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She was a national treasure of the United States. Dolly Parton died on August 25, 2026. She spent six decades as not only a singer, songwriter, hit maker, actor but a philanthropic business woman working inside a structure that discriminated against the Black community, Latino community. LGBTQ+ community and women. Many would say she is a bonafide 'accomplice' to Black and Brown communities. She recognized the 'working class', blue collar workers and the women who are major contributors to the workforce. Throughout her multi-faceted career, music catalog and business ventures she kept making room for Black, Latina and Latino artists.
What did Dolly Parton and Linda Ronstadt record together?
They recorded two albums together. With Mexican American icon Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris, Parton made Trio (1987) and Trio II (1999), projects that together sold more than five million copies and earned three Grammys, according to Rhino Records. Ronstadt was already one of the biggest voices in American rock, and she would go on to devote herself to traditional Mexican music. The partnership placed her alongside two of country's most respected women without asking her to be anything other than herself.
Trio
Did Dolly Parton ever sing in Spanish?
Not as a lead vocalist, but she recorded bilingual country. Parton performed "Before the Next Teardrop Falls" with Freddy Fender, the Mexican American singer who made the bilingual ballad a landmark. Her own 1996 recording of the song brought in Los Lobos cofounder David Hidalgo to sing the Spanish section, a choice that treated the Spanish verse as essential rather than decorative.
Freddy Fender
Did Dolly Parton record a song about Mexican farmworkers?
Yes! Dolly Parton recorded "Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)" in 1980 for her concept album 9 to 5 and Odd Jobs. On the record she wanted to document the lives that working people carry, she counted deported farmworkers among them. It is the one item in her music catalog that is not a collaboration or a byproduct.
What's the driving story behind "Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)"?
On January 28, 1948, a plane carrying 28 Mexican farmworkers back across the border went down in Los Gatos Canyon in Fresno County. Newspapers ran the names of the four Americans aboard and called everyone else, simply, deportees. Woody Guthrie wrote a poem about that erasure, inventing names for the dead because no one had bothered to record the real ones; a schoolteacher named Martin Hoffman set the words to music roughly a decade later, and the song passed into the folk canon through Pete Seeger, Joan Baez (a prominent folk song Mexican and Scottish American artist) and the Byrds.
The 28 farmworkers stayed nameless until 2013, when a memorial at Holy Cross Cemetery in Fresno finally listed every one of them.
Who turned "Jolene" into a cumbia?
Chiquis and Becky G, in 2020. A year later, Parton joined Chiquis for a performance at the Latin Recording Academy's Ellas y Su Música, the night built around Latinas and women in Latin music, as the Recording Academy documented. She sang "Gonna Be You" with Gloria Estefan, Cyndi Lauper, Belinda Carlisle and Debbie Harry in 2023, Entertainment Weekly reported. And in 2024 she remade her working-women anthem "9 to 5" with Cuban American rapper Pitbull as "Powerful Women".
Did Dolly Sing With José Feliciano?
She did! She teamed up to record a new version of Parton's classic song "Eagle When She Flies" in September 2021. Feliciano originally recorded the track for his album Behind This Guitar. His producer brought it to him. Impressed by the track by Jose, Dolly offered to lend her vocals to his version of her song.
Is Dolly Parton's Imagination Library available in Spanish?
Yes. The program mails a free book every month to children from birth through age five, and it now offers a fully bilingual English-Spanish collection. California became the first state to make the bilingual option available statewide, with the Governor's Office estimating access for roughly two million children.
So was Dolly Parton connected to the Latino community?
Absolutely Yes. Parton never launched a direct Latino initiative, however she was conscious of her music and ventures being inclusive. What her legacy shows is a woman who kept choosing collaborators across language and culture, and a literacy program that eventually asked what families actually read at home. In a genre that has spent most of its history looking past us, that is worth naming. If you have a child under five, the bilingual sign-up is open at imaginationlibrary.com.
