Dolly Parton: The timeless queen of country music

Balancing on five-inch heels, a satin white knee-length skirt and gold embroidered top hugging her famously tiny frame and flashing a dazzling “hillbilly” smile straight from the “smoky blue mount’ns of Tennessee”, Dolly Parton recently strolled into London’s O2 arena and delivered a master-class in the art of being timeless and ageless.

There were jokes (“careful now, don’t break my hair! You know it doesn’t hurt me but some woman in Korea is screaming right now”).

There was a display of multi-instrumental fluency that most modern-day artistes can only dream of; playing in turns, the piano, the guitar, banjo, the saxophone, the fiddle, the harmonica and several more.

And, of course, there was the singing, her striking soprano unchanged despite her being just two years short of her 70th birthday. Almost each song was preceded by a narration of her life story in her strong American southern accent.

“Howdy! How are you? Oh my goodness you are rowdy and you are looking good too.

Well, ‘course you know I grew up in the great smoky blue mountains of Tennessee, I was a farmer’s daughter and I grew up in the country. Momma met dad when she was 15 and dad was 17 and they went on to have 12 children. We were rich in spirit.

We didn’t have much money. We were six girls and six boys. We were just a bunch of happy hillbillies (poor, rural dwellers). My folks loved each other.

My dad was a hard working farmer. Raised 12 kids, always kept a roof over our heads, even if it leaked. He kept food on our table, even if it wasn’t exactly what we wanted. And we always had a bed to sleep in so that was good.”

Then she turned to her mum’s story: “And I had a perfect momma too. My momma was one of those people that could tell you anything, make it sound good, and she could cook anything and make it taste pretty good. Momma could stretch everything. She was good with a dollar.

COAT OF MANY COLOURS

I went for a dinner not long ago where we spent $1,500 (Sh130,000) and I thought this is what she spent for 18 years raising 12 children. Well, momma could sew anything and make it seem good. You know where I’m going with this don’tcha. She made a little coat that I wrote a song about and became famous for and I always like to dedicate it to all the good mommas out there. Hope you’ll enjoy hearing about my little, true story of the coat of many colours.”

The Coat of Many Colours is one of her most recognisable songs, describing a jacket her mum made ahead of the winter when she was a school girl from “a box of rags someone gave us” and her pride in the little garment. 

Momma sewed the rags together sewin’ every piece with love

She made my coat of many colours that I was so proud of

And while she sewed, she told a story from the Bible, she had read

About a coat of many colours Joseph wore and then she said

“I hope this coat will bring you good luck and happiness”

And I just couldn’t wait to wear it and momma blessed it with a kiss

In my coat of many colours I hurried off to school

Just to find the others laughing and making fun of meand my coat of many colours my momma made for me

And oh I couldn’t understand that ‘cause I thought I was rich

And then I told them of the love my momma sewed in every stitch

And I told ‘em all the story momma told me while she sewed

And why my coat of many colours was worth more than all their clothes

They didn’t understand it and I tried to make them see

One is only poor only if you choose to be.

Ms Parton was in London to promote her 42nd album, Blue Smoke, and she received fulsome praise from the media for her two sold-out concerts including a performance at the annual Glastonbury festival which drew 100,000 fans.

POPSTAR WITH A DIFFERENCE

Six national newspapers gave the story front page treatment, describing it variously as a “storming appearance,” hailing her as “the undisputed queen of Glastonbury” and saying she gave “a performance that surely calls for a redefinition of the word ‘crowd-pleaser’…ridiculous, yet sublime”.

Yet what intrigues and draws so much attention to the singer is not just her consistently vigorous and powerful performances over the years which have made her the most successful female country singer of all time and one of the most decorated musicians of the modern age but the fact that she is so unusual in the world of show business.

Dolly Rebecca Parton was a child star, being spotted at a tender age, receiving her first guitar at eight, becoming a fixture of local television programmes in Tennessee at 10 and recording her first song Puppy Love at 13.

But, unlike other child sensations from Michael Jackson and Amy Winehouse who lost their lives to drugs as they struggled to cope with the pressure of early stardom, Dolly Parton, who does not smoke or drink, has managed to retain a perfectly normal personality although her interviewers always struggle to tell whether her eternally bubbly and cheerful personality represents an act or not.

“I’m not happy all the time, and I wouldn’t want to be because that would make me a shallow person. But I do try to find the good in everybody,” she told an interviewer.

Even more unusually for a screen diva, she has been married to the same man, Carl Dean, for 48 years although her husband avoids the spotlight and never appears in public with her.    

“We’re really proud of our marriage. It’s the first for both of us. And the last,” she says. “Carl’s never wanted to be in the limelight, so I didn’t put him there. He wants to be left alone and be a homebody and then hear about what I’ve been up to when I get back. He’s my anchor and I’m his excitement …

“Y’know in the small town I grew up it was hard to find a boyfriend who wasn’t a blood relative. So I went to a nearby town, Rocky Town, and I found him”

This was her way of introducing another of her famous songs, Jolene, in which she urges a strikingly beautiful red-haired bank teller not to take her husband “just because you can”.

The singer is also one of the few people in show business who boasts about the extent of plastic surgery she has undergone to keep her youthful look.

