I've been a fan of Dolly’s forever. (‘Is it okay if I call you Dolly?’ ‘What else would you call me – Reba?’) I loved her long before her Glastonbury appearance in 2014 rebadged her as ‘cool’ – as if she cares about cool – and in the weeks leading up to this meeting I’ve had sleepless nights sound tracked by earworms of ‘Dumb Blonde’, her first US chart hit (‘Just because I’m blonde/ Don’t think I’m dumb/’Cause this dumb blonde ain’t nobody’s fool’). And I sobbed again at the crystalline beauty of ‘I Will Always Love You’ – written for the leery, sharpsuited country legend Porter Wagoner when she left his show, her muchdissected double act with him the platform that launched her on the road to superstardom.
And now here she is, arranged on a studded leather armchair at her Tennessee headquarters – ‘We’ve all been holed up here.’ She is immaculate, dressed in – remarkably for her – understated black, makeup dramatic as ever,scarlet talons punctuating her everypoint, the inevitable blond wigadding centimetres to her tiny five foot frame. I’ve borrowed a cowboy shirt from my husband to get in the mood and look like a Minnesota trucker. Born in 1946, she doesn’t look her age – she doesn’t look like anything other than Dolly Parton.
So how has being holed up been for her? ‘It’s always difficult to be locked down for any reason. I’m a free bird – I have to be able to do whatever I feel, whenever I feel like doing it. So I wrote a lot of songs and got a lot of business done, safely and smartly.’ She laughs that frequent, tinkly laugh.
This story is from the May/June 2021 edition of Fairlady.
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This story is from the May/June 2021 edition of Fairlady.
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