Dolly Parton – Queen of Country music

Dolly Parton is an American country music performer and actress. She has written more than six hundred songs. Dolly is recognized as one of the most successful singers in the genre and is named Queen of Country Music. Only she and Reba McEntire are performers who rose to the top of the charts in four different decades. In 2016, Parton became the only singer whose hits have appeared in the Top-20 country music chart Hot Country Songs all recent 6 decades in a row (1960, 70th, 80th 90th, 00th & 10th).
Dolly Rebecca Parton was born on January 19, 1946 in Locust Ridge, Sevier County, Tennessee. She was the fourth of twelve children born to Robert Lee (1921-2000) and his wife Avie Lee Parton (1923-2003). Parton’s grandfather Robert Jake Owens (1899-1992) was a preacher in a Pentecostal church and the family all played music and sang in the church. Dolly began writing music and playing the guitar when she was seven years old. When she was ten years old, Parton sang on the show in front of a live audience in Knoxville, Tennessee, and a year later she recorded Puppy Love, a song she had written on Gold Band, a small label.

In 1964, Parton was the first person in her family to graduate from high school and the very next day she headed for Nashville, Tennessee.
At first Parton wrote songs for the popular country music artists and in 1967 she released her first album, Hello, I’m Dolly. Then, for several years she performed as a duet with Porter Wagoner.
In 1971, Parton attracted worldwide attention with the album Coat of Many Colors, which is considered a milestone in the history of country music. For several years she was the most popular singer in the world of country music, but dreamed of a wider audience.

In 1977 she released the album Here You Come Again, which made her name known far beyond the borders of the southern states of the USA.
In 1980 the singer debuted as an actress in the comedy Nine to Five. The humorous song 9 to 5 written for the film became the unofficial anthem of the office workers and was nominated for Oscar.
Two years later, Dolly with Kenny Rogers recorded the song Bee Gees Islands in the Stream, which also took the first place in the Billboard Hot 100. Over the next two decades, any country musician could not achieve similar success on the pop charts.
In conjunction with starring in The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas in 1982, Parton re-released I Will Always Love You. She was the first performer to hit number one twice with the same song. In 1983, she starred in Rhinestone and received a Grammy nomination for the song Tennessee Homesick Blues. She starred in Steel Magnolias in 1989.

In 1987, Dolly released the album Trio together with country music divas Emmylou Harris and Linda Ronstadt. In 1993 she recorded another shared disk in a trio with Loretta Lynn and Tammy Uinett.
In 1999, Parton became a member of the Country Music Hall of Fame.
In 2004, Parton was honored by the Library of Congress with The Living Legend award.
In 2005, Parton received a second nomination for Oscar in the category Best Song for Travelin’ Thru. In the same year she was awarded the US National Medal of Arts.
She wrote her autobiography, Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business.

Personal life
On May 30, 1966 Dolly married Carl Thomas Dean.

Interesting facts
– In 1986 Dolly became an owner of a theme park in her home state of Tennessee, which was renamed Dollywood in her honor.
– When in 1992 Whitney Houston released a cover version of I Will Always Love You, Dolly earned no less than six million dollars royalties. Parton admitted that she wrote I Will Always Love You for Porter Wagoner in an effort to express her reasons for leaving him. She first recorded the song in 1973; a year later it was number one on the country charts.
– The first cloned animal – Dolly the sheep – was named after buxom singer as the original nucleus of the cell was taken from the breast (or more precisely, from the udder) of the donor animal.
– Soviet tank T-72A was nicknamed “Dolly Parton” in the West because of the shape of the tower, which is supposedly at a certain angle resembles a magnificent bust of the singer. T-72B got the name “Super Dolly Parton”.
– Parton is the godmother of actress and singer Miley Cyrus.

Dolly Parton – Queen of Country music