Dolly Parton, the country singer from the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee, will be remembered for her songs that told beautiful stories so honestly, such as Coat of Many Colours, Jolene and I Will Always Love You. In a seven-decade career, Parton won 10 Grammy awards, sold more than 100 million records worldwide, and wrote in excess of 3,000 songs. Parton took her writing seriously, and considered herself a songwriter over everything else.
"It's my way of expressing myself," she said. "It's my therapy.” She was also a savvy businesswoman who wasn't afraid to make tough decisions. Armed with a quick wit and southern charm, she took control of her show business career that spanned more than 60 years.
Dolly Rebecca Parton was born in 1946, the fourth of 12 children, into a poor farming family who lived in a one bedroom cabin in Tennessee. Her father, Robert Lee Parton, was a tobacco farmer and paid a missionary a sack of cornmeal for delivering her. There was already music in the family - her mother, Avie Lee, sung folk songs all the time and her aunt played the guitar and wrote songs.
During some of Parton's earliest performances, her uncle, Bill Owens, accompanied her on the guitar - formative years for the future music legend. From the age of six, she sang in the local church where her grandfather was the pastor, and was performing on her local TV station by the time she was a teenager. In 1959, when she was 13 years old, Parton performed with Uncle Bill at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville - a live broadcast that is regarded as country music's biggest stage.
She was introduced by Johnny Cash and received three encores. During her teenage years, Parton began to model herself on a local character who was known as the “town tramp”. The lady wore bright red nail polish, low-cut tops and high heels - young Dolly thought she was beautiful.
When people said to her: “She ain’t nothing but trash”, Parton would reply: "Well, that’s what I’m gonna be when I grow up”. Parton sang “I’m just a backwards Barbie / too much make-up, too much hair”, but her image was both a coat of armour and an astute disguise that helped get her noticed in show business. She would get ahead of the jokes by making them first, and had a quick and simple response for anyone who suggested she should tone it down: "Go to hell." After graduating from high school in 1964, she moved to Nashville to launch her singing career and met her future husband, Carl Dean, on her very first day.
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