Global superstar Dolly Parton, whose first children’s album I Believe In You releases today on Dolly Records/RCA Nashville, could have been anywhere on the day her album releases, but she wanted to be in Nashville with kids and their families at Monroe Carell Jr. Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital.
Parton’s niece Hannah Dennison, daughter of her sister Rachel and longtime band member Richard Dennison, spent years battling leukemia at Vanderbilt. Today she is a healthy young woman, and Dolly and family are bringing that story of hope to those children currently in the hospital.
Two of the songs on I Believe In You, “Chemo Hero” and “Brave Little Soldier,” were specifically written for Hannah to help her through her health struggles.
During her visit today, Dolly surprised the doctors and children by announcing she will make a $1 million donation to Monroe Carell Jr. Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital.
To shine a light on the great work the Hospital does and to give the children a chance to ask questions, Parton is teaming with Pandora—the world’s most powerful music discovery platform—for a very special Facebook LIVE event, broadcasting from Seacrest Studios at Vanderbilt. Pandora’s Beville Dunkerley will co-host the Facebook LIVE broadcast with Seacrest Studios’ Mamie Shepherd at 3 PM CT today.
Pandora is supporting the release of I Believe In You and the Facebook LIVE event with special tune-in liners airing across all Country and Children’s channels on the platform.
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ABOUT DOLLY PARTON:
Dolly Parton is the most honored female country performer of all time. Achieving 25 RIAA certified gold, platinum and multi-platinum awards, she has had 25 songs reach #1 on the Billboard Country charts, a record for a female artist. She has 41 career top 10 country albums, a record for any artist, and she has 110 career-charted singles over the past 40 years. All-inclusive sales of singles, albums, hits collections, paid digital downloads and compilation usage during her Hall of Fame career have reportedly topped a staggering 100 million records – which includes sales of her 2016 chart-topping disc Pure & Simple, her first number one album on the Billboard Country Album charts in twenty-five years. She has garnered eight Grammy Awards – including a 2017 win with Pentatonix in the Country Duo/Group Performance category for their collaboration on her iconic 1973 hit “Jolene” – 10 Country Music Association Awards, five Academy of Country Music Awards, three American Music Awards and is one of only five female artists to win the Country Music Association’s Entertainer of the Year Award. In 1999 Parton was inducted as a member of the Country Music Hall of Fame. She has her own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and became a member of the National Academy of Popular Music Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2001. Broadcast Music Inc. honored Parton with their Icon Award in 2003, and in 2004 the U.S. Library of Congress presented her with their Living Legend Award for her contribution to the cultural heritage of the United States. This was followed in 2005 with the National Medal of Arts, the highest honor given by the U.S. government for excellence in the arts. The honors keep coming. The 2016 made for television movie, Dolly Parton’s Christmas of Many Colors: Circle of Love is nominated in the “Television Movie” category for the 69th Annual Emmy Awards. The film also won in the TV and Cable category at the 68th Annual Christopher Awards, which also includes the Movieguide Epiphany Prize for Television. The film served as the follow-up to her highly rated 2015 film Coat Of Many Colors, also broadcast on NBC, which won the Academy of Country Music’s Tex Ritter Award. In 2017, Dolly will release “I Believe In You,” a collection of children’s songs on Dolly Records through her partnership with Sony Music Nashville.
ABOUT DOLLY PARTON’S IMAGINATION LIBRARY:
Founded in 1995, Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library is a book gifting organization that has, to date, mailed more than 100 million books to children in Australia, Belize, Canada, United Kingdom and the United States. Each month, the program currently mails more than one million specially selected, high-quality, age-appropriate books to registered children from birth until they start Kindergarten in participating communities. Dolly envisioned creating a lifelong love of reading in children, preparing them for school and inspiring them to dream. Recent studies suggest participation in the Imagination Library is positively and significantly associated with higher measures of early language and math development. Penguin Random House is the exclusive publisher for Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library.
FOR MORE INFORMATION ON DOLLY PARTON, VISIT:
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