Dolly Parton

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Dolly Rebecca Parton (born January 19, 1946) is an American country music singer, songwriter and actress.

Born in Sevierville, Tennessee, the fourth of 12 children, she started her entertainment career singing on local radio and television in eastern Tennessee. She moved to Nashville in 1964, and in 1967 was invited to join the weekly syndicated country music television program hosted by Porter Waggoner, with whom she became half of a highly successful duet team. She took to the Nashville Sound many traditional, folkloric elements from East Tennessee and popular music. Despite being typecast in many circles as a "Country and Western" singer, Parton has had commercial success as a pop singer and actress. Her work of the late 1990s and beyond has moved towards bluegrass and more traditional folk styles.

Parton is also a shrewd businesswoman. She invested much of her earnings into business ventures in her native East Tennessee, notably Pigeon Forge which includes a theme park named Dollywood, resulting in a thriving tourism industry drawing people from large parts of the southeastern and midwestern US, notably, Tennessee, Kentucky and Ohio. This region of the US, like most areas of Appalachia, traditionally has been characterized by economic poverty. Parton thus put back into the community where she was born and raised. Many of her relatives earn a good living from Dollywood.

Parton is noted for her large breasts. She often mocked this reputation with quips such as "I would have burned my bra in the 60s but it would have taken the fire department three days to put it out" or "the reason I have a small waist and small feet is that nothing grows well in the shade". She reportedly turned down several offers to pose for Playboy magazine and similar publications, and to date there are no known photographs of her posing topless or nude, although there are many faked photographs of her topless on the Internet. Although she has confessed to having some amount of cosmetic surgery (notably a breast lift), rumors that she has also had some breast augmentation surgery remain unsubstantiated.

Parton is a hugely successful songwriter, having penned the single "I Will Always Love You" which was performed by Whitney Houston on The Bodyguard (1992) soundtrack. It became the best-selling hit written and performed by a female vocalist, with worldwide sales of 12 million. Parton also earned an Academy Award nomination in 1981 for Best Original Song for the title track to the film Nine to Five.

After being dropped by country radio stations' playlists in the mid-1990s she re-discovered her roots by recording a series of critically acclaimed bluegrass albums including Grammy Award-winning Little Sparrow (2001) which was the theme tune of the very popular movie of the same name.

On April 14 2004, she was awarded the Living Legend medal by U.S. Library of Congress for her contributions to the cultural heritage of the United States.