“If something is bagging, sagging or dragging, I’ll tuck it, suck it or pluck it,” she told one newspaper. “It’s like what I always say: I may look fake but I’m real where it counts. Ha ha ha!,” she said, touching the general direction of her heart.

FLASHY DRESSER

“So do you (always dress flashily) when it’s just you and your husband Carl at home?” another interviewer, from the Guardian, asked. “Well, of course! I don’t want to look good for everyone else and like a slouch for him! So even if we’re just driving around in our pick-up and hitting all the local fast-food joints, I’ll tease my hair and put it up in a little scrunchie.”

“I don’t believe you eat fast food,” the interviewer demanded. “Your waist is the size of my wrist.”

“I do have to watch it because I’m only about 5ft and you can’t hold on to too much weight when you’re so short,” she said. “So I stay on a low-carb diet pretty much through the week and eat what I want on weekends. And, of course, nothing matters on Thanksgiving and Christmas! Ha ha ha!”

Ms Parton brought this infectious enthusiasm to her energetic two-and-a-half hour performances at the two concerts that sent fans to their feet as she played a combination of familiar old hits and new compositions.

She also spoke at length about her spirituality, an unusual thing for a public figure in what is an increasingly solidly atheist Western Europe.

This was her introduction to a tune on the piano: “When I hear the sound of an old church organ, and maybe this comes from my upbringing with my grandfather (who was a Pentecostal preacher) it makes me want to testify. It really does. ‘Course I am no saint, that’s for sure, but like most of you I try to be a better person. And like most of you, I feel sometimes I am getting caught right in the middle. I’m just a little too bad to be really good and just a little too good to be really bad. Now if you folks can relate to that, let me hear you say Amen.”

Her simplicity recalled a period when America had acquired a positive, benign image as the land of basketball, famous musicians and Hollywood stars, before George W. Bush’s wars introduced a harder, less positive view of the US with his wars and in her disarmingly simple way, she spoke of missing the days when there was “all this love and peace”.

“Wouldn’t it be great if we could all live like this (pointing at the dancing crowd) and everybody got along? Yes, I was alive and well when that was the case.”

Ms Parton maintains a rigorous schedule, waking up at 5a.m. most days and adding to her collection of over 3,000 songs although she is now kept as busy by her charity as her music.

THANK GOD, NO KIDS

She has never had children, having undergone a hysterectomy (partial surgical removal of the womb) to treat a condition she suffered, a development which sent her into a period of depression and weight gain at the age of 36.

“I’ve never been pregnant, so I just feel God didn’t mean for me to have kids, so that everybody else’s children could be mine,” she said in one interview. “But if I had had them, I think I’d have been a devoted mother. My songs are like my children – I expect them to support me when I’m old!” 

Dolly Parton helped bring up some of her siblings, nephews and nieces and her charity, Imagination Library, delivers 2.5 million children around the world each year to boost child literacy.

Time flew along with her fast-paced, engrossing mix of autobiography, singing and instrument playing and it was finally time for her final song, an extremely throaty rendition of her hit I Will Always Love You which was composed, oddly enough not for a lover but after she decided to terminate a contract with a production company.

The thundering cheers to which she left the stage and the charisma that helped her fill the hall with her presence recalled the words of film critic Roger Ebert who wrote that meeting Parton made him feel “as if I were being mesmerised by a benevolent power. I left the room in a cloud of good feeling”.

So did the sold-out crowd when the 68-year-old star finally brought the curtains down.

_______________ 

HER TUNES ARE POPULAR WITH MUGITHI ARTISTES

The makuti roof has definite cultural roots from the East African coast. However, the last two decades have seen many entertainment spots in urban centres adopt the makuti thatch as the roof of choice.

Most of these entertainment spots have one thing in common: the inevitable one-man guitar musician. Though these days guitarists give renditions of various local tunes, the pioneers of the early 1990s almost exclusively performed copyrights of country music greats such as Dolly Parton, Kenny Rogers and Don Williams.

Such popular hits as The Gambler, Coward of the County by Kenny Rogers; Daddy Was A Country Preacher Man and My Coat of Many Colours by Dolly Paton were a regular part of the offering by one-man guitar pioneer the late Joe Mwenda, whose first base was Ngong Hills Hotel in mid-1990s.

Mwenda later moved the action to Park Inn at Uhuru Park. Musicians such as Mike Murimi followed in his footsteps.

These breed of musicians invariably dressed in faded jeans, cowboy hat and boots. The rendition of country music was a hit with revellers, many of whom could sing along with musicians.

It is not clear when country music became popular in Kenya, but it is known to appeal across all generations. Available research suggests that country music originated in America in the southern states.

It is mostly a combination of ballads and dance tunes. When it first emerged as a popular genre in the 1940s, it was considered music of hillbillies, a rather derogatory term of rural young men who were less sophisticated than their urban counterparts.

This rural origin perhaps explains the term country music. Distinctly poetic and tempered with catchy romantic lines, the genre smashed all class and cultural barriers, winning an ardent fan base around the world.

The local entertainment scene has changed though. While the one-man guitar is still part of many entertainment spots, the offering is mainly a remix of local music, which is sometimes defined by unmitigated vulgarity.                      

By Gakiha Weru