Dolly Parton has died

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2026/aug/25/dolly-parton-country-singer-dead

323•helsinkiandrew•56m ago

https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/25/entertainment/dolly-parton-de...

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/25/arts/music/dolly-parton-d..., https://archive.ph/w4vsE

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/music/music-news/dolly-par...

Comments

mikestew•43m ago

I’ve never been much of a country music fan, but I’ve always been a Dolly fan. Great songwriter, philanthropist, and seemed like a genuinely nice person. RIP, Dolly, you were one of the greats.

jihadjihad•35m ago

Her vocals were exceptional, too. One of my favorite videos I've randomly come across on YouTube is "Jolene" slowed down to 33 RPM [0]. The comments are hilarious as well, but the clarity of her vocals and the vibrato that carries through to a slower tempo is really something special to hear.

0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doz1QJ7LwjA

PaulHoule•24m ago

She's one of those crossover performers, such as Kenny Rogers and Taylor Swift who escape Country music as a genre and get mass appeal. Whenever I comment about a Dolly Parton song playing in a public place I hear things like "She's a national treasure!"

lenerdenator•43m ago

I knew she had been sick recently but always assumed she'd bounce back.

We're worse off.

paulpauper•17m ago

some people are really sick but it's not evident because they keep it concealed

1970-01-01•43m ago

She still has a hit single dropping in 2045.

R.I.P. Dolly

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRPdwWzTTi8

curuinor•42m ago

I am from the wrong continent to be inculcated in country music from an early age, but I read books distributed from her program every week to the niece. So that's probably her more durable contribution to society, I think.

autoexec•28m ago

Something tells me that the songs and films will outlast the books program, but hopefully it's making a difference in the lives of kids. There's no telling how far reaching that can end up being.

cheeze•15m ago

On the flipside, how many individual lives have been changed by the books provided to families for free? Impossible to quantify but I'd argue extremely important.

genericone•26m ago

I immediately thought you must be a supporter of Effective Altruism. Like, she wrote 5000 songs, and released nearly 1000 of them herself with many top songs spanning decades and will continue to be listened to for decades more, but her most durable contribution is spending her money giving books to kids. Not trying to do a hot take, but if this is what most people think, then the most important thing to do in life is become rich and then focus on building your image thereafter.

Kye•41m ago

Dolly Parton seemed nice on that episode of The Orville.

stego-tech•38m ago

Dolly was one of the unequivocal good ones. Damn girl, RIP.

DiBop•33m ago

One of THE best humans to have ever graced this planet. I've never heard a single negative thing about her. I wish I believed in heaven.

jjtheblunt•18m ago

in some sense, the collection of innumerable entirely positive memories effect one aspect of heaven for her, i believe.

jolt42•11m ago

In regard to heaven, you don't need to believe for her - she believed.

d4mi3n•38m ago

End of an era. She was a very active philanthropist and will be dearly missed for all the good she brought to the world.

DiBop•35m ago

Wow. I knew she was close but still. She has always held her in a special place in my heart as I am sure so many else do. I hope there is a national day of mourning. And parades. She would've like parades

odyssey7•33m ago

Sad news - she was a treasure.

CalChris•33m ago

I saw Dolly at Hardly Strictly in 2005. She was great.

cjboco•33m ago

What an amazing woman and person in general.

I wish other celebrities did as much as her. Her Imagination Library (https://imaginationlibrary.com) is just one example of her giving back to the community.

steveBK123•31m ago

She made money doing what she loved, and gave a huge amount of it away to help others. Can't ask for better than that, she will be missed.

Aboutplants•30m ago

“Dolly Parton's Imagination Library has gifted over 318 million free books to children worldwide since its inception”

Amazing contributions to many aspects of life

haney•12m ago

As a kid growing up in Tennessee I was the beneficiary of several of her reading programs. They really helped to foster a sense of curiosity and wonder that live with me to this day. Dolly was a real one, she'll definitely be missed.

duck•7m ago

Yeah, it is such an amazing program that was just executed in the right way. She didn't see it hit the billion books like she wanted to in her lifetime, but I'm sure they will get there. I would love to know other examples of philanthropy like that are similar in impact?

[1] https://imaginationlibrary.com/ [2] https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2018/03/01/589912466/dolly-p...

dylan604•30m ago

My mother was a die hard Dolly fan. We even visited Dollywood when I was a kid. One of her favorite movies was with Dolly and Sylvester Stallone called Rhinestone. She watched it repeatedly, and there are quotes from it that are taking up precious space in the ol' memory banks.

