Dolly Parton, country music icon, dead at 80

Country music icon Dolly Parton died in Nashville, Tenn., on Tuesday at the age of 80.

“I am representing the Parton and Owens family today, announcing the passing of my Aunt Dolly Rebecca Parton Dean. Sister, sis, Aunt Granny to one generation and Gigi to the next. This video announcement is something Dolly asked of me years ago, before I fully absorbed it as a future reality,” Seaver began.

“As her head of security for more than two decades, a role my father Larry held before me, I have imagined the heaviness of this moment, but haven’t truly felt it until now. It is an honour, an honour that is mixed with absolute pride and great sadness. But sadness lies with us, not with Dolly.”

Seaver said that Parton lived “in the light” and is now “in the arms of Jesus, surely met by Carl, her parents and countless others who have watched her and longed for her to meet them in the heavens.”

“I first went on the road with Dolly as a kid, getting a taste of the road life in the early 1980s. Dolly opened doors, not just for me, but for her entire family to reach the potential we didn’t even know was possible. Dolly also opened doors for generations of singers, songwriters, musicians and dreamers from every walk of life and across every continent,” he said.

“By her example, we believed that anything was possible. She never saw a door she couldn’t open and the doors she opened made and changed history,” Seaver said. “My family and I have shared a lifetime of beautiful memories with Dolly, but so have you.”

“Our family and the team she has entrusted with her legacy will work diligently to ensure her spirit will live with us forever,” Seaver said.

“Dolly called me and said she wants to rest in a beautiful bed of plush cotton because after a life wearing heavy rhinestones, she finally deserves to be comfortable and have some rest,” he said, adding, “Rest in peace, Aunt Dolly.”

Parton wrote hundreds of songs, including classics like Jolene , Coat of Many Colors and I Will Always Love You , that totalled more than 100 million worldwide sales and more than one billion online streams. Parton, who plucked bejewelled banjos, guitars and dulcimers with her long fingernails during performances, was a generous philanthropist and successful businesswoman whose projects included a theme park in the Smoky Mountain foothills near her birthplace.

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

Parton’s first musical performances were in church, where her grandfather was a preacher. By age 10, she was learning guitar and singing on local television shows. At 13, she appeared at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, where Johnny Cash introduced her as “a little girl here from up in East Tennessee.”

Parton released her huge hit in 1974, I Will Always Love You , that helped her win the Country Music Association’s female vocalist of the year back-to-back in 1975 and 1976.