Dolly Parton‘s career as an entertainer spanned roughly seven decades.
During that time, the legendary country music star cemented herself as an icon not only in the music industry, but also as a movie star and a philanthropist.
From getting her start on “The Porter Wagoner Show” in 1964 to multiple Academy Award nominations, Parton forged a path for herself in the industry and paved the way for female country singers who followed her.
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Here are some of Parton’s career highlights.
Parton moved to Nashville, Tennessee, in May 1964, the day after graduating from high school, to pursue a career in country music.
Three years later, she released her debut album, “Hello, I’m Dolly,” in February 1967, which caught the attention of singer Porter Wagoner. He then invited Parton to join him on his TV show, “The Porter Wagoner Show,” a few months later, in September 1967.
Parton’s time on the show provided her with national attention and established her as a recording artist. Her duets with Wagoner, starting with “The Last Thing on My Mind,” became major country hits. Their partnership also earned Parton her first Grammy nomination in 1970.
In addition to her duets with Wagoner, she also released many of her well-known songs during this era, including “Jolene,” “Coat of Many Colors,” “My Tennessee Mountain Home,” “Just Because I’m a Woman” and many more.
After seven years on the show, Parton felt it was time to pursue a solo career, ultimately leaving the show in 1974.
Shortly after leaving the show, Parton released “Love Is Like a Butterfly,” which quickly climbed to the top of the Billboard country charts.
She continued releasing hit after hit, including “Here You Come Again,” off the album with the same name, which earned her first Grammy Award win in 1979.
She had 26 songs reach No. 1 on the Billboard country charts, including “The Bargain Store,” “Heartbreaker,” “Starting Over Again,” “Tennessee Homesick Blues” and “Why’d You Come in Here Lookin’ Like That.”
In addition to her own music, Parton found success covering other artists’ songs in her own style, including “Stairway to Heaven,” “The House of the Rising Sun,” “Shine” and others.
“Yes, and they loved it. Robert’s been out on tour, so he’s been doing a lot of interviews,” she told Hot Press in 2002 about Led Zeppelin singer Robert Plant’s reaction to her “Stairway to Heaven” cover. “And he seems to make mention of it a lot – I guess because people are asking him about it – and he says something different every time, but he seems to like it. He says he really likes what I did with it, and that makes me feel good.”
Parton wrote one of her most well-known songs, “I Will Always Love You,” in 1973 when she told Wagoner she wanted to leave the show and go solo.
When Wagoner responded negatively and all her efforts to get him to understand her reasoning fell on deaf ears, Parton thought she would put all her feelings into a song and play it for him to help him understand.
“I said, ‘Porter, sit down. I got something I need to sing to you,’” she told Howard Stern in 2023. “He was just sitting behind his desk and tears started rolling down. He said, ‘That’s just the best song you ever wrote, and you can go if I can produce the song.’”
The song was released in 1974 as part of her “Jolene” album, and climbed to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot Country Singles chart. It returned to No. 1 again in 1982 when Parton released a different version for “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.”
Nearly two decades after the song’s initial release, Whitney Houston‘s version reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, where it stayed for 14 consecutive weeks.
Houston recorded an R&B ballad version of the song for the soundtrack to “The Bodyguard.”
In addition to staying at the No. 1 spot for 14 weeks, it was Billboard’s No. 1 song of 1993, went 19-times Platinum in the U.S., and won two Grammy Awards at the 1994 ceremony. This version of the song is also the highest-selling single written by a female artist.
“I almost wrecked, honest to god. I had to pull over to a Walgreens … and listen to the rest of it,” Parton told Stern about hearing Houston’s version for the first time. “I couldn’t believe my little country sad song could even be done like that … and it was just overwhelming. That was one of the greatest experiences I ever had in my entire life.”
Two years after leaving “The Porter Wagoner Show,” Parton started her own variety show called “Dolly!” in 1976.
The show aired 26 half-hour episodes and featured guest stars such as Kenny Rogers, Linda Ronstadt, Emmylou Harris, Anne Murray and many others.
Ten years after that show ended, she released a second variety show, “Dolly,” in 1987.
The show aired 22 one-hour episodes from September 1987 to May 1988 and was a huge ratings success, featuring guests such as Oprah Winfrey, Bruce Willis and Loretta Lynn as well as Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy.
In addition to Wagoner, Parton had several other significant collaborations throughout her career.
One of her most celebrated partnerships was with Kenny Rogers. The two first connected in 1983 when they recorded the hit song, “Islands In the Stream” together. The song was a massive crossover hit and spent two consecutive weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and earned them a Grammy nomination.
The two later released a joint Christmas album in 1984, titled “Once Upon a Christmas,” and a year later collaborated on “Real Love,” which reached No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot Country Singles chart.
Nearly 30 years later, they released “You Can’t Make Old Friends” in 2013, the title track of Rogers’ album with the same name, earning them another Grammy nomination.
“It really made me very emotional,” Parton told ABC News in September 2013 about the song. “Even when I was recording it I was tearful, and when I was listening to the demo it really just, you know, it certainly summed us up and our relationship. But it also is such a song of friendship of all kinds.”
Parton also partnered with Emmylou Harris and Linda Ronstadt in 1987 to release their highly successful album, “Trio,” which largely featured covers, except for “Wildflowers,” which was written by Parton for the album.
The album reached No. 1 on Billboard’s country albums chart and No. 6 on the Billboard 200 and earned the three artists a Grammy.
