Say Hello! To Dolly!
By Corinna Tomrley
Miss Dolly Parton is soon to take to the road of our very own British Isles (well England and Wales).
A consummate show woman, she’s bound to shine as every rhinestone, spangle and sequin shimmer beneath the lights. A Dolly Parton gig is an event because Dolly herself is an event.
Playing guitar despite those nails - in fact, she’s been known to play the nails like a washboard. And to play the banjo, piano, autoharp and drums. Then there’s those wigs; she used to have her own line. Alas no more. Raquel Welch has taken over as Wig Flogging Queen. Dolly was once asked how long it took her to do her hair, ‘I don’t know’ she said, ‘I’m never there!’ That body, once natural now unashamedly altered to keep up the Dolly Parton image. The look is part doll, part good time gal, part caricature, part hooker.
She tells the story that when a child she saw a woman in the street, the most beautiful woman she’d ever seen. The woman had tall, blonde hair, high heels, tight clothes, red lips painted like her red, long nails. She was to Dolly, just like a movie star walking down her street. When Dolly expressed her admiration for the woman to her mother she was chastised and informed that the woman was pure trash. Dolly was idolising the ‘town tramp’. But to Dolly she was a visual role model, one she chose to emulate and has increasingly strolled into a more cartoon version of over the years. Look at Dolly in the 60s, the ‘Dumb Blonde’, Porter Wagoner stage. She sure had impossibly high wigs, akin to the pompadours of the court of Marie Antoinette with a beehive twist. Her face was painted, lips glossy. Her shirts tight, the Parton bosom was displayed proudly from the outset. Cowgirl costumes, on the country showbiz side, Dolly was always extraordinary, was never going to slip into the crowd. Incredibly, classically beautiful - pretty, stunning, all those adjectives - she chose to put on a costume from head to toe of a trashy glamour. ‘It takes a lot of money to look this cheap‘, she famously remarked.
Now after all the surgery - this side of too much - she becomes ever a little bit more drag and a lot more queen. ‘If I have one more facelift’ she warned, ‘I’m gonna have a beard!’ Dolly should be a contradiction but she isn’t. From abject poverty to multi-millions she still sings of simplicity with authenticity. She may seem one-dimensional (no boob jokes please) but she’s as complicated as all get out. But easily so. ‘If there's a magic in me,’ she says, ‘it's the fact that I look so artificial but I am so totally real’.
A large part of Dolly’s charm is that she pours the schmaltz on, singing of the lean times, hard times, heartbreak, and little children and their dogs dying of hunger in the snow. But she can pull it off. She balances the sugar with the tart - well she would - she sings with kahunas and defiance; sings of inspiration and exultation. It’s all in her repertoire and mostly penned by her own elaborately manicured hand. And though songs like ‘Me and Little Andy’ (the kid and dog death song) and ‘Coat of Many Colors’ (love overcoming poverty and bullying) are on the edge of being too schmaltzy, still with Dolly that sweetness and sincerity bring it into our heart; you shouldn‘t but you do find yourself with a lump in your throat. On later albums such as ‘Halos and Horns’ the tune ‘Hello God’ beseeches and bellows to the heavens and tug us along with her. ‘These Old Bones’ is an adoption story that will have you swearing you’ve a speck of dust in your eyeball. Other, older heartbreakers such as ‘Mama Say a Prayer’ about a young woman finding herself seeking comfort in the cold arms of strangers may not have the bite of similar tales told by, say, Bobbie Gentry (think ‘Fancy’), but when Dolly sings it you can almost feel the loneliness and skin thickening against the pitiful parts of the world.
