To me, apart from her amazing music and philanthropy, what Dolly Parton represents is something that was (emphasis on past tense) at one time truly exceptional about the United States - that someone from a very humble background (poverty in East TN) could have a tremendous impact on the culture of the world - the other example in entertainment being Michael Jackson (from Gary IN).

Admittedly the US music industry was among the few where this phenomenon happened, although definitionally very few reach pop stardom.

In contrast, much of the world exports only its "elite culture", not the culture of common people.

Don’t you still see this with hip-hop to some extent?

I also think a lot of the difference is that a much smaller percentage of the population grows up as poor as she did. A person from a similar wealth/income percentile today mightn’t seem to have had such a difficult start.

Obviously lots of other things are different today – it’s easier than ever to access a wide variety of music but that’s not what people tend to do (iirc); there’s less money to be made selling music; there’s perhaps less interest in more ‘rural’ genres of music.

Your contention is what, that now this is no longer possible or less likely?

See also Britney Spears, who's mom ran a small daycare. Taylor Swift's an in between story, middle class financial services parents, hard to say if they were paycheck to paycheck or not...

Its not necessarily the best thing that big companies have a business model of taking advantage of poor, or relatively poorer, people, particularly attractive young women. See our global Epstein class and global Weinstein class.