Country icon Dolly Parton has died at age 80 after “a brief battle with cancer,” US media reported Tuesday, citing representatives of the artist.
“After courageously fighting a brief battle with cancer, Dolly left this world today at the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center, surrounded by her loved ones,” according to a statement from her representatives sent to People magazine.
The unforgettable interpreter of “Jolene” and “unifying figure” with immense popularity, passed away on Tuesday, sparking an intense wave of emotion.
“She was always present on your television, your record player, your CDs or in the playlist of your phone, becoming a full member of your family,” said her nephew in a video announcing her death, posted on the star’s social networks.
A sign of the emotion that gripped America, Donald Trump ordered flags to be flown at half-mast for a week and regretted a “real loss for millions of people”.
“Dolly Parton was unique” and “told the stories of ordinary Americans with sincerity, humility and sensitivity,” praised former Democratic President Bill Clinton on X.
From the pen of Dolly Parton emerged some 3,000 titles, including classics like “Jolene” (1973) and “I Will Always Love You” (1974), the cover of which in 1992 by Whitney Houston was a worldwide success.
In New York, the iconic Empire State Building will pay tribute to him by sparkling pink in the evening, at 9:25 p.m. local, in reference to “9 to 5”, another of his hits.
Monument
Erica Moore, 37, was driving to Washington on Tuesday when she heard the news of his death. “We put Dolly Parton in the car,” she tells AFP, adding that she plans to go to Nashville, capital of the singer’s native Tennessee, on Wednesday: “I imagine there will be a big gathering.”
Steve Bowman, 63-year-old entrepreneur, will remember Dolly Parton as a “very unifying figure in our country”. “There weren’t many people who didn’t like Dolly Parton.”
We knew the singing icon was ill for some time. In May, she canceled a series of concerts planned in Las Vegas, like the first time last October.
Dolly Parton had explained that her convalescence was well underway, but that she was not yet ready to return to the stage, citing immune and digestive systems that were “put to the test”.
The singer-songwriter, also an actress, powerful businesswoman and philanthropist, still hoped to inaugurate a museum and a hotel at the end of the year in Nashville.
During her sixty-year career, the queen of country released nearly fifty albums, sold more than 100 million records and built one of the biggest fortunes on the American music scene.
A multi-awarded artist who wrote her own songs, controlled her image and managed her career masterfully in a predominantly male industry, until becoming a monument of song in the United States, she embodied a feminist figure – without claiming it.
“Dollywood”
“His example convinced us that anything was possible. Never did a door resist her, and those she opened marked and changed the course of history,” praises her nephew.
Her gravity-defying blonde hairstyles and her sartorial audacity have contributed in their own way to forging her legend.
Dolly Rebecca Parton was born on January 19, 1946 in a cabin in the depths of Tennessee, the fourth of a poor family of twelve children.
From the age of 13, she sang on the legendary stage of the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, whose country radio show was broadcast throughout America.
She moved there as soon as she graduated, at the end of the 1960s, and quickly established herself as one of the most popular American singers.
An accomplished entrepreneur, Dolly Parton also launched a publishing house, radio station, restaurants, and even a perfume, “Dolly”, at the age of 75.
Her immense popularity can perhaps be measured even better than elsewhere at “Dollywood”, the amusement park that she opened in 1986 near where she grew up, and which welcomes several million visitors per year.
Her husband of nearly 60 years, Carl Dean, whom she met when they were 18, died in 2025.
