Forever Dolly
At 70, with a new album and tour, the country titan is as brash as ever, with a message that speaks to a much younger generation
It’s hard to catch Dolly Parton off guard.
Whether she’s chirping a boob joke to the press or spinning a yarn to fans, Parton is the master of making carefully scripted moments seem like revelations.
During a recent stop in Massachusetts on her Pure and Simple tour, which arrives in Toronto on Sept. 9, Parton told a tale about how, as a young teen, she wanted to look like the town tramp, all lipstick and high heels.
One day, after Dolly had started dolling up, her grandfather took her aside to sternly admonish her.
“But don’t you want to get to heaven?” he asked.
“Sure!” Dolly replied. “But do I have to look like hell to get there?”
It’s a classic Partonism, and one that nicely summarizes her winning contradictions — the devout Christian with a penchant for plastic surgery, the blond bombshell whose brilliant brain outshines any rhinestone.
Although that story’s been told over and over again during her 60plus-year career, each time she tells it, it seems fresh, like she’s just remembered this one time she sassed her pious granddad and don’t you want to hear about it?
There was a time, when it seemed like maybe some people didn’t.
Speaking to the Star from Little Rock, Ark., before going on stage, Parton said she “didn’t think there was much of an audience” for her after her albums stopped topping the charts on radio.
Parton, with an amusement park in her name and more wigs than she can count, didn’t fit nicely into the easy-breezy earth-goddess archetype prescribed to most female singer-songwriters.
She tried a little too hard, was a little too tacky, a little too country, to be cool.
Thankfully, that humourless time is over. Nowadays, it’s her willingness to show her work that has made her into a feminist icon for many young women. By making her artifice plain, she has exposed the truth that being a woman doesn’t come naturally to anyone — it takes practice, patience and a whole lot of effort.
Or, as Parton would say: “It takes a lot of money to look this cheap.”
With a new album titled Pure and Simple out last week, and a North American tour underway, there will be no shortage of Partonisms in our future.
This is your first big tour in North America in 25 years. Why did you leave us for so long?
I’ve done a lot of shows overseas in Europe and Australia. I have fans out there that are still real hot. But I just haven’t had a lot of radio hits in the last several years and I just didn’t think there was much of an audience for me because the ones that are out on tour have a bunch of hit records and hit albums.
But little did I know that the promoters, after seeing all the success we were having overseas, they started checking with us to see if we’d like to do it.
And I said yeah! If you think we can draw people then let’s go!
Do you think that people are just as excited to see you as they were 25 years ago? Or do you feel like you have to re-establish who you are as an artist?
No! I think it’s more so, I was really surprised. Because I’ve been around so much. I’ve done a lot of television, I’ve done movies, I’ve done movies for television and I’ve been on every show in the world, as you know. All the people see me all the time on TV doing stuff and know me. But I’ve had bigger audiences and more excitement than I ever did in the early days. I mean it was great, but it seems greater now. I’m just amazed it’s really a love fest with me and these fans and I love ‘em.
I attended the news conference in Toronto where you announced your album and you had the press just eating out of your hand. Have you always been so comfortable with the media?
I just love people. I think people have seen me so long. I’m a very familiar person, I think, to the press and to the fans. I’m like an older sister or a favourite aunt, I like to think. I think people feel like they know me and I feel like I know everybody. So I just talk to people like I talk to my family, because I really feel like my fans are my family.
But you’ve always been very private, and that’s very different than nowadays where everyone puts everything on Instagram and everyone knows who’s dating who in the music industry. What kind of impact does privacy have on an artist’s life and why is it so important to you?
Well, it’s always been not only important, it’s been vital to keep my very private life private. I tell ‘em what I can, but I don’t think you have to expose everything.
You know I’m willing to give my heart and my mind and as much as
my soul ... well you just can’t give everything away.
I like to keep my life private because when I finish working, I like to go home and I like to do all those wonderful precious things that keep a body safe and sane.
A lot of crossover collaborations are really popular: Reba McEntire’s done some covers of Kelly Clarkson and you’re certainly no stranger to being a crossover artist. But this album is pure country and you produced it yourself and you wrote it yourself. Why?
Just to be honest with you, I felt like I needed an album when we decided to go on tour.
I thought well, I need to have an album just to promote the tour and vice-versa, and I thought I aught to write a song called “Pure and Simple” and I thought, well, what would that be about? It should be simple, because the whole show is simple. So I just got the big idea that I should write it all love songs, since it was my 50th year married.
How long a period was there between when you decided to go on tour and when you decided to write the album?
Ha ha! Probably within three months from the time I said ‘Yes I’ll go on the tour,’ and then I thought, well what am I going to do?
So within three months I had the whole album written and recorded and ready to start the artwork and all that stuff. It was a blessed project, I felt.
(The interview was edited for both clarity and length.)