NASHVILLE, Aug. 26 -- For the millions who grew up with her music playing from kitchen radios and car speakers, the news arrived on Tuesday like a door quietly closing on something irreplaceable. Dolly Parton, the Tennessee girl who turned twelve siblings, a grandfather's backwoods church, and a father who couldn't read into the most decorated career in country music history, died in Nashville. She was 80.

Her nephew Bryan Seaver confirmed the death. "Dolly has lived in the light, and is in the arms of Jesus, surely met by Carl, her parents, and countless others who have watched her," Seaver said, referring to her husband Carl Dean, who preceded her in death.

No cause of death was announced. Parton had hinted at health struggles in the ...