Dolly Parton

Dolly Parton (Dolly Rebecca Parton Dean, January 19, 1946 – August 25, 2026) was an American singer-songwriter, actress, philanthropist and businesswoman. Dubbed the "Queen of Country", she was one of the most successful performers in the history of country music and sold more than 100 million records worldwide.

She grew up in East Tennessee, the fourth of twelve children. She wrote her first song at six, was performing regularly on television by ten, and became a professional songwriter at sixteen. Her debut album, Hello, I'm Dolly, came out in 1967 and began a career of nearly sixty years in which she released 49 studio albums and wrote more than 3,000 songs, including "Jolene", "Coat of Many Colors", "9 to 5" and "I Will Always Love You", the last of which became the best-selling single by a woman in Whitney Houston's version. She had 25 number-one singles on the Billboard country chart, tied with Reba McEntire for the most by a woman, and her final solo studio album, Rockstar (2023), reached No. 3 on the Billboard 200, her highest position on that chart.

As an actress she starred in films including 9 to 5 (1980) and Steel Magnolias (1989), appeared as Aunt Dolly in Hannah Montana, and won a Primetime Emmy Award for the Netflix film Christmas on the Square. She also wrote the music and lyrics for the Broadway musical 9 to 5, earning a Tony Award nomination. Over her career she won eleven Grammy Awards and three Emmy Awards; she was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1999 and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2022, and received the National Medal of Arts (2004), the Kennedy Center Honors (2006), the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award (2011) and the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award (2025).

She was a co-owner of the company that runs the Dollywood theme park, and in 1995 she founded the children's literacy program Imagination Library in honor of her father, who never learned to read; it mails a book each month to enrolled children from birth until they start kindergarten. Her husband, Carl Dean, died in 2025. In August 2026 she was admitted to the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center in Nashville with cancer, and she died there on August 25 at the age of 80.