Dolly Rebecca Parton was born on January 19, 1946, deep in the Smoky Mountains of East Tennessee, in a one-room cabin in Locust Ridge that had no electricity. She was the fourth of twelve children in a poor farming family, and the Partons gathered around a battery-powered radio to listen to the Grand Ole Opry — the first stage she ever dreamed of.

Born in the mountains and raised in the fields, she was never trapped by poverty. The gentleness of the land, the small fires of rural life, and the quiet dignity of the working poor all became her natural musical grace. She wrote her first song at five. At ten, she was singing on a Knoxville television show for twenty dollars a week. By thirteen, she had already stood on the stage of the Grand Ole Opry itself. From the beginning, her fate and her music were inseparable — a clear, pure voice telling the joys and sorrows of country life, planting the seed of everything that followed.