The Queen of Country died in Nashville at 80. Nine chapters of a life that ran from a one-room cabin to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Her family said she died peacefully in Nashville. No cause has been released. She was 80, and had cancelled a Las Vegas run in May citing health problems.
Dolly Rebecca Parton arrived in Sevier County, Tennessee, in January 1946, the fourth of twelve children. The Smokies stayed in almost everything she wrote.
She met Carl Dean outside a Nashville laundromat in 1964 and married him in 1966. He stayed out of the spotlight for the whole marriage, and died in March 2025.
"Dumb Blonde" broke her through in 1967, the year Porter Wagoner made her his duet partner. "Joshua" gave her a first solo country No. 1 in 1971.
The 1971 song about a jacket her mother stitched together from rags became the one she called her favorite. It turned her poverty into the story she told for life.
"Jolene" hit No. 1 on the country chart in 1973 and has been covered hundreds of times since. Parton said she wrote it the same day as "I Will Always Love You."
She wrote "I Will Always Love You" in 1974 as a farewell to Wagoner. Whitney Houston's 1992 version made it one of the best-selling singles ever recorded.
"Here You Come Again" earned her a first platinum album in 1977. The theme to 1980's "9 to 5" then topped the pop chart, won two Grammys and drew an Oscar nod.
She opened Dollywood in Pigeon Forge in 1986. Her Imagination Library, started in 1995, has since mailed more than 325 million free books to children.
She entered the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2022, then answered it with "Rockstar" - the highest-charting album of her career, released at 77.