Who the real Jolene was, why she chose fame over baby & song that left her in tears… My conversations with Dolly Parton

IT was easy to be dazzled by Dolly Parton. I don’t just mean by her blonde bombshell image with her rhinestone-studded outfits but by her smile, her singing, her straight-talking, her quick wit, her compassion and her kindness. Country queen Dolly pictured in the 70s Credit: Getty Dolly held more than 100,000 people in the palms of her delicate little Tennessee hands at Glastonbury in 2014, above Credit: Getty I vividly remember meeting Dolly in stifling St. Louis, Missouri, in a cheerless, windowless backstage room at the cavernous arena where she was due to play that night. We exchanged hugs before being ushered towards two tired-looking beige leather armchairs. Sign up for the Showbiz newsletter Thank you! Yet this diminutive figure with an enormous personality — cool as you like and clad in embroidered double denim — instantly lit up the gloomy surroundings as only she could. Displaying her irresistible spirit, down-to-earth Dolly told me in her Southern drawl: “I love what I do, I love who I am and I love the things that I’m able to accomplish. READ MORE ON DOLLY PARTON “I’ve got so much left to do that I keep fearing I might run out of time before I get it all done. “I just hope my health holds up so I can carry on. Unless I get sick, I never want to retire.” Then she added with typical self-deprecating humour: “But at least I look like a cartoon so I’ll look the same if I am 80 or 90.” Dolly Rebecca Parton was a naturally gifted singer and songwriter who took her craft way beyond the bounds of country music. Most read in Showbiz She could play virtually any instrument by ear — guitar, banjo, fiddle, autoharp, dulcimer, saxophone, piano, recorder, you name it. She was wildly ambitious, creating a multi-million dollar business empire that included her own theme park, Dollywood, not far from the humble Tennessee mountain cabin where she was raised. The star-to-be aged three in 1949 Credit: Shutterstock Dolly with her parents Robert and Avie Credit: Instagram “I saw early on that I could make a business out of all this,” she said. “I wanted money, I wanted to travel, I wanted to be staying in fine hotels, I wanted clothes . . . I wanted to be loved.” Not forgetting her poverty-stricken childhood in the Smoky Mountains, she added: “But I didn’t try to get away from what I was because I knew it would always be me. “I’ve never been ashamed of my people. I love them. I’m still a stupid hillbilly sometimes.” Dolly was a born comedian, who loved to laugh about her peroxide- blonde wigs and cosmetically enhanced boobs. She’d tell anybody and everybody: “It takes a lot of money to look this cheap.” That night in St. Louis in 2016, Dolly gave a boisterous, singalong crowd her views on the American presidential election being contested that year by Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. “Can you believe all the craziness going on with the election?” she cried, carefully avoiding pinning her colours to the Republican or Democrat masts. “Right now, I’m just about sick of it. I’ve been thinking about running myself — Dolly for President!” Referencing the contestants’ big hair, she added: “I’ve got the hair for it, it’s huge. And we could use more boobs in the race.” Quite simply, Dolly was the ultimate showgirl. With Porter Wagoner, a country singer and TV host, gave Dolly her early break as his duet partner on his show in 1967Credit: Refer to source Dolly and Carl — who kept out of the spotlight — remained married until his death last year after years suffering with Alzheimer’sCredit: Refer to Source Remember the way she held more than 100,000 people in the palms of her delicate little Tennessee hands at Glastonbury in 2014? Wearing a white trouser-suit adorned with hundreds of rhinestones, she performed her timeless signature songs — Jolene, Coat Of Many Colors, I Will Always Love You, 9 To 5 and Islands In The Stream. “I felt better looking like this than when I tried to dress down,” she said in one of our chats. “The outside matched the outgoingness I felt on the inside.” Dolly considered how life might have been without the flamboyant image she embraced early on. “I probably would have had no one paying that much attention to me as a songwriter,” she said. “And I would never have got my foot in the door if I hadn’t been a freak to start with. “When I saw the attention, the more I enjoyed it and the more people noticed me.” Yet behind the image, the wisecracks and the showmanship, there was a beating heart of a person who had known hardship and heartache. Amidst the usual promotional whirl, this time at London’s Dorchester Hotel, Dolly gave me glimpses into her private world. Clearly emotional, the fourth of 12 children described how singing Coat Of Many Colors became difficult after her hard-working mother Avie Lee became ill and subsequently died. Avie Lee had stitched together a patchwork coat for her young daughter, inspiring the song which became closest to Dolly’s heart of all her compositions. While Dolly had no kids, she was a godmother — to singer Miley Cyrus Credit: Getty Images – Getty Despite her health issues, Dolly admitted she never wanted to retire Credit: Getty It was the ultimate symbol of her rags-to-riches story. “When my mother was sick, the Coat would bring it all back,” she admitted in a moment of reflection. “I would realise she wasn’t gonna be around for ever and I would think how lucky I was to have good parents. Then after she died, it would nearly kill me to sing that song. “I would always get through it but sometimes I would just sit there with tears coming down.” Remembering her dear mother, she said: “Oh, I’m so much like my mom, it’s crazy. If Mom hadn’t had a houseful of kids and had gone out into the world, she could have been like me. “I look like my dad and his people — he was fair and Mom was dark — but my spirituality, my personality and the music all came from Mom’s side.” Only once in her extraordinary life did Dolly consider having children of her own. You have to go back to 1964, when the 18-year-old wannabe country star first met ruggedly handsome Carl Dean in the unlikely setting of Nashville’s Wishy-Washy Laundromat. Two years later, they married and their thoughts inevitably turned to starting a family. They wondered whether their kids would be tall like him or petite like her, and even decided Carla would be a nice name for a girl. But the principled, God-fearing young woman felt she had to choose between being a mum and pursuing her dream of being a country singer. She picked the bright lights of fame. “I was very playful at that time,” she told me. “I had a great sense of humour and all my friends loved hanging around me. “I’d play guitar, I’d sing and I could make up funny stuff right on the spot. I was good around a campfire.” Despite remaining childless, Dolly and Carl, who kept out of the spotlight, remained married until his death last year after years suffering with Alzheimer’s. Through the decades, Dolly never lost her love of children. I spoke to her in 2017 to mark her first children’s album, I Believe In You. She quipped: “Somebody said, ‘Why did you wait so long to make a children’s album?’ and I just said, ‘Well, I wanted to wait until my second childhood’. “I’m there now!” she added before breaking into a peal of laughter that had me joining in. “I have a very child-like spirit and I’ve been writing these songs for years. I spend so much time with children that I think like a kid.” Despite never experiencing motherhood herself, Dolly recalled: “Being from a big family, with eight children younger than me, we all had to be responsible for one another. “All the girls were little mommies and all the boys were little daddies — and we were very close. Now I love my little nieces and nephews (who called her Aunt Granny).” But Dolly WAS a godmother to a singer, also born in Tennessee and who, like her, also commands the world stage. Miley Cyrus. “I love Miley,” she said. “She could be one of my own. “Like all kids, they go through their bad times but they have a right to make mistakes and grow up in their own way, according to their own personalities. “Miley’s a good girl. She’s smart, she’s talented and I’ll always be on her side.” In telling the Dolly Parton story, it’s also important to reflect on the three most important men in her life — her father, her husband and her early singing partner Porter Wagoner. She told me her ever-expanding Imagination Library was inspired by her farmer dad Robert Lee Parton. She launched the charity in 1995 to encourage childhood literacy and, by the end of last year, it had handed 304,539,509 free books to under- fives in countries including the US and UK. “I’m very proud of my Imagination Library,” Dolly said. “I established it in my home country because my dad couldn’t read or write. “He lived long enough to see it start and I got him involved. He was so smart, so wonderful and such a good daddy but it was just crippling to him that he couldn’t read.” As for enigmatic hubby Carl, Dolly released an album in 2016 called Pure & Simple and her partner was very much on her mind. “So many of the songs are about him,” she said. “I based it on our relationship. “I even pulled in two songs written about him from the Seventies, Say Forever You’ll Be Mine and Tomorrow Is Forever, because I thought they fitted so well. “I decided this is a good year to do love songs because I’ve been married for 50 years.” In St. Louis, I watched Dolly as she regaled the audience with the story behind Jolene and its immortal line, “I’m begging of you, please don’t take my man”. As the song about a girl with “flaming locks of auburn hair” ended to thunderous applause, she said: “I’m glad you remember her. I’ve been trying to forget her . . . for about 50 years! “A lot of my songs are based on some truth and Jolene was about a girl that was flirting with my husband back then. “She was working down at the bank and he was spending a little more time down there than he should. “So I put a stop to it. I wrote the song about Jolene and did a lot of banking after that — but not at her bank!” Dolly then revealed that on Memorial Day (the last Monday of May) “my husband Carl and I had been married for 50 years, so we decided we’d do it again”. She said: “I was looking through his address book the night before we renewed our vows. I thought, ‘I’m gonna see if he’s still got Jolene’s number. I might let her have him for the next 50 years.’ That’s gonna be the hard part, right? But I guess I’ll keep him’.” And what about Porter Wagoner, country singer and TV host, who gave Dolly her early break as his duet partner on his show in 1967 when she was 21? She told me candidly: “Well, Porter was very influential in my life and for my career but we bashed heads because we were both stubborn. “When I joined his show, I’d already had a couple of top ten records. I said I’d stay for five years and wound up staying for seven. “I loved Porter and he loved me. It was a love-hate relationship but it was all meant to be. I’m so grateful to him for so many things but I had to go my own way.” In 1973, as Dolly prepared to spread her wings, she wrote I Will Always Love You as a farewell to Porter. The song would become her biggest-selling hit when Whitney Houston recorded it for The Bodyguard soundtrack in 1992. She told me that denying Elvis Presley the opportunity to record it had been one of the “most heartbreaking” decisions she ever made. “It wasn’t Elvis personally,” she said. “He loved the song and I loved it.” “Then, on the last day of the recording session, Colonel Tom Parker lays something on me, ‘that we take half the publishing rights if we put it out’. I said: ‘Well, that’s just tough’, and man, it was a heart-breaker. “I thought, ‘I can’t just give this away.’ I want to leave it to my brothers and sisters’.” People told Dolly that Elvis could have made her “ten times as much money” but she held firm. “Then after Whitney, I was certainly justified,” she smiled. One thing I always got from Dolly was that she never took her success for granted. “It’s scary, it’s a big responsibility but it’s what I’ve worked for all my life,” she said. “I like to think people are familiar with me because I’ve been around so long. I’m like a relative — a sister or a favourite aunt. “I’m somebody you’re comfortable with, plus I came from humble beginnings and people always love my Cinderella story. “There’s so much darkness in the world, so many people with bad attitudes and fear. I’d like to think I represent a little bit of hope and humour. “I try to make light of situations for myself as well as for others. I try to find the joy.” Comment now