A dynamo in the world of pop

Press, 23 April 1980, Page 19

A dynamo in the world of pop

Dolly Parton, the Tennessee backwoods girl who became the queen of country music and has now‘.successfully stormed the world of pop, has a TV2 .special tonight — an hour-long musical docu-

mentary of a recent autumn tour which took the entertainer and her entourage over 5000 miles in less than two weeks. In the United States and Europe Dolly’s concerts are sell-outs, with fans

scrambling for the chance to see her in action. For Dolly, big, blonde and buxom, is well worth watching. Her on-stage outfits are little short of outrageous — figure-hug-ging rhinestone-studded gowns, teetering stiletto shoes, a thick coat of make-up and platinum wigs impossibly teased. The guadiness is deliberate, says Dolly. “That’s part of showbusiness and showbusiness is a phony world anyway. So why not dress the part?” Away from the public eye and alone with Carl Dean, her husband of 12 years, she strips away the glitter. Carl, she says, likes her “natural.” Carl steers clear of his wife’s career. He concentrates instead on running his asphalt paving company in Nashville, where thev live. Dolly spends six months of the year on tour and six months at home. ' , „ In distance, Nashville isn’t far from where Dolly was born 34 years ago, but in other ways it’s a million miles from the mountain shack where she grew up with her 11 brothers and sisters.

Today she’s a millionaire with a bundle of top awards, including a Grammy for her latest album “Here You Come Again,” which has become her first gold record. Dolly also makes a lucrative living from her song-writing. Linda Ron« stadt, Olivia Newton-John, Tina Turner, Emmylou

Harris and Merle Haggard sing her songs and now Twentieth Century-Fox are negotiating a three-movie contract for her..

So life for the little lady (she is after all just sft tall) is certainly on the up and up and as Dolly says of her critics:

“If people think I’m a dumb blonde because Of the way I look, then they’re dumber , than they think I am.”