According to a statement claimed to her nephew Bryan Seaver, American country music singer, actress, and songwriter Dolly Parton passed away in her Nashville home on Tuesday, August 25, at the age of 80.
The Grammy winner was one of the most popular, unifying, and charitable celebrities in America. Her immediate family will attend a modest, private service after her “peaceful” death.
Over the past two years, Parton has been candid about a number of health concerns, particularly since her husband Carl Dean passed away in March 2025. Parton told viewers in a video earlier this year,
“I did not take care of myself back when my husband Carl was really unwell – that was for a long time — and then after he departed.” “Therefore, I neglected a lot of things that I ought to have attended to.”
Over the course of her more than 50-year career, Parton wrote more than 3,000 songs that encapsulated the American experience. Among them was “Coat of Many Colors,” a subdued tribute to her mother, who sewed clothes in the family’s rural Tennessee home. “Jolene” and “I Will Always Love You” are only two of the love and heartbreak songs she composed and sung. “9 to 5,” the title track from the same-titled film in which Parton also appeared, became an anthem for American women and workers.
One of the most successful country crossover performers of all time, Parton went on to create 49 albums, win 11 Grammys, and consistently score songs on the pop charts, including the duet “Islands in the Stream” with Kenny Rogers.
Later, she used her popularity to start a library initiative that has given over 300 million books to kids worldwide.
“I Will Always Love You,” one of Parton’s most popular love ballads, reached unprecedented heights and was even covered by Whitney Houston in the 1990s.
Parton, the fourth of twelve children, was born on January 19, 1946, in a one-room cabin in Tennessee. The family, according to her, is “dirt poor.” Her father was illiterate.
The family had always loved music, particularly via her mother, whose father was a preacher and guitarist. Parton once recalled, “My people were the ones who sang at funerals, weddings, shindigs, and anything around locally.”
When Parton was younger, her first guitar was given to her by an uncle. At the age of seven, she began writing her own songs and learning to play.
In 1965, Parton signed her first record contract with Monument Records. The following year, she wed Dean.
Whitney Houston’s Estate Denies Oprah’s Claim That She Fell..
She had her first number one hit with “Joshua” in 1971 (“Coat of Many Colors,” released the same year, made it to No. 4). By 1974, after seven years of first being Wagoner’s “pretty little girl” singing in support of him and then sharing the stage with him in many duets, Parton decided it was time to move on and, with a little help from “I Will Always Love You,” struck out on her own.
Years later, when the track became a megahit for Houston as the love theme for the 1992 movie “The Bodyguard,” Parton netted somewhere in the vicinity of $10 million in royalties.
Films:
Dolly Parton returned to the big screen in 1982’s “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas” opposite Burt Reynolds and later in 1989’s “Steel Magnolias” — about a strong-willed clan of Southern women featuring Sally Field and Julia Roberts — which introduced her to a new generation of admirers, including many in the LGBTQ+ community.
Parton won the Recording Academy’s lifetime achievement award in 2011 after being admitted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1999. She first objected to the idea of being inducted into the Rock ‘n Rock Hall of Fame, claiming she did not think she was a true rock star. At her husband’s request, she accepted it as an offer to try a rock album, naturally named “Rockstar,” in which the legendary country music artist dueted with rock stars like Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr and covered hits like “Let It Be” and “Stairway to Heaven.”