Dolly Parton, the celebrated country music star, passed away on August 25 at 80 years old following a short fight with cancer, her family announced.
A career built on ownership
The day she finished high school, Parton relocated to Nashville to chase a songwriting career. In 1965 she secured a deal with Monument Records, and two years afterward she became a regular on The Porter Wagoner Show, a collaboration that propelled her to nationwide fame.
Throughout her career she composed over 3,000 tracks, such as “Jolene,” “I Will Always Love You” and “9 to 5,” and moved more than 100 million records. She possesses the distinction of achieving the highest count of number-one country singles by a woman, with 26 chart-toppers, and she has earned 11 Grammy Awards. She also ventured into movies, headlining the films “9 to 5” and “Steel Magnolias.”
Business acumen emerged quickly for Parton. In 1966 she partnered with her uncle Bill Owens to establish Owe-Par Publishing, securing her control over her song copyrights from the outset. Later, she turned down Elvis Presley’s proposal to record “I Will Always Love You” when his manager insisted on a 50% share of publishing, a choice that safeguarded many years of royalty earnings.
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The most significant business decision occurred in 1986. Instead of taking a simple licensing payment for her name, Parton secured an equity interest by teaming up with the Herschend family to create Dollywood. The equal-share arrangement eventually developed into one of the nation’s most frequented amusement parks. Two years after opening the park, she founded the Dollywood Foundation, which supports literacy initiatives throughout East Tennessee.
During the past decade she broadened her brand into consumer goods, initiating a long-term collaboration with Duncan Hines and securing licenses for a perfume and a pet-clothing collection. The last projects she undertook arrived shortly before she passed away. Earlier this year she opened the Songteller Hotel in Nashville, and two months prior to her death she inaugurated Dolly’s Tennessean Travel Stop, a highway-side travel center in Tennessee.
She never reached billionaire status, as she directed a large portion of her earnings to the Imagination Library and other philanthropic efforts.
“I don’t boss anybody around, because I don’t even have the time or the energy to even do that. I just try to put people that are smarter than me in all the right places, and then I go on about my business,” Parton told Bloomberg in 2024.
