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President of Dolly Parton's foundation says nonprofit will "carry her dream forward"

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Cher speaks out after Dolly Parton's death, describes their first meeting

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Country singer Ashley McBryde on Dolly Parton's impact: "She was the pedestal"

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Country STAR honors Dolly Parton's legacy

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Country STAR honors Dolly Parton's legacy

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Country STAR honors Dolly Parton's legacy

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Parton’s self-construction project began in her childhood. She was born the fourth of 12 kids in a tiny cabin in Pittman Center, Tennessee. Her parents were so poor that they paid the doctor who delivered her with a sack of cornmeal. As a girl, she sang songs on her porch into a fake mic fashioned from a tin can and a tobacco stick, envisioning herself at the Grand Ole Opry. Her talent drew attention from local radio and TV personalities, and by age 13, she was singing on the real Opry stage.

The craftiness and self-consciousness that came from growing up impoverished shaped her outlook for life. As she’d sing in her 1971 song “Coat of Many Colors”—her signature (and favorite) hit—her mother used to sew rags into garments that the young Parton would flaunt at school. Mockery from other kids taught her the lesson in self-determination that she’d turn into one of her defining lyrics: “One is only poor only if they choose to be.” As a young woman, she modeled her fashion off a “town tramp”—as she later put it—whom she’d grown up around. Her preacher grandfather whipped her for dressing that way, but to her, women with heels and push-up bras weren’t trashy; they were glamorous and confident.

A fascination with stereotypes—with fulfilling them and subverting them—gave her an edge when she moved to Nashville. In 1966, her first solo hit, “Dumb Blonde” (written by Curly Putman), saw her singing that despite her looks, she “ain’t nobody’s fool.” On the TV variety series The Porter Wagoner Show, she played the aw-shucks second fiddle to the titular star even as she wrote songs that outcompeted Wagoner’s music. Her 1970 hit “Joshua” spun a tale in which the narrator approaches a mean-looking backwoods hermit, someone whom the rest of the town fears, only to realize that he has a heart of gold. It was an example of how her penchant for social criticism and her interest in flipping expectations made her songwriting stand out.

[Read: The transcendence of Dolly Parton]

She left Wagoner behind in 1974 to court an audience that transcended country music. Her songs sparkled with fun production touches, clever lyrical twists, and melodies that seemed at once as winding as a lazy river and as smartly constructed as good Levi’s. For 1980’s “9 to 5,” the sound of her fingernail clicks did as much work as the lyrics—and the movie the song accompanied—in celebrating the hustle of women at work. “Jolene,” her enduring ballad of jealousy, built itself around a chorus so plaintive that it seemed surely scraped from a harrowing chapter of Parton’s own life—but she was quick, in interviews, to say that the song’s story was more or less fiction.

As she settled into icon status, she seemed to revel in the franchisability of her image: Dolly Parton was an idea that everyone could benefit from. She founded a theme park in her home state, selling a blend of rustic realness and fun kitsch. She only ever seemed tickled that Whitney Houston’s cover of “I Will Always Love You” eclipsed Parton’s original in eminence. She made childhood literacy the central focus of her philanthropic efforts—another subversion of the “dumb blonde” image (and one that channeled her upbringing by a father who couldn’t read).

In recent years, Parton’s persona has come to take on political significance. She was, as my colleague David Graham has written, the rare public figure who seemed beloved by both red and blue America. She maintained that status through careful circumspection regarding partisan politics. But when it came to questions about sexuality and identity, she took a stand by repeatedly supporting gay, trans, and gender-nonconforming people. After all, she once told RuPaul, she herself was a drag queen.

Many of the most important stories in music this decade owe a lot to Parton. Sabrina Carpenter has brought Dolly-style humor (and hair) back to the charts; Beyoncé enlisted Parton to play emcee on her 2024 album, Cowboy Carter; Ella Langley is blending backwoods scenery with wry, shrugging wisdom that recalls Parton’s catalog. But Parton set an example bigger than music—by showing how to take the scraps you were given and stitch them into something bright and new.

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Remembering Dolly Parton's life and legacy

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Dolly Parton's "9 to 5" and the U.S.-Canada trade battle

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Tributes paid to Dolly Parton | BBC News

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