Dolly Parton is truly a living legend. Singer, songwriter, actress, and icon — is there anything she can’t do?
With so much talent packed into one beautiful person, it’s hard to imagine there was once a time she was so insecure about a girl being more beautiful than her that she wrote a whole song about it.
RELATED STORIES
‘Jolene’ is probably Dolly Parton’s most iconic song.
It tells the story of a woman so beautiful that Dolly had to beg her to not steal her husband away. Dolly’s always maintained that the song is true, and Jolene was a real and very beautiful woman she knew.
The song has been covered and re-imagined tons of times.
Miley Cyrus, The White Stripes, Kelly Clarkson, Olivia Newton-John, and even Glee have all left their mark on the song’s history, which is definitely a huge legacy.
Dolly Parton wrote both Jolene and I Will Always Love You on the same night . Fun fact.
While promoting her new Netflix series, Dolly updated Jimmy Fallon on the Jolene situation.
“This woman I tell the story about, this girl that worked at the bank when we first got married, this beautiful redhead,” Dolly explained, who has said in the past that this woman used to flirt with her husband whenever he went to the bank.
Dolly has explained before that her husband liked the attention he got from this woman.
“And he’s spending more time at the bank than we had money,” Dolly told Fallon. “And I thought, ‘Well that ain’t gonna work out too good.'”
“Just so you know, I did see Jolene not long ago,” she revealed to Jimmy.
“She’s not so hot now.” As both Jimmy and the audience started cracking up, Dolly continued, saying, “She used to have that beautiful red hair and now she’s gray.”
“She used to have a little tight butt. Now, it’s a tight spot getting her butt through that door now.”
“She used to wear a D-cup — now she’s wearing Depends,” Dolly joked, much to the amusement of everyone present.
It looks like Dolly doesn’t have anything to worry about these days! You can watch the hilarious clip right here.
While Dolly has insisted that the woman who worked at the bank (who now, apparently, wears Depends) is real, her name isn’t actually Jolene.
The story of how Dolly came up with the name to use in that song is actually really sweet — and I’m sure the real woman is glad that her real name wasn’t attached to the song about her being a potential homewrecker.
Dolly said the name itself came from a young fan she met once.
Dolly once said that a young fan had come up to the stage to get an autogrpah. “I said, ‘You’re the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen.’ She had red hair, green eyes and fair skin.”
Dolly said when she’d asked the young fan her name, she’d said Jolene.
“I said, ‘Well that’s just about the prettiest name I ever heard. I’m gonna write a song about you and if you ever hear it, you’ll know it was about you.'”
While the young fan named Jolene has never come forward, hopefully she didn’t think the song itself was about her.
Dolly’s also maintained her classic sense of humor about the song’s subject through the years, having once said , “I want you folks to know, though, that something good can come from anything. Had it not been for that woman I would never have written ‘Jolene’ and I wouldn’t have made all that money, so thank you, Jolene.”
And she’s still got that sense of humor now.
Dolly joked of her husband, “Every time I look at him sleeping over there in his La-Z-Boy, snoring, that hair turning grey at the temples, I wonder if Jolene is still around. I’ll call her up and say, ‘You come and get him now!'”
