Country music legend Dolly Parton dies at 80

Legendary country singer, songwriter and actor Dolly Parton, known for such chart-topping hits as “Jolene,” “I Will Always Love You” and “9 to 5,” died Tuesday at the age of 80, according to a social media video announcement by her nephew Brian Seaver.

Parton, who had many hits on the country charts and on the Billboard Hot 100, was also a celebrated actress, starring in “9 to 5” alongside Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda, “Rhinestone” alongside Sylvester Stallone and in 1989’s “Steel Magnolias,” which won a People’s Choice Award in 1990.

Among Parton’s accolades include 10 Grammys, including a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, an Emmy, a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, an honorary award given by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. She sold over 100 million records worldwide, according to her website, and worked with artists such as Willie Nelson, Miley Cyrus, Kris Kristofferson, Emmylou Harris, Linda Ronstadt and, to great success, Kenny Rogers.

In recent years, Parton had been renowned for her philanthropy, using her net worth to promote literacy throughout poorer sections of the United States, including through proliferate book-giving and donations through the Dollywood Foundation and Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library. She was recently reported to have given away her 100 millionth book to the Library of Congress.

“Inspiring kids to love to read became my mission. In the beginning, my hope was simply to inspire the children in my home county, but here we are today with a worldwide program that gives a book a month to well over 3 million children,” Parton said of the library’s mission.

“Before he passed away, my Daddy told me the Imagination Library was probably the most important thing I had ever done. I can’t tell you how much that meant to me because I created the Imagination Library as a tribute to my Daddy,” she said.

The post Country music legend Dolly Parton dies at 80 appeared first on MS NOW.

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