Dolly Parton — the Queen of Country, songwriter of more than 3,000 songs, movie star, businesswoman, and humanitarian — died Tuesday, August 25th, 2026 in Nashville. She was 80.

By the middle of the twentieth century, American music had already traveled an extraordinary distance. The spirituals of enslaved Africans had evolved into gospel, the blues had become a language of emotion and survival, ragtime had introduced syncopation to mainstream audiences, and jazz had transformed improvisation into one of the world’s most sophisticated musical art forms.