Dolly Parton was around six when she wrote her first song: “Little Tiny Tasseltop,” an ode to her corncob doll with corn-silk hair. Her mother stored it preciously in a shoebox.
“I loved that little doll,” Parton wrote decades later. “I expressed myself and my feelings through writing — I’m sure what I was thinking was, ‘Well, Tasseltop has to have a song about her.'”
Parton never stopped making music after that. The irrepressible country music singer, songwriter and actress whose charisma, heartfelt lyrics and business acumen captured the public’s imagination for nearly six decades, died on Tuesday, August 25, aged 80, her family said in a statement.
No cause of death was disclosed, but her publicist said she died peacefully in Nashville. Days earlier, she told People magazine she was dealing with unspecified health issues but planned to keep working.
“By her example, we believed anything was possible,” her nephew, Bryan Seaver, said in a video message. “She never saw a door she couldn’t open, and the doors she opened made and changed history.”
