NASHVILLE  –  Dolly Parton, who rose from humble beginnings to the greatest heights of American music and became one of the country’s most philanthropic, unifying and beloved stars, died Tuesday at her home in Nashville, according to a fam­ily statement. She was 80. The state­ment, attributed to her nephew Bryan Seaver, said Parton died “peacefully.” A small, private service will be held for her close family, the statement added. In a career that spanned over half a century, Parton captured the American experience, penning more than 3,000 songs. Those included “Coat of Many Colors,” a quiet ode to her mother, who stitched together garments in the fam­ily’s rural Tennessee home. She wrote and performed songs of love and heartbreak, like “Jolene” and “I Will Always Love You.” “9 to 5,” the title track from the movie of the same name, in which Parton also starred, became an anthem for American women and workers. Parton went on to release 49 albums and win 11 Grammys, and became one of the most successful country crossover artists of all time, scoring regular hits on the pop charts, including “Islands in the Stream,” a duet with Kenny Rogers. Later in life, she funneled her massive success into philanthropy, founding a library program that has gifted more than 300 million books to children around the world. But Parton was always, first and fore­most, a songwriter. She liked to tell the story of how one of her biggest songs, “I Will Always Love You,” came into the world. A love ballad that soared to ever greater heights once it was covered by Whitney Houston in the 1990s, the song began as a plea to her performing partner, Porter Wagoner, to let her move on from the TV show they appeared on together. As she made her case to go solo, Wag­oner, in her telling, “wasn’t listening to anything” she had to say. “So I went home and wrote that song, took it back the next morning, and said, ‘Sit down, I need you to hear something.’