Music for Grownups: Dolly Parton at Radio City Music Hall
By: Richard Gehr | Source: AARP.org | Date Posted: 2008-05-06
Richard Gehr is a veteran music critic based in New York City.
From her elaborately sequined denims to her sky-high hair and admitted surgical attention to "anything that bags, sags, or drags," it sounds as though it takes work to be Dolly Parton. But judging from the gusto with which the 62-year-old singer-songwriter performed at Manhattan's Radio City Music Hall on May 1—and her preference for dying onstage ("hopefully in the middle of a song I wrote") rather than ever retiring—it looks like it's also a lot of fun being Dolly Parton.
Like a dutiful flight attendant, Dolly acknowledged that while her boisterous audience, which consisted here mainly of kitsch-loving gay locals and country-loving suburbanites, had many entertainment options to choose from, she was especially happy they chose her. She says that’s "because I really need the money."
And Dolly works hard for that payday. She introduced nearly every song with either a bit of autobiography or a string of self- deprecating jokes. "There's two kinds of mountain women," she noted during one of several interludes devoted to memories of her legendary, hardscrabble childhood in Tennessee's Great Smoky Mountains, where she was the fourth of 12 children: "The kind that get married and have a bunch of kids, and the kind that stay single and have a bunch of kids."
Dolly also recounts her "dirt-poor," yet obviously inspiring, upbringing in autobiographical songs such as "Coat of Many Colors," which her mother sewed out of rags, "Jolene," about a rival's attempt to steal her real-life husband, Carl Dean, and the title song from her most recent album, "Backwoods Barbie." “I’ve always been misunderstood because of how I look,” she sings perceptively in the latter. “Don’t judge me by the cover, ’cause I’m a real good book.” Her “Dollywood” amusement park in Pigeon Forge, Tenn., is likewise nothing less than an idealized reproduction of that childhood, built to scale. And her current “Backwoods Barbie” tour, which runs here and abroad through August 5, offers her ample opportunities to re-tell her story.
While some of Dolly's more recent albums have explored her bluegrass roots, this show was all about the glitz. She played most of her hits, from her first million seller, "Here You Are Again," through "I Will Always Love You." Whitney Houston launched that one into the stratosphere, and Parton subsequently recut it successfully with Vince Gill in 1995. A montage of Dolly clips accompanied "Islands in the Stream" from a few decades ago. The new Dolly did not suffer by comparison.
Her eight-piece, guitar-heavy band, and three backup singers received their turn in the limelight during an overly long medley of '50s hits that should really have been a medley of even more Parton. And considering the facility with which she plays the fiddle, harmonica, guitar, dulcimer, piano, autoharp, or any of the other sequined instruments thrust her way, you imagine that she could probably pull off the whole shebang by herself if forced to.
The evening climaxed with a crowd-pleasing "9 to 5," which both summed up the evening's working-woman theme and gave Dolly a chance to plug the planned September premiere in Los Angeles of a musical "9 to 5" based on the 1980 movie that launched her film career. That morning "cup of ambition" Dolly refers to in the song? I'm guessing it's extra large.
Have you seen Dolly Parton on tour lately? Tell us what you thought in the comments section.
Like a dutiful flight attendant, Dolly acknowledged that while her boisterous audience, which consisted here mainly of kitsch-loving gay locals and country-loving suburbanites, had many entertainment options to choose from, she was especially happy they chose her. She says that’s "because I really need the money."
And Dolly works hard for that payday. She introduced nearly every song with either a bit of autobiography or a string of self- deprecating jokes. "There's two kinds of mountain women," she noted during one of several interludes devoted to memories of her legendary, hardscrabble childhood in Tennessee's Great Smoky Mountains, where she was the fourth of 12 children: "The kind that get married and have a bunch of kids, and the kind that stay single and have a bunch of kids."
Dolly also recounts her "dirt-poor," yet obviously inspiring, upbringing in autobiographical songs such as "Coat of Many Colors," which her mother sewed out of rags, "Jolene," about a rival's attempt to steal her real-life husband, Carl Dean, and the title song from her most recent album, "Backwoods Barbie." “I’ve always been misunderstood because of how I look,” she sings perceptively in the latter. “Don’t judge me by the cover, ’cause I’m a real good book.” Her “Dollywood” amusement park in Pigeon Forge, Tenn., is likewise nothing less than an idealized reproduction of that childhood, built to scale. And her current “Backwoods Barbie” tour, which runs here and abroad through August 5, offers her ample opportunities to re-tell her story.
While some of Dolly's more recent albums have explored her bluegrass roots, this show was all about the glitz. She played most of her hits, from her first million seller, "Here You Are Again," through "I Will Always Love You." Whitney Houston launched that one into the stratosphere, and Parton subsequently recut it successfully with Vince Gill in 1995. A montage of Dolly clips accompanied "Islands in the Stream" from a few decades ago. The new Dolly did not suffer by comparison.
Her eight-piece, guitar-heavy band, and three backup singers received their turn in the limelight during an overly long medley of '50s hits that should really have been a medley of even more Parton. And considering the facility with which she plays the fiddle, harmonica, guitar, dulcimer, piano, autoharp, or any of the other sequined instruments thrust her way, you imagine that she could probably pull off the whole shebang by herself if forced to.
The evening climaxed with a crowd-pleasing "9 to 5," which both summed up the evening's working-woman theme and gave Dolly a chance to plug the planned September premiere in Los Angeles of a musical "9 to 5" based on the 1980 movie that launched her film career. That morning "cup of ambition" Dolly refers to in the song? I'm guessing it's extra large.
Have you seen Dolly Parton on tour lately? Tell us what you thought in the comments section.
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