Dolly Parton, Legendary Singer And Philanthropist, Dead At 80
The microphone fell silent for one of the world's most universally beloved musicians and all-around, authentically down-to-earth, stuffed with sass and glitz people, Dolly Parton. Dolly had always been known for her boundless energy, on full display in interviews such as her 2019 appearance on "The Tonight Show," watchable on YouTube, which carried her and her health well into late life.
Her death was announced on her official Instagram page by Bryan Seaver.
Dolly had a prolific career and was beloved by many
Anything we could say about Dolly's whopping musical catalog of 3,000 songs and numerous hall-of-fame inductions (per Lit Hub), 91 albums and 9 Grammy wins (per Insider), and profound impact on country music, both as a woman and a crossover pop star, as described in "Dolly Parton, Gender, and Country Music," has been said before. Just about anyone might recognize smash hits like "9 to 5," "I Will Always Love You," and "Jolene," but others might not realize that Dolly was a completely self-taught singer-songwriter who wrote music "before she knew how to hold a pencil," as her father said.
In an interview with the Dallas Observer, Dolly said of her writing process, "I still write the same way and for the same reasons. I have to put things down. Everything's a song to me and I have the gift of rhyme, so I'm just always writing stuff. The more you live, the more you have to write about, and the more you write, the more you're skilled at it."
Tapping on a pot with a spoon as a kid, obsessed with rhythm, she even incorporated the clicking sounds of her acrylic nails into "9 to 5."
Dolly also had a bountiful acting career, appearing in films like "9 to 5" (of course) and "Steel Magnolias" (via IMDb).
A songwriter and philanthropist who never forgot her roots
Dolly Rebecca Parton was born in 1946 in Locust Ridge, Tennessee, the fourth of 12 children. As she said on ABC News, she grew up dirt poor, "redneck, roughneck" and "white trash." Her song "Coat of Many Colors," in fact, was a true story about her mother stitching together patches of clothes to keep her warm, per Lit Hub. Dolly took her modest upbringing, and insults such as "hillbilly Mae West" and "backwoods Barbie," as Dolly Parton, Gender, and Country Music describes, and turned them into zingers such as, "It takes a lot of money to look this cheap."
She built her first guitar at age 7 — two bass strings slung to a mandolin neck — and by age 10 had regular gigs at the "The Cas Walker Show" in Knoxville. By age 13, she played the Grand Ole Opry, as Insider describes.
Besides her musical accomplishments, Dolly was a prolific philanthropist. The Dollywood Foundation, founded in 1988, decreased the rate of high school dropouts for students in her home country from 35% to 6%, as their website says, on promise of $500 to graduates. They've also spawned charities such as the Imagination Library, which has provided millions of free books to children worldwide. Dolly even helped fund the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine to the tune of $1 million.