Dolly Parton, beloved music and film icon known for her personality and songwriting, dies at 80

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Dolly Parton, the country music icon whose soaring vibrato vocals, poignant songwriting and sparkling costumes defined her rise from a log cabin in the Tennessee mountains to the height of stardom and acclaim, has died. She was 80.

Parton died peacefully Tuesday in Nashville, Tennessee, her publicist said in a statement. A cause of death was not disclosed.

Known for her curves, massive blonde wigs and skin-tight outfits that served her self-deprecating wit, she was among the most beloved personalities in music and beyond — the rare celebrity whose appeal transcended generations, geography and politics.

She wrote hundreds of songs, including such favorites as “Jolene,” “Coat of Many Colors” and “I Will Always Love You,” which totaled more than 100 million worldwide sales and more than 1 billion online streams. Parton was a generous philanthropist and successful businesswoman whose projects included a theme park in the Smoky Mountain foothills near her birthplace.

Her career was influenced by her upbringing as one of 12 children born into what she called a “dirt poor” Tennessee family. She started her education nonprofit, Imagination Library, to send free books to needy children because her father quit school to work on the farm and struggled to learn to read.

Her first musical performances were in church, where her grandfather was a preacher. At 13, she appeared on the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, where Johnny Cash introduced her as “a little girl here from up in East Tennessee.”

With a suitcase of songs, she followed her uncle, Bill Owens, also a songwriter, to Nashville after graduating high school.

Her partnership with Porter Wagoner and his syndicated TV show kicked off her career. Their first duet, “The Last Thing On My Mind,” was released in 1967, the year she started her publishing company.

Their duets were often radio hits, but her solo singles didn’t chart as highly at first. With Wagoner as co-producer, she adjusted her country warble to a more polished pop-leaning style.

Her first No. 1 solo single was “Joshua.” She reached the top 5 with the ballad “Coat of Many Colors,” about her mother sewing together scraps to make a coat Parton wore “so proudly” even as her peers mocked it.

In 1973, she had the hit that made her career — “Jolene,” a country music standard with its churning rhythm and Parton’s repetition of the title as she pleads for the woman not to steal her man.

“Jolene” was followed by the 1974 hit, “I Will Always Love You,” an ode to Wagoner that helped her win the Country Music Association’s female vocalist of the year back to back in 1975 and 1976. She famously turned down Elvis Presley, who wanted to record it, because she would not share publishing rights.

Decades later, Whitney Houston’s version became a smash for the 1992 soundtrack of her film, “The Bodyguard.” Houston won a Grammy for her performance in 1994, presented to her by Parton.

For millions, she was simply “Dolly,” a mixture of Southern charm, humor and glamour. She was also considered a feminist role model for holding the reins of her career, writing her own songs, owning her content and controlling her finances in an entertainment world dominated by men.

Parton was open to making fun of herself; when she hosted “Saturday Night Live” in 1989 she told the writers her only restrictions were she wouldn’t curse and wouldn’t make fun of Jesus. She'd regularly joke about her breasts or her dumb blonde appearance, but with a wink that she was the one controlling the laughs. In the memoir “My Life So Far,” her friend Jane Fonda remembered Parton’s way with a wisecrack, “usually high raunch,” and a laugh that was “somewhere between a girl’s giggle, an explosive shriek, and a cascade of little bells.”

She married Carl Dean, an asphalt paving contractor, in the mid-1960s and they were together until his death in 2025 at the age of 82. Though rarely seen in public, he was an influence on her career: She said she wrote “Jolene” about a flirty bank teller who seemed to take an interest in Dean.

In her first major film role, Parton played alongside Fonda and Lily Tomlin in the hit comedy “9 to 5.” Critic Roger Ebert called her a “natural-born movie star” and the title song, written by Parton, earned her two Grammy Awards and was a pop crossover hit. Starring roles in “The Best Little Whorehouse In Texas” and “Steel Magnolias” followed.

