Early Years
She was born in Sevierville, Tennessee, the fourth of twelve children of Robert Lee Parton, a tobacco farmer, and his wife Avie Lee (Owens). She has described her family as being "dirt poor". She outlined her family's poverty in her early songs "Coat of Many Colors" and "In the Good Old Days (When Times Were Bad)". They lived in a rustic, one-room cabin in Locust Ridge, just north of the Greenbrier Valley, in the Great Smoky Mountains in Sevier County, a predominantly Pentecostal area.
Music played an important role in her early life, and her grandfather was a Pentecostal "holy-roller" preacher.
Read more about this topic: Dolly Parton
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