Almost a week later, the world is still mourning Dolly Parton, who sold more than 100 million records and whose songwriting power and iron-handed approach to her career transformed country music and the larger entertainment industry.

Parton’s life was a female Horatio Alger story. Born into abject poverty in the East Tennessee mountains, at a time when being poor and female was a double disadvantage, she went on to conquer the entertainment industry and the larger world with her talent, charm, authenticity, generosity, and magnetic personality.

The fourth of twelve children, Parton was no stranger to adversity. All aspects of her life, from the songs she sang and her specific social activism to her unvarnished downhome wit, occasional ribald humor and fierce independence, personified her impoverished upbringing. Her music and persona connected with those suffering in silence or solitude, despite the hopeful messages such songs conveyed.

The most sustaining parts of her legacy are the emotions she deftly captured in song. Some of her most popular hits depicted pivotal situations from her life in contemporary era stories.

“Coat of Many Colors” narrates a period in her impoverished youth when her mother assembled rags to make a coat........

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