“I never thought of myself as a movie star,” she told The Associated Press' Bob Thomas in 1979. “I knew I’d be a star, but as a singer or as a writer of songs or books or poetry. I wanted to be a famous performer and wear flashy clothes, but singing in movies was not one of my ambitions. My family lived in the mountains and we didn’t see movies.”

Her love affair with TV and film continued for decades, with appearances alongside Miley Cyrus on “Hannah Montana” and adaptations of her music for Christmas specials, films and streaming series.

The stage adaptation “9 to 5: The Musical” debuted in 2009, and “DOLLY: A True Original Musical” is set to open on Jan. 19, 2027, on what would have been her 81st birthday.

Parton’s appeal spanned social and political divides. But she was strict in not voicing her own political beliefs, often turning aside questions about presidents, candidates, policies and other controversies.

“I don’t do politics,” Parton told Jad Abumrad on his hit podcast “Dolly Parton’s America.” “I have too many fans on both sides of the fence. Of course, I have my opinion about everything, but I learned years ago to keep your mouth shut about things.”

When the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Foundation sent out a ballot with her name on it, though she said she felt she hadn’t earned it, the voters answered with a “Hello, Dolly.” Parton showed up to the induction ceremony, performed and then put out a rock album.

Associated Press writer Hillel Italie contributed.

FILE - Dolly Parton, left, Lily Tomlin, center, and Jane Fonda arrive for the premiere of their film "9 To 5" in New York on Dec. 14, 1980. (AP Photo/Richard Drew, File) Corrects spelling from Jan to Jane.

FILE - Dolly Parton appears at Dollywood's Season Passholder and Media Day in Pigeon Forge, Tenn., March 8, 2024. (Photo by Amy Harris/Invision/AP, File)

FILE - Dolly Parton, left, Lily Tomlin, center, and Jan Fonda arrive for the premiere of their film "9 To 5" in New York on Dec. 14, 1980. (AP Photo/Richard Drew, File)

FILE - Dolly Parton reads her book "Coat of Many Colors," at the Library of Congress in Washington on Feb. 27, 2018. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, File)

FILE - Singer and Actress Dolly Parton shown at a party following the premiere of her movie 'Nine to Five' in Los Angeles, Dec. 12, 1980. (AP Photo/Harms, File)

FILE - Dolly Parton poses for a photo at her office in Nashville, Tenn., Aug. 11, 2005. (AP Photo/John Russell, File)

The Supreme Court's decision giving preliminary approval for President Donald Trump's order restricting mail voting may not lead to a single election procedure changing during the November midterms, but it has already thrown into uncertainty the method that nearly one-third of the country uses to vote.

Rather than saying that Trump's order is legal, the high court said Monday it was too early for Democratic-run states to challenge it in June, when they convinced a federal judge in Boston to freeze the order for November's election. That effectively restarts the legal fight over the order in an incredibly compressed timeline, with initial ballots scheduled to be sent to North Carolina's overseas and military voters in just over a week, on Sept. 4.

A second injunction barring the U.S. Postal Service from making changes to comply with Trump's directive remains in effect. Still, the administration late Monday filed a motion asking that the second hold be removed, and has posted new regulations from the Postal Service that would go into effect Tuesday if the legal pathway is fully cleared.

That new rule requires specific formatting for envelopes containing mail ballots — which may force some jurisdictions to completely revise theirs — and makes states use an electronic system to identify to the Postal Service who is voting by mail. If states don't comply with the rule, their mail ballots won't get sent.

The prospect of such a potential sweeping overhaul in mere days boggled critics' minds. In her dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson warned that the decision “needlessly injects chaos and uncertainty into the upcoming midterm elections.”

David Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research, agreed, saying the majority “seemed to create complete chaos leading up to the midterm elections” and it'd be “impossible” for states to comply with the new rules at this late date.

Jesse Salinas, the registrar of Yolo County in California and president of that state's association of election officers, noted that ballots in his state start going out in 11 days and his county already printed its envelopes.