If you've never heard the 45 of Jolene played at 33, give it a listen.

delichon•14m ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMrfM711vXI

mattsolle•29m ago

If anyone hasn't listened to "Dolly Parton's America" (https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/dolly-partons-america), I highly recommend it.

Does a great job interviewing Dolly and discussing with her (and those two are around her) who she is, her life events, her thoughts on life. I knew people loved Dolly Parton before I listened but didn't really know why and the podcast helped me understand a bit more of it. It features a LOT of one-on-one time with Dolly in a way that I don't often find docu-series do. It's fantastic!

sleet_spotter•28m ago

If you are curious to know more about Dolly, I wholeheartedly recommend the podcast series “Dolly Parton’s America”. One of the best podcast series I’ve listened to and gave me so much respect for Dolly. The world is a little dimmer without her in it!

1PlayerOne•28m ago

I'm going home, I'm going home...

Long As I Can See The Light: https://youtu.be/tMgyIUvz9ak?si=zZq0yHRHmGl7LsFB

otter-in-a-suit•24m ago

Very sad to hear. Rest in peace.

I was at Dollywood a few weeks ago. I highly recommend a visit if you ever get the chance. She has a fantastic legacy in more ways than one.

dayyan•23m ago

Amazing human who popularized the amazing Country Music. Listening to Country Music radio all day as respects.

gigatexal•19m ago

very, very sad. she was such a good person in this age of trump especially in the country music scene

chistev•17m ago

We used to play Coat of Many Colors a lot in my house when I was a kid.

My coat of many colors

That my mama made for me

Made only from rags

But I wore it so proudly

Although we had no money

Well, I was rich as I could be

In my coat of many colors

My mama made for me

Jaauthor•11m ago

I will be crying 9-5 today.

baba_vanga•9m ago

RIP Dolly, she was a good one.

losvedir•8m ago

RIP. We went to Dollywood last year and I highly recommend it! It was a fun, family-friendly park, and one of the things I was impressed by was how helpful and happy to be there all the workers were. Seemed like a bunch of friendly veterans who took our tickets and let us in.

delichon•8m ago

I put her in my pantheon with Johnny Cash. Turns out Cash introduced her on her Grand Ole Opry debut in 1959, when she was 13. She killed it. Parton said later she was best friends with Johnny and June.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcfyzJW-BA4

I don't think I've ever seen the interwebs talking about one thing as much as right now.

kzrdude•7m ago

I guess this is why English Wikipedia was down. It's back up now.

Bluestein•3m ago

You know how, sometimes, you downright think "that is impossible", with certain people. And then, of course, you realize ...

This.-

InsideOutSanta•2m ago

She always seemed so full of life, it's difficult to believe she's gone.

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Dolly Parton has died

Comments

Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra

New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra

Black hole singularity is a surface not a point

Nitter project received cease and desist

My Friend Aaron

OpenAI Jalapeño: Better than Nvidia Blackwell

New Mac mini, featuring M6 and M5 Pro

Run OpenBSD on DigitalOcean for $4/month

Clara (YC P26) is hiring a growth engineer to bring AI doctors to market

Bomb fishing is wreaking havoc on Indonesia's coral reefs

Dolly Parton has died

Show HN: LatticeDB – Like SQLite but for graph databases

Tooltips need a delay, and then they need to skip it

A new ceiling for Λ: the de Bruijn–Newman constant

Pgbot: A 5.9 MB read-only Postgres tool for humans and agents

Starbase, LA

Building a backyard office, the build and cost breakdown

Don't Wordle

Fuzzing the Gleam Compiler

Firefox 157 will include JPEG XL by default on all platforms

Visualizing Binary Files

Show HN: Lightweight system monitor for Linux VPS written in Go

Warnock: Harnessing GPU geometry amplification for vector graphics

Solving the 1+N Query Problem

Run Minecraft in a Windows sandbox for computer use agents

Otto Dix, Nietzsche, and the Great War (2019)

HelloAssembly: The smallest possible complete Windows application (2021)

Show HN: I wrote a BASIC interpreter that boots on UEFI machines

Qwen 3.8-Flash-Next releasing tomorrow (125B a6B)

How much of HN is AI?