Concerts
Dolly Parton dies at 80
The country icon passed away August 25 in Nashville, weeks before the Las Vegas engagement she had waited more than three decades to play.
Dolly Parton died on August 25 at home in Nashville. She was 80. Her family said she passed peacefully after a brief battle with cancer, and asked for privacy while they grieve.
Las Vegas was three weeks away from seeing her again. "Dolly: Live in Las Vegas" was set for The Colosseum at Caesars Palace on September 17–26, her first extended engagement in this city in more than three decades. She had wanted these nights: announced for December 2025, moved to September when her doctors intervened, and held onto rather than canceled, because a residency meant singing for her fans without the grind of a tour. Those shows will now never happen.
Her history here reaches back to the showroom era. She headlined the Riviera in the early 1980s and played Bally's in 1993, and then stayed away from the Strip for a generation while she built everything else: the songs the whole world knows by heart, Dollywood, a literacy foundation that has put more than 200 million books into children's hands.
Few artists were loved the way Dolly Parton was loved, across every border that usually divides an audience. The Colosseum stage will be dark on the nights she was meant to stand on it, and this September in Las Vegas will feel quieter for it.
Our thoughts are with her family, her friends and the millions of fans who never stopped hoping to see her one more time. Rest easy, Dolly.