The Queen Of Country: Dolly Parton
Growing up in the 80s and 90s, the title Queen of Country Music was practically synonymous with Dolly Parton. You wouldn’t have been entirely unreasonable for wondering whether she had some kind of Zimbabwean connection. The way almost everyone, including their grandparents, seemed to know a Dolly Parton song, you’d have thought she had a homestead somewhere between the Zambezi and Limpopo river.
There was always somebody who could belt out the opening notes of Tomorrow Is Forever. Somebody who sang along to 9 to 5 while clocking in their shift. Somebody knew I Will Always Love You, and somebody, somewhere, had probably called a radio DJ to request a Dolly Parton song and then dedicate it to somebody who was definitely going to know it was about them.
My parents were fans or maybe that’s just what was there, because country music dominated the airwaves back then, Don Williams, Kenny Rogers, The Trio… My father had a vinyl LP collection he would jam on his beloved Tempest SuperSonic hi-fi turntable, which played everything from the greatest-hits to double album specials.
So naturally, we grew up listening to Dolly. I am still slightly shocked that she never performed in Zimbabwe. If she had, she would filled up a stadium, with fans ready to break into an uproarious ovation soon as she appeared on stage.
Earlier this month, I posted a joke asking why national anthems aren’t called country music. Someone replied: “Because country music was already taken by Dolly Parton.” And honestly that’s an accurate reflection of her influence and all the lives and generations she touched with her music.
On 25 August, the world lost her. Dolly Parton died in Nashville at 80, leaving behind a career spanning more than six decades, more than 3,000 songs, 25 chart-toppers and a cultural footprint that stretched across continents.. Even Google marked it: search her name and butterflies drift up the screen, with the words “We will always love you“
It is almost unbearably appropriate, because she loved butterflies. She once explained that she related to them because they are beautiful, bite-free, and gentle. She adopted the butterfly as a personal symbol, weaving it into her music, clothing, and branding. Her 1974 song Love Is Like a Butterfly became one of her hits, cementing the association forever.
Her butterfly association even earned her a couple of dark conspiracy theories, that she was covered in butterfly tattoos and was an activating agent for mind control program Project Monarch. The far less dramatic truth was that many of her small, pastel tattoos were used to cover up surgical scars.
That could probably sum her up her life philosophy, make something beautiful out of the things with what you are given…
Dolly Parton always maintained she wrote “Jolene” and “I Will Always Love You” back to back, in the same extraordinary stretch of songwriting. Whether it was literally the same 24 hours or a very good couple of days apart, even she wasn’t entirely sure. Either way, “Jolene” was recorded in May 1973 and “I Will Always Love You” barely a month later in June, so however you slice it, that’s a whole of creative juice in a short window.
She may have also singlehandedly ruined the name Jolene for an entire generation of parents and someone with name probably went through life with a sort of homewrecking suspicion.
The song was inspired by a combination of real life and Dolly’s imagination. The name came from a young red-haired, green-eyed fan who asked Dolly for an autograph after a performance. Dolly liked the name so much she remembered it. The other ingredient was a red-haired bank teller who, according to Dolly, had been paying rather too much attention to her husband.
The first version of “I Will Always Love You” I ever heard was Whitney Houston‘s, and that’s what made me fall for Whitney, alongside The Bodyguard movie starring Kevin Costner and its soundtrack. I only learned several years later that it was cover from a 1973 song. Imagine that, a song so well written that another artist could turn it into a global phenomenon 2 decades later, reintroduce it to an entirely new generation who’d never have found it otherwise.
In the late 90s Dolly Parton turned up again in pop culture when Pras, Mýa and Ol’ Dirty Bastard took Islands in the Stream Dolly’s 1983 duet with Kenny Rogers and turned its familiar melody and chorus into Ghetto Supastar (That Is What You Are)
Music has a way of crossing distance culture and time itself… amapiano and house remixes have quietly reintroduced some of these old country classics to a dance floor that would never have willingly listened to country music. My generation inherited Dolly Parton from our parents and another generation will inherit her from us.
And she, left the world one final gift, back in 2015, she sealed away an unreleased song called “My Place in History” in a time capsule at Dollywood, complete with the players to read them, just in case, with instructions not to be opened until 19 January 2046, what would have been her 100th birthday had she lived that long.
Long live the Queen.
I’m curating a playlist of essential Dolly Parton songs. What comes to mind for you when you hear her name?
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