A Family Announcement, Years in the Making
In the video, Seaver identified himself as speaking for the Parton and Owens family, calling her "Dolly Rebecca Parton Dean, Sister, Sis and Granny to one generation and Gigi to the next." He said the announcement was something Parton had asked him to prepare years earlier. "I have imagined the heaviness of this moment but haven't truly felt it til now," he said, adding that Parton had told him she wanted to rest "in a beautiful bed of plush cotton" after a career spent in heavy rhinestones. Parton's cause of death hasn't been disclosed. She had spoken publicly about health struggles in recent months, including postponing a planned Las Vegas residency in September 2025 for medical procedures and canceling shows again this past May, when she described trouble with her immune and digestive systems following kidney stone complications.Six Decades of Music and a Massive Cultural Footprint
Parton moved to Nashville after high school in 1964 and joined The Porter Wagoner Show three years later. She wrote "I Will Always Love You" in 1974 after ending her professional partnership with Wagoner, a song that would later become a global hit for Whitney Houston. Her catalog, spanning more than 50 studio albums, also includes "Jolene," "9 to 5," "Coat of Many Colors" and "Here You Come Again." She was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2022 and appeared in a dozen films and more than 50 television programs, including the 1982 musical Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, directed by gay filmmaker Colin Higgins.A Gay Icon Who Rarely Talked Politics
Parton was famous for avoiding partisan labels, twice declining a Presidential Medal of Freedom offer and a statue at the Tennessee Capitol under the Trump administration. "I don't do politics," she said on her podcast in 2019. "I have too many fans on both sides of the fence." But on LGBTQ+ issues specifically, she was consistently, unmistakably direct.I have a huge gay following, and I'm proud of them. Sometimes some of them look more like me than I do. Dolly Parton, The New York Times, 2016She backed marriage equality as early as 2009 and later put it plainly: "I think love is love, and we have no control over that... I think people should be allowed to marry." On anti-transgender bathroom bills, she told CNN Money, "I think everybody should be treated with respect," adding that she was going to pee "wherever it's got to be." And when Tennessee moved to ban gender-affirming care for minors, she said she knew and loved transgender people and understood how important that care was to them. Her 1991 song "Family," from the album Eagle When She Flies, included the line
Source: LGBTQ Nation
Cover photo: RCA Records, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
