Dolly Parton, American country music icon, was reported to have died on Tuesday at the age of 80.
She was an immense and gifted talent who started writing serious music at the tender age of 10 and says she wrote some 3,000 tunes in all.
Her hit songs include enduring country standards like 1973’s Jolene and the iconic ballad I Will Always Love You, which became an international smash for Whitney Houston.
The “queen of country music” released 49 studio albums and more than 100 compilation and collaboration albums over a decades-long career that saw her sell more than 100 million records and top the charts more than any woman in the genre.
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At the height of her fame, she reached number one on the pop charts too, with songs like “Islands in the Stream,” and starred in Hollywood blockbusters “9 to 5,” for which she sang the insuppressible title track, and “Steel Magnolias.”
Dolly essentially wrote the book on how a woman can rule the airwaves in a male-dominated industry, ultimately becoming an American treasure whose songs were covered by the likes of Shania Twain, Sinead O’Connor and the White Stripes.
Her eye-popping hourglass figure, gravity-defying hairdos and wigs, and take-me-on-a-hayride appeal were unavoidable parts of her persona.
But she did not sweep sexism aside so much as defiantly play against it using her own rules, capitalizing on her homespun endearment and business savvy to rack up one of the largest fortunes of any American stage performer.
And she embraced the flash and glitter that came with stardom.
“I love makeup, I love clothes, and I got the personality that can pull it off,” Parton told National Public Radio in 2001.
And Parton rarely went out of her way to knock down constant rumors about possible dalliances with other men despite her low-key marriage to Carl Dean, who remained well out of the spotlight after their 1966 wedding. He died last year.
“I didn’t say I was dead, I said I was married,” she grinned to late night TV host Jay Leno in 2002 when he asked whether she enjoyed her on-screen scenes with leading men like Sylvester Stallone.
Parton said she was “serious-minded about my work, but I knew how to enjoy men. Being a girl always served me well.”
Her pulchritude was unavoidable, but her songcraft was proof that Dolly was more than eye candy.
“She may lead with the boobs but she has the talent to back it all up,” Rolling Stone magazine editor David Wild once said.