And for the biggest heartbreaker I give you ‘I Will Always Love You’. Now please try and forget the Houston version. Erase that from your mind. Right now if at all possible please, just forget it. Because that powerhouse belting is not the fate such a delicate, aching tune should befall. To know what Dolly thought of it one has to only hear her answer - she was mighty happy to get those royalty cheques (said to be $6 million). No. Forget that one and I beseech you listen to Dolly’s original (subsequent versions she’s done are lovely but it’s that first 1974 one you must track down). Listen to her delicate, high, sweet, perfect, perfect voice trill out those words with authenticity and restraint. And when she gets to the spoken part, ‘Well I hope life treats you kind…’ if you have dry eyes then you have no heart, you have no soul. That’s what my dad used to say and I agree with him. Now think on this: think of that song and think of Mr Elvis Presley singing it. You know that version? No? Well, there’s a good reason for that because it never happened. The King wanted to record it and now - can’t you almost hear what it would have sounded like? However it was a Colonel Tom Parker policy that if Elvis were to do you the honour of covering one of your songs then you were to repay the gesture by signing over half of the publishing rights to him. Or the Colonel. Or whoever. Dolly said no. Sure The Pelvis would have racked up some sales and spondoolicks for the chickadee but she held on to that song. See the lady is savvy.
This is just one Dolly penned masterpiece but there are more; think of ‘Jolene‘. There’s not a line too many, it says just enough although in a complex lyric structure (so many similar sounds, the tongue trips up!). It’s minor keyed melancholy reaches the falsetto cry of the tramp’s name and falls back down to the plea, ‘don‘t take my man’. Just because she can. Though who could be more beautiful, more compelling than Dolly? That Jolene must be some dame.
There aren’t enough Dolly Parton movies. Let’s put Best Little Whorehouse in Texas aside for a moment (even though it has its charms). Perhaps there is only one truly sensational DP movie - the faultless Nine to Five. That ensemble piece of mainstream women’s liberation is farce, fierce, ferocious and superbly funny. The title track is now something of an anthem and again as complicated as all get out. It takes a genius to make the complex seem simple.
It seemed that the crossover queen who came from the Smoky Mountains and blended country with pop in a superbly delicious brew became a bit too pop for the C&W brigade by the 1990s. When they stopped playing her tunes on the country stations, what did Dolly do? She went back to her roots and recorded a series of bluegrass albums. For 1998’s ‘Hungry Again’ (OK not quite bluegrass yet, but country it was) she did what she said on the tin; Dolly fasted while writing the songs to get her to remember what it was like growing up, dirt poor and one of 12 kids. Her bluegrass chops were fully exhibited on ‘The Grass is Blue’ in 1999. Still she kept the tongue in her cheek enough to record a bluegrass version of ‘Stairway to Heaven’ on Halo and Horns.
The diminutive pop-country tart has spent the majority of her 61 years in show business, getting her first contract before her teens. Married to a man she met in a laundrette in Nashville, forty years later they’re still together and he runs a business paving roads. Continuing with the glitz and the grit duality that is Miss Dolly, her fortune has allowed her to become an essential philanthropic presence in her home state of Tennessee, pouring money into the communities stricken with extreme poverty, building a hospital, a cancer care centre, launching a literacy programme and of course there is Dollywood. Not (just) the tacky Dolly spotting tourist spot one might think, the park provides jobs for hundreds of Appalachians (including many of her family).
In the 2006 Oscars her song for TransAmerica, ’Travellin’ Thru’ was nominated for best song; it didn’t win. That the tune was kept for the titles and not used during the movie was criminal. You don’t hire Dolly to stick her at the end when people are walking out. Shame on them.
But let’s get back to the shows, her first extensive UK tour in nearly 30 years. Dolly is a true show biz legend, an old fashioned performer who believes in giving her audience a good time. Warm, magnetic, self-deprecating and sheer joy, Dolly will have every single audience member eating out of her hand, declaring their love and leaving the concert hall in awe. If not, then there must be something wrong with them.
19 March - Wembley Arena, London
20 March - MEN Arena, Manchester
21 March - Metro Radio Arena, Newcastle
23 March - Clyde Audotorium, Glasgow
24 March - Hallam FM Arena, Sheffield
25 March - Wembley Arena, London
27 March - International Arena, Cardiff
28 March - NEC Birminham