They followed it with “Trio II” in 1999, which featured a highly praised cover of Neil Young’s song “After the Gold Rush,” which earned them yet another Grammy.
In addition to these collaborations, Parton released songs with Brad Paisley, Vince Gill, Willie Nelson, Reba McEntire, Miley Cyrus and others.
After making a name for herself in the music world, she set her sights on movies.
Parton made her feature film debut in the 1980 classic comedy “9 to 5,” which also starred Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin. Tomlin, Fonda and Parton played a trio of secretaries who took revenge on their sexist boss by kidnapping him and enacting changes in the workplace in his name.
The movie was an instant classic, earning Parton three Golden Globe nominations and an Oscar nomination for best original song for the song she wrote for the film, “9 to 5.”
Two years later, Parton made a splash with a second critically-acclaimed role in the film “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas,” playing Miss Mona, a madam at the Chicken Ranch, a long-running Texas brothel.
Her role in the film earned her another Golden Globe nomination.
She then starred in the 1989 movie “Steel Magnolias,” alongside Hollywood heavy-hitters Sally Field, Shirley MacLaine, Daryl Hannah, Olympia Dukakis and Julia Roberts.
Together they portrayed a group of Southern women who banded together during life’s good and hard moments, with Parton in particular playing a hair stylist.
“I totally related to her. She’s not different from me at all, and it wasn’t hard for me to play a Southern girl with a Southern accent,” she told “Today” in 1989. “And it’s not foreign to me, like you said in your intro, for me to do hair, ’cause I grew up doing my sister’s hair, my friends’ hair – I started cutting and bleaching in a salon on my own at 15 years old and I loved it.”
Throughout her career, she also appeared in the films “Rhinestone,” “Straight Talk,” “The Beverly Hillbillies,” “Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous,” “Joyful Noise” and others, including appearing on three episodes of “Hannah Montana.”
Parton received many accolades during her roughly seven decades in the entertainment industry.
Since releasing her first album in 1967, Parton has received a total of 55 Grammy Award nominations, resulting in 10 wins. Her first win came in 1979 in the female country vocal performance for her song “Here You Come Again.”
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She later won awards for “9 to 5,” “Trio,” “The Grass Is Blue,” “Shine” and other projects, with her final nomination coming in 2025 for best audiobook narration and storytelling recording for her memoir, “Behind The Seams: My Life In Rhinestones.”
Her music was also celebrated in the film world, with two Academy Award nominations for best original song. The first came in 1981 for her song, “9 to 5,” and the second in 2006 for the song, “Travelin’ Thru,” featured in the movie, “Transamerica.”
Parton received six Golden Globe nominations over her career, including three connected to “9 to 5” and one for her performance in “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.” She also won an Emmy Award for outstanding television movie as an executive producer of “Christmas on the Square.”
She also won 10 CMA Awards out of 45 nominations, including entertainer of the year in 1978, five ACM Awards and seven CMT Awards.
Parton was honored in other ways, in addition to the many awards she accumulated throughout her career.
In 1984, the singer received her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1999 and the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2001.
She later received a Kennedy Center Honor in 2006, recognizing her contributions to American culture.
In 2022, Parton was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Two years later, Billboard named Parton the No. 1 country music artist of all time.
“People usually [say] ‘Dolly rocks’ or ‘you rock’ or ‘you’re a rock star.’ I thought they just meant that I was cool, and I took that as a great compliment,” she told Billboard in February 2022 about the induction. “But now I’m going to have to take it literally!”
Apart from her work as an entertainer, Parton was also known for her philanthropy.
She started the Imagination Library in 1995, which sends free books to children around the world from birth to age five, no matter their families’ economic status. She was inspired to create the program by her father, who never learned to read or write.
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According to the organization’s website, over three million kids have registered and over 330 million books have been gifted since the program started.
“When I was growing up in the hills of East Tennessee, I knew my dreams would come true. I know there are children in your community with their own dreams,” Parton said in a statement on the website. “They dream of becoming a doctor or an inventor or a minister. Who knows, maybe there is a little girl whose dream is to be a writer and singer. The seeds of these dreams are often found in books and the seeds you help plant in your community can grow across the world.”
Parton showed off her business knowledge when she opened her own theme park called Dollywood in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, in 1986.
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Not only was the theme park popular, drawing about four million visitors annually, it also provided job opportunities for thousands of people in the area, proving Parton was all about giving back to her community.
“The Smokies – and the wonderful people who work here – are what make Dollywood so different than many of the other theme parks around the world,” she told National Geographic in January 2024, per People. “We’re right on the front porch of the most-visited national park in the country, so we take what God gave us and use it to dream up the big dreams we want our guests to experience while they are here riding rides and making memories.”
In addition to her own chart-toppers, Parton wrote many songs for other artists which were also big hits.
Included in the list are “Kentucky Gambler,” which she wrote for Merle Haggard and became a No. 1 country hit in 1975, and “Put It Off Until Tomorrow” for Bill Phillips, which became a top 10 country hit.
She also wrote “Waltz Me to Heaven” for Waylon Jennings, “The Stranger” for Kenny Rogers,” “I’m In No Condition” for Hank Williams Jr., “Love, You’re So Beautiful Tonight” for Willie Nelson and “There’ll Always Be Music” for Tina Turner.
These are far from all the songs she wrote, as it is reported that Parton had a catalog of over 3,000 songs penned by her.
