"We had many wonderful laughs together, cried over certain things together and she will be missed," the musician's friend Dolly Parton wrote in a statement.

Aug. 2 (UPI) -- Singer Jeannie Seely, who helped transform the image of women in country music, has died. She was 85. Seely died Friday in a hospice in the Nashville area, the Country Music Association said, and her publicist, Don Murray Grubbs told told The Tennessean that she died after an intestinal infection.