This is breaking news: Bryan Seaver, the son of Cassie Parton, has just announced the passing of the beloved Country Superstar Dolly Parton at age 80 in an official Dolly Parton Instagram post. See the announcement below. This is a blow to the music industry as well as the theme park industry. As well as a blow to the world! She was something special, an aspiration!
In the video, Seaver described the announcement as something Parton had asked him to deliver years in advance, and said she wanted to be remembered resting comfortably after a life spent in rhinestones. Tributes followed quickly across social media. Actor Leslie Mann wrote that Parton “made the world a better place,” and Jamie Lee Curtis thanked her simply “for all of it.” According to a statement from Parton’s team, her immediate family plans a small private service, and in lieu of flowers they are asking fans to donate to Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, the childhood literacy program she founded in 1995.
Dolly Parton has crossed paths with Disney more times than most casual fans realize, and her most beloved connection is easily her run as “Aunt Dolly” on Hannah Montana. Parton first appeared in the Season 1 episode “Good Golly, Miss Dolly” in 2006, playing the godmother of Miley Stewart, a role that doubled as real life since Parton is Miley Cyrus’s actual godmother. She returned for “I Will Always Loathe You” in Season 2 and closed out her run in the Season 4 episode “Kiss It All Goodbye” in 2010, giving fans four years of Aunt Dolly cameos across the Disney Channel series.
Parton’s Disney ties go back further than Hannah Montana, though. Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy appeared on her ABC variety show Dolly in 1987, with Kermit and Parton trading banter and dueting on “Everyday People.” Muppet Magazine even gave her an honorary Muppet Award in 1986. Years later, Kermit and Parton reunited to sing “Islands in the Stream” on Good Morning America in 2012, keeping the Muppets connection alive well after Disney acquired the franchise in 2004.
Parton also lent her voice to Disney’s animated side, playing Dolly Gnome, the lawnmower race announcer, in 2011’s Gnomeo & Juliet, released through Disney’s Touchstone Pictures banner. Her music has popped up around the Disney universe too, with “9 to 5” featured in the Donald Duck compilation special Down and Out with Donald Duck.
Parton’s own theme park, Dollywood, is not a Disney property, but the connection is closer than fans might think. In a 1982 interview with Barbara Walters, Parton described her dream of building a “mountain Disneyland” in the Smoky Mountains near her hometown. Four years later, that dream became Dollywood, opening on May 3, 1986, when Parton partnered with the Herschend family to relaunch what had been Silver Dollar City in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. Today the 150 acre park draws millions of visitors a year with rides like the Wild Eagle and Lightning Rod, along with a replica of Parton’s childhood cabin and the Dollywood Express steam train.
