India, Aug. 26 -- There are voices the world simply assumes will always be there - steady, warm, singing somewhere in the background of ordinary life. Dolly Parton's was one of them. On Tuesday, that voice went quiet. She was 80.

Her publicist confirmed it soon after. And then, almost immediately, the tributes began-from Nashville to Hollywood to the White House-because it seemed everyone, somewhere, had a Dolly Parton story of their own.

Born on January 19, 1946, in Sevier County, Tennessee, Parton was the fourth of twelve children raised in a home with more love than money. She would later turn that upbringing into the raw material of a legend-a one-room cabin transformed, decades on, into songs, stories, and an entire theme park bear...