B1 Intermediate · 250 words · 2 min read

Dolly Parton, Country Music Icon Behind Jolene, Dies at 80

From a one-bedroom cabin in Tennessee to more than 100 million records sold, the singer-songwriter's career spanned seven decades.

Dolly Parton, the country music star whose songs told stories of love, loss and life in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee, has died at the age of 80. Her team announced her death on social media.

In a career spanning seven decades, Parton wrote more than 3,000 songs, sold over 100 million records worldwide and won 10 Grammy awards. Her best-known hits include Jolene, Coat of Many Colors and I Will Always Love You, which later became a global success for Whitney Houston.

Dolly Rebecca Parton was born in 1946, the fourth of 12 children in a poor farming family who lived in a one-bedroom cabin. Music ran in the family: her mother sang folk songs and her uncle accompanied her on guitar at her earliest performances. She sang in the church where her grandfather was the pastor from the age of six, appeared on local television as a teenager and, at 13, performed at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, where she was introduced by Johnny Cash.

Parton considered herself a songwriter above everything else. "It's my way of expressing myself," she once said. "It's my therapy." She was also a sharp businesswoman who took control of her own career, and she used her famously glamorous image and quick wit to get ahead of any jokes about her appearance.

After finishing high school in 1964 she moved to Nashville to begin her singing career, and met her future husband, Carl Dean, on her very first day in the city.

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