www.answers.com
American country singer and multi-instrumentalist Dolly Parton, who is best known as “The Queen of Country Music” for her distinctive soprano voice and contribution in country music, is certainly an inspiring “rags to riches” story of rising from a dirt poor family in rural Appalachia. Today, she is known to be one of the most famous and commercially most successful female country artists of all time with more than 100 million sales of her records.
Dolly Parton was born on January 19 1946, as one of 12 children in Locust Ridge, Tennessee, to a tobacco farmer Robert Lee Parton and his wife Avie Lee and grew up in a rustic, decrepit one-room cabin in Locust Ridge in Tennessee. From the early age, she developed passion for music and she learned church songs and created own tunes on the guitar which was gifted to her by her relative. At the age of 10, she began to perform professionally and sang on radio and television shows in Knoxville and at the age of 13 she recorded on a small label and made her Grand Ole Opry debut. In 1967, her career took off with her hit “Dumb Blonde” and became prominent when popular American country music singer Porter Wagoner invited her on his weekly television show ‘The Porter Wagoner Show’. Together, they released a duet single – a cover of Tom Paxton’s “The Last Thing on My Mind”, which reached in top-ten hit on the country singles charts. In 1977, her single “Here You Come Again” was another very successful on the country as well as pop charts and in 1980s she gave several hits among which 9 to 5 in 1981 and duet with Kenny Rogers “Islands in the Stream” in 1983 were top hits. She is a prolific composer who has composed more than 3,000 songs among which “I Will Always Love You”, “Jolene”, “9 to 5”, “Coat of Many Colors” and “My Tennessee Mountain Home” were internationally popular.
Besides singing she has appeared in the movies 9 to 5, Gnomeo & Juliet, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, Straight Talk, Steel Magnolias, and Joyful Noise and some other. She has won several Grammy and Country Music awards and in 2000 was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.
Info Source: wikipedia.org
Dolly Parton Quotes:
If you don’t like the road you’re walking, start paving another one.
I feel that sin and evil are the negative part of you, and I think it’s like a battery: you’ve got to have the negative and the positive in order to be a complete person.
I know who I am, I know what I can and can’t do. I know what I will and won’t do. I know what I’m capable of and I don’t agree to do things that I don’t think I can pull off.
We cannot direct the wind, but we can adjust the sails. -Dolly Parton
“If your actions create a legacy that inspires others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, then, you are an excellent leader. -Dolly Parton”