“You look at the timeline, and it's a bit chaotic,” Salinas said, noting he doesn't know precisely which envelope designs comply with the new rules.

He dismissed the idea of a last-minute revision in procedures. “The capacity to do that, I just don't see it,” Salinas said.

Tammy Patrick, chief program officer at the Elections Center, an association of 2,500 election officers, warned that it's impossible for any state to comply with the rule and that no one she talked to has tried.

“There isn't a single state that does their elections in a way that this postal rule lays out,” Patrick said in an interview. “There has been this assumption that this is not going to happen because it could not happen the way it's laid out, because no one does it this way.”

Cisco Aguilar, the Democratic Secretary of State in Nevada, where every registered voter gets a mail ballot, noted the post office had already misdelivered three dozen mail ballots from his state's June primary.

“They're going to come in within seven days and build a massive database that has 100% accuracy?” Aguilar said in disbelief. “It is impossible to implement this system in that time frame.”

Trump has long sought to make voting by mail largely impossible, though he himself has repeatedly cast his ballots by mail.

Trump falsely blamed his 2020 loss on mail voting and spun up baroque conspiracy theories that he's tried to prove while back in office. Judges blocked him from creating new voting restrictions by executive order last year, and he only issued his latest order after his bill to revamp voting procedures stalled in the Senate amidst Democratic opposition.

The Election Assistance Commission found that 29% of voters in 2024 cast their ballots through the mail. Democrats are more likely to use mail voting than Republicans, a reflection of how the process has become polarized since Trump began attacking it in 2020. Still, the president has to date been unable to make the sweeping changes he's sought because the Constitution grants control of voting rules to states, and in federal elections, to Congress — not the president.

Legal experts stressed that's why they view it as unlikely Trump's order will actually be implemented. Not only did the majority in the Supreme Court's unsigned order note that it hasn't determined whether the measure is constitutional, but every victory the administration has won so far has only been because it's argued that it's premature to talk about its constitutionality. Opponents are already weighing new lawsuits since the final rule was published Friday night.

Becker, a former Department of Justice lawyer who co-wrote a book debunking Trump's 2020 election lies, added that he expects the next round of litigation to keep the order from being implemented in November. Rick Hasen, a UCLA law professor, said after the ruling: “This doesn't necessarily mean anything in terms of November.”

Derek Muller, a Notre Dame law professor, said the Supreme Court still ensured a fraught court battle in the coming days.

“It puts courts in a terrible place, because whatever happens is super close to the election,” Muller said. “If it permits it, it creates super disruption for the states. If it suspends it, it visibly angers the administration.”

Hasen said it's inconceivable that the regulation will impact voters in November.

“Both legal and practical reasons make this practically impossible to enforce,” he said of Trump's mail voting order.

Elections are run by local officials in thousands of scattered offices, many of which don't even have a full-time employee. Patrick said that those who work in the field have been left reeling.

“Election officials just feel like punching bags at this moment because they plan one way of conducting their elections, and have contingency plans if a fire breaks out, or one location loses power,” Patrick said. “But how do you plan for something that affects one-third, one half, or all of your voters?”

The Supreme Court is seen on the morning after the conservative majority sided with the Trump administration in a case over President Donald Trump's executive order restricting mail-in voting, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Aug. 25, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Election workers sort vote-by-mail ballots at the Miami-Dade County Supervisor of Elections Office for the Florida primary election in Doral, Fla., Tuesday, Aug. 18, 2026. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky)

Election workers sort vote-by-mail ballots at the Miami-Dade County Supervisor of Elections Office for the Florida primary election in Doral, Fla., Tuesday, Aug. 18, 2026. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky)

An election worker sorts vote-by-mail ballots at the Miami-Dade County Supervisor of Elections Office for the Florida primary election in Doral, Fla., Tuesday, Aug. 18, 2026. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky)