Dolly Parton Turns 70 Today

Happy birthday Dolly Parton.  Today, the "I Will Always Love You" singer turns 70 years-old.  Parton is a singer-songwriter, actress, author, businesswoman, theme-park owner, and humanitarian. Parton is one of the most-honored female country performers of all time.

The Record Industry Association of America has certified 25 of her single or album releases as either Gold Record, Platinum Record or Multi-Platinum Record. She has had 26 songs reach No. 1 on the Billboard country charts, a record for a female artist. She has 42 career top-10 country albums, a record for any artist, and 110 career-charted singles over the past 40 years. All inclusive sales of singles, albums, collaboration records, compilation usage, and paid digital downloads during Parton's career have reportedly topped 100 million records around the world 

Born in 1946, Parton began her musical career picking on a guitar in her family's bare bones home in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee. Parton was born in Sevier County, Tennessee, the fourth of twelve children of Robert Lee Parton (1921-2000), a farmer and construction worker, and his wife Avie Lee (née Owens) (1923-2003).

She has described her family as being "dirt poor." Parton's father paid with a bag of oatmeal the doctor who helped deliver her. She outlined her family's poverty in her early songs: "Coat of Many Colors" and "In the Good Old Days (When Times Were Bad)". They lived in a rustic, one-room cabin in Locust Ridge,just north of the Greenbrier Valley of the Great Smoky Mountains, a predominantly Pentecostal area.

Music played an important role in her early life. She was brought up in the Church of God, the church her grandfather, Jake Robert Owens (1899-1992) pastored. Her earliest public performances were in the church, beginning at age six. At seven, she started playing a homemade guitar. When she was eight years old, her uncle gave her her first real guitar. She began performing songs in front of audiences at just 10 years old. She turned 18 and moved to Nashville for good.

Parton is a Christian, and deeply spiritual. Though she wouldn't associate herself with a denomination, Parton loves the Lord.  She says, "God is in everything I do and all my work glorifies Him." She's a big fan of gospel and spirituals, and many of her songs are deeply religious from "Letter to Heaven" to "Hello God." She credits this theme in her songwriting to her childhood: "My grandpa was a preacher, and I guess at an impressionable age, I believed that through God I could do everything. . . . and that's why so many of my songs have an inspirational feeling."

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