Dolly Parton, the legendary county music singer who also became a popular star of TV and movies, died Aug. 25. She was 80 years old.
Her nephew Bryan Seaver announced her death in a video message shared to Instagram Tuesday, reflecting on her legacy. Seaver, son of Dolly Parton’s sister Cassie Parton, did not provide a cause of death.
Parton made headlines in September 2025 after she postponed a string of concerts in Las Vegas amid “health challenges."
The singer did not specify at the time what health struggles she faced but said, “my doctors tell me that I must have a few procedures.”
The following month, Parton's younger sister Frieda Parton caused alarm when she asked fans to pray for the “Jolene” singer in an Oct. 7 Facebook post. A day later, Dolly Parton put fans' minds at ease when she released a video of herself assuring them she was “OK” and that “nothing major” was wrong with her health.
“Before I got started, I wanted to say, I know lately everybody thinks that I am sicker than I am. Do I look sick to you? I’m working hard here!” Parton said in the video, which she said she filmed during a break from shooting commercials for the Grand Ol’ Opry.
Parton said she needed to stay in the close to her home in Tennessee and Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, to get treatment for health issues that escalated while she cared for her late husband Carl Dean, who died in March 2025.
“I let a lot of things go that I should have been taking care of,” she explained at the time.
Born Dolly Rebecca Parton on Jan. 19, 1946, Parton, the fourth of 12 children, began life in a small log cabin in rural Pittman Center, a rural East Tennessee town near the Great Smoky Mountains. When she was a young girl, her family relocated to a nearby farm in Locust Ridge. Parton's father, a sharecropper turned tobacco farmer, struggled with illiteracy, which inspired Parton to launch the Imagination Library, a children’s literacy program, in 1995, she told the Belfast Telegraph.
As a child, Parton sang on local television and radio. At 13, Johnny Cash introduced her for her 1959 debut at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville.
Just a day after graduating high school in 1964, Parton moved to Nashville for a career in music. A multi-instrumentalist, she teamed up with her uncle, Bill Owens, to co-write songs that became hits for Bill Phillips and Skeeter Davis. In 1967, country star and TV personality Porter Wagoner handpicked her to be his new duet partner on "The Porter Wagoner Show."
In 1967, Parton released her debut solo album, “Hello, I’m Dolly," which rose to the number 11 spot on the Billboard Top Country Albums chart.
By the early 1970s, Parton had become a solo success. She mined her “dirt poor” upbringing in her homespun lyrics, recalling how her mother compensated for the family’s poverty with her ingenuity on “Coat of Many Colors,” “My Tennessee Mountain Home," and scored additional hits with "Travelin Man," “Jolene" and her own recording of “I Will Always Love You," which would later become a global hit for Whitney Houston.
Decades before Taylor Swift crossed over from country to pop, Parton, who scored 25 No. 1 singles on the Billboard country music charts, saw her 1977 album "Here You Come Again" landing in the Top 20 on the Billboard pop album chart. The album's title track becoming Parton's first Top 10 pop single.
As Parton's fanbase widened in the mid- to late-1970s, her Tv appearances multiplied, including a joint special with Carol Burnett on CBS, "Dolly & Carol in Nashville."
