Gatlinburg, Parton’s My People Fund distributed about $12.9 million to nearly 1,000 affected families. In 2020 she donated $1 million to Vanderbilt University Medical Center for COVID-19 research that helped support development of Moderna’s vaccine. After Hurricane Helene struck the region in 2024, she personally pledged another $1 million.
But mostly we loved Dolly for moments in her absence too, like in 2011’s movie Our Idiot Brother, where the two lovers finally get together – that being idiot bro Paul Rudd and beloved Kathryn Hahn – and their dogs are named Willie Nelson and, wait for it, Dolly Parton, respectively. This woman was so beloved in the public mind, she brings joy to the heart even having a dog named after her. And that whole cast, from Paul Rudd, Elizabeth Banks, Zooey Deschanel, Emily Mortimer, Steve Coogan, Hugh Dancy, Kathryn Hahn, to Rashida Jones, you know they loved her too. Everybody in Hollywood does still.
Even in her later years in 2023, with her half-time Dallas Cowboys Thanksgiving Show where her skimpy outfit of sequined boobs and mini-sequin skirt, when she pissed off most of middle America with her sexy antics at 77? You still loved her. Even when they blamed Wild Miley Cyrus circa naked-style twerking on Dolly, that happened a decade earlier on stage with latex Miley in 2013 with Robin Thicke? Godmother Dolly came back with a pure country zinger, saying Miley was “smotherin’ and chokin'” on all that Disney fairy dust and needed to break free.
Yes, it’s true, Dolly Parton has died today, August 25, 2026, at eighty, which seems ‘young’ by our longevity standards now. After a lifetime traveling from Locust Ridge to Nashville, Nashville to Hollywood, Hollywood to the world, Dolly came back up that Great Smoky Mountain, bringing books, jobs, and love. So we can say, from 9 to thrive, Dolly Parton found a way to make a living, and a joyful noise is gone from the world, which she would want us to continue.
And you know it’s bad when the Official Dolly Parton website is so flooded with mourners, it returns a “bad gateway” overload message.
Rest in Perfection, Dolly Parton… when things calm down over on her cloud… visit Dolly Parton here.
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