Dolly Parton

Dolly Rebecca Parton was born in a one-room cabin in Locust Ridge, Tennessee, the fourth of twelve children. She arrived in Nashville the day after her high school graduation in 1964 and spent the rest of the decade developing her craft on television and as a staff songwriter for Combine Music. Her partnership with Porter Wagoner — she replaced Norma Jean as his television show co-host in 1967 — made her a known quantity in country music; leaving it in 1974 proved she was more than that.

“Jolene” (1973) — a plea to a real-hair-flaming woman named Jolene not to take her man — is one of the most performed country songs ever written. “I Will Always Love You” (1974), written as a goodbye to Wagoner, is the other: a deceptively simple farewell that Whitney Houston’s 1992 recording transformed into one of the biggest pop hits of all time, while Parton’s original remains the superior version.

She has consistently outmaneuvered industry expectations: the 9 to 5 soundtrack made her a pop crossover star in 1980; her Dollywood theme park became the most successful celebrity tourist attraction in the US; her Imagination Library (books mailed monthly to children from birth to age five) has distributed over 200 million books in nine countries. She declined a Presidential Medal of Freedom twice, preferring not to accept political honors.