Dolly's Biography

About Dolly

Dolly Rebecca Parton was born on January 19, 1946, in Locust Ridge, Tennessee, to Robert Lee Parton, an illiterate sharecropper and farmer, and Avie Lee Owens Parton. “I guess my mama knew I was going to want to be a star,” Dolly later said about her mother’s choice for her first name. Dolly grew up in rural Appalachia and was the fourth of 12 children. Parton’s first exposure to music came from her family members. She learned about music at an early age while performing in church and was writing songs before she knew how to read. Parton received her first guitar from a relative and soon began to pen her own tunes. At age 10, she started performing professionally, appearing on local television and radio shows in Knoxville. Set on a career in music, she then moved to Nashville the day after finishing high school in 1964. Country music icon and actor Dolly Parton initially found success with country star Porter Wagoner in the 1960s before embarking on a solo career marked by hit songs. A highly skilled singer-songwriter known for thoughtful narratives and distinctive vocals, Parton has won many major awards, including 10 Grammys, and was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1999. In 1986, she opened her Dollywood theme park, now part of a network of attractions. Parton continues to record and tour regularly. Parton’s singing career really started to take off in 1967. Much was made of her shapely curves, petite 5-foot-tall stature, and warm personality, which to some people belied a thoughtful, visionary artist with a strong business sense. Since her early career, Parton has protected the publishing rights to her catalog of songs, which has earned her millions in royalties. I Over the years, Parton has enjoyed many successful collaborations. In 1983, she scored another major smash with “Islands in the Stream,” her duet with Kenny Rogers that topped the Billboard Hot 100. Four years later, she recorded the Grammy Award-winning album Trio with Emmylou Harris and Linda Ronstadt. Having reached the apex of her mainstream success, Parton made her movie debut in the 1980 comedy hit 9 to 5, starring alongside Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin. She played a secretary who, along with her two coworkers, plots against their egotistical and sexist boss in a movie that raised awareness of workplace harassment and discrimination. In addition to co-starring in 9 to 5, Parton also contributed to its soundtrack. The title song, with one of the most memorable opening lines in popular music history, proved to be another No. 1 hit for Parton on both the Billboard Hot 100 and the country chart. For “9 to 5,” Parton also took home two Grammy Awards for Best Country Song and Best Female Country Vocal Performance and earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Song. movies that include Steel Magnolias (1989), Straight Talk (1992), Unlikely Angel (1996), Frank McKlusky, C.I. (2002), and Joyful Noise (2012). She also hosted her own variety TV show in both 1976 and 1987-88. Dolly Parton’s Coat of Many Colors, a television movie biopic about the singer’s childhood, aired in 2015. It starred Alyvia Alyn Lind as young Dolly and Jennifer Nettles of the musical duo Sugarland as Parton’s mother. Years later, in 2020, a two-hour A & E documentary, Biography: Dolly, traced Parton’s extraordinary journey from her childhood spent and early days in Nashville to her successful music empire. Parton was married to asphalt contractor Carl Dean for 58 years. The couple met at a Nashville laundromat, the Wishy Washy, in 1964 and married in a private ceremony on May 30, 1966. “My husband is not one who wants to be just thrown out there,” Parton once said about Dean. “He’s very private, and I’ve always respected that for him and about him.” On their 50th anniversary, the two renewed their vows. They remained happily married without children until Dean’s death in early March 2025. He was 82.Parton and Dean met outside a Nashville laundromat, the Wishy Washy, in 1964, and she was immediately taken with him. “I was surprised and delighted that while he talked to me, he looked at my face (a rare thing for me). He seemed to be genuinely interested in finding out who I was and what I was about,” she later recalled. The couple married in May 1966 with only a preacher, his wife, and Parton’s mother in attendance. Although he kept a low profile and seldom attended public events, Dean inspired many of Parton’s songs, including her 1973 hit “Jolene.” She told NPR in 2008 that she wrote the song about a bank teller who regularly flirted with her husband early on in the marriage. “He just loved going to the bank because she paid him so much attention,” Parton said, adding that it became a “running joke” between the two of them. “My husband is not one who wants to be just thrown out there,” she told Vogue in 2016. “He’s very private, and I’ve always respected that for him and about him.”Dolly Parton’s husband of nearly six decades, Carl Dean, died on March 3 in Nashville, Tennessee. He was 82 years old. The country music legend announced his death on social media but didn’t provide a cause of death. “Carl and I spent many wonderful years together. Words can’t do justice to the love we shared for over 60 years,” Parton wrote in a statement. A devoted husband, Dean was a reserved man who stayed out of the spotlight despite his wife’s massive stardom.