It has been revealed that country music icon Dolly Parton has Welsh ancestry.
The ‘9 to 5’ singer’s niece, Jada Star, told The Sun that Parton had traced her ancestry to the Welsh valleys and will be visiting the country for a TV special set to air next year. Star told the outlet: “Dolly is exactly as you would imagine her as an aunt.”
Parton was born in Tennessee and resides on the outskirts of Nashville. She has previously told her fans about her link to Wales. Back in 2008 at one of her shows at the Cardiff International Arena, the icon reportedly told fans in the crowd that she had Welsh ancestry.
“Some of my mother’s people, the Owens, are from there (Wales),” Parton later told Wales Online (via BBC News). “I’ve been there about three times and it always feels good because it feels like family.”
Elsewhere, Parton recently shared a new rousing cover of Tom Petty‘s 1985 classic, ‘Southern Accents’.
The newly released cover will feature as part of an upcoming country tribute album honouring Petty. The late singer’s estate took to social media to announce the album, titled ‘Petty Country: A Country Music Celebration Of Tom Petty’, and the LP is due for release on June 21. You can pre-order your copy here.
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Back in January, Parton shared the deluxe edition of her rock covers album ‘Rockstar’, featuring new versions of Eurythmics’ ‘Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This)’ and Billy Joel’s ‘The Entertainer’ in celebration of her birthday.
In a four-star review of the album – which also became Parton’s highest-charting in history – NME wrote: “‘Rockstar’ is as bursting with life and positivity as the woman who made it,” and added: “Dolly’s long been celebrated for her knack of bringing people together and the tracklist, which features nine originals amid covers of enormous anthems, groans with big-name collaborators.
“The surviving Beatles join a bombastic ‘Let It Be’, for God’s sake, proving that their tasteful ‘final’ single ‘Now and Then’ wasn’t the last word after all. Elsewhere, Dolly’s goddaughter Miley Cyrus helps to reimagine ‘Wrecking Ball’ as an ‘80s rock ballad.”