David and Art - A Timeless Artist

Dolly Rebecca Parton was born in January, 1946 in a one-room cabin in a little settlement in Tennessee called Pittman Center.It was on the edge of the Great Smokey Mountains National Park and not far, at least as the crow flies, from the border of North Carolina. It wasn’t even incorporated as a town until 1974.She was the fourth of 12 children.Her father was a farmer mostly and her mother had the full-time job of raising those children.Her mother also instilled in her children a love for music, particularly sad songs, she remembered. In 1969 Dolly wrote a song called “Coat of Many Colors” that hearkened back to the poverty of her childhood.

She began performing music at her church, and wrote her first song at age six.When she was eight, her uncle bought her a guitar and she was a natural on it.(She also went on to play the dulcimer, the autoharp, the banjo, the fiddle, the piano, the recorder, and the saxophone.)At age 10, she debuted on Knoxville’s WROL which by then was also a TV station.She made her first recording when she was 11.

Two years later—when she was just 13—she appeared for the first time on the stage at the Grand Ol Opry where she was introduced by a rising star named Johnny Cash.After she graduated from Sevier County High School in 1964 she immediately moved to Nashville.By then she was a prolific songwriter and had songs recorded by established stars like Kitty Wells and Hank Williams, Jr.

She kept playing live around Nashville and her first album came out in 1967 when she was 21.That was also the year that Porter Wagoner, who had relocated to Nashville from WKRO in Springfield, Missouri, invited her to join the cast of his weekly hit tv show.They made many recordings as a duet, and she had her first #1 single early in 1971.

The numbers begin to boggle the mind.Over the next six years she had 8 number one singles, and in all she had 25.She recorded 49 studio albums and 44 of them reached the top ten.She sold more than 100 million records.She was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2001, received a National Medal of Arts in 2004, was a Kennedy Center honoree in 2006, and received a Lifetime Grammy award in 2011.

She was one of the most popular musicians in history.All that, along with her movies, TV shows, and philanthropy, made her a national treasure.When she died on August 25th, she was 80 years old.

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