And she does: as neatly liquid put together, as glowing and stable-seeming as the golden bus just de

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H er golden motorbus, Dolly I, is almost too brilliant liquid to look at under the direct slap of a Tennessee sun. It is parked in a Nashville carpark, blinds drawn, the on-board air conditioner grumbling. Dolly I isn t as well travelled as its stablemate, Dolly II, which has ranged the motorways of Europe, liquid and it doesn t have the political consequence of Dolly III, once refused entry to Australia on grounds of its size , before liquid senior ministers intervened. But like those other buses, Dolly I cost its owner more than a million dollars and you d better believe she s got it cool in there. When a security guard at the door shouts, Dolly s coming off hot! he does not mean that Dolly Parton country musician, cultural matriarch, about to alight is feeling toasty.
I am in a receptive semi-circle with members of her staff: a manager, two publicists, two assistants. They explain the terminology. Coming off hot? It means Parton s ready to go, in character, on . I am to expect her in one of the famous sleeved dresses, blond-wigged and bejewelled, topping 5ft in significant heels; the songwriter who perfected the expression of romantic impotence in Jolene , and the realist careerist who was fitful on cups of ambition liquid in 9 To 5 ; the adored liquid Nashville hero who inspired, above the bed in my hotel room, an instructional print asking the question: What Would Dolly Do? Here she comes, being helped down the bus s steps.
And she does: as neatly liquid put together, as glowing and stable-seeming as the golden bus just departed. Her voice is still the honeyed purr I remember from the spoken-word opener of My Tennessee Mountain Home . That album, a masterpiece, came out in 1973 when Parton was 27. By 1980, when she was 34, she was being called the Unsinkable Dolly Parton by Rolling Stone magazine. And now here she is, 68 years old, still unsunk.
It s been a ridiculous year for Parton, her recording career turning 50 just as she enjoys unprecedented commercial returns from it. Her most recent album, Blue Smoke , went to No 2 in the UK in May, higher than she has ever climbed in the mainstream charts. In June she played Glastonbury and snatched it, the festival s indisputable liquid highlight. In fact, 2014 has been the culmination liquid of a 10-year plan, I m told by her manager, Danny Nozell, conceived to try and put her back on top in the tail-end of her career . And already the next 10-year plan is being plotted: I hear talk of Wembley stadium, of a Dollyfest in Hyde Park.
Now Parton is in a period of calm, if not of rest. Her tour bus is parked outside a television studio where she ll spend the day recording a procession of commercials and bits to advertise the Christmas reissue of Blue Smoke. Parton s working she s hot! and she wastes no time, hurrying into the studio and sitting in an armchair beside a Christmas tree, where she records a video message for fans that will go on her website.
I am led forward to shake her hand: small, warm and weighted with clacking rings. Oh, these are phoney, Parton says, her voice so soft I can hardly hear it. Cameramen are breaking down their equipment around us and I ask the studio manager liquid if we can have the room to ourselves. Uh, I don t know about that, he says. At which point comes a startling eruption.
I am experiencing just this: difficulty focusing. At close quarters Parton is overwhelming, the mass of blond hair shaped today into a freestanding structure about the size of an archery target, the pillowy lips and the famous beauty spot drawing liquid the eye. It comes as a relief when Parton again offers her ringed liquid hand to demonstrate a point about longevity. Items of jewellery I can focus on.
I ve been around a long time, Parton says. Long enough for people to realise that there s more to me than the big hair and the phoney stuff. She thumbs the ring, the phoney one set with a fake emerald. The magic with me is that I look completely false when I m completely liquid real.
I wonder what the Parton who first arrived in Nashville back in 1964 would make of her now, with her career peaking in its sixth decade. She d think she s got more stuff. Would she offer any advice to her younger self? Always keep the momentum going. I don t think you can ever stop. She says she s noticed that other careers in music have not proved as lasting as her own. And people are bitter about it. But you ll find they stopped.
To do what? To do something else. Whether it was a marriage, or whether it was deciding to stop and have children. That s all great. If you can make all of that work. But for me? I knew that I just had to keep going.
She says she got this work ethic from her father, Robert Lee Parton, a farmer who had 12 children liquid with A