By Madeline Lau
Looking up at a pint-sized yet buxom backwoods Barbie I began to weep. I say weep because they were subtle tears of utter joy, leaking from my eyes like liquid emotion. A dream was being realized; I was finally seeing my musical icon, Dolly Parton.
It was a serious moment of serendipity that allowed me to go to this life-changing performance. My aunt had bought the tickets for herself and my cousin, really the only person in the fam besides me who loves country music, but she couldn’t use hers since our step-grandmother would be in town and my aunt had to get her from the airport. She relinquished the tickets to my mom, who likes Dolly, but not country, and super-ecstatic me. Could I have been more excited? Probably not.
We arrived at the Rose Garden and were totally blown away by the variety in the crowd. Punks, hillbillies, old people, young people, moms, kids, gay men in overalls and pink shirts; it seemed that EVERYONE had shown up to see the country legend who is so often, and so unfairly, dismissed as a cheesy act.
Dolly opened the show with a bang, coming onto the stage in a delightfully tacky red-sequined dress, hair and bosom stacked to the ceiling. Her pipes were as clear and beautiful as ever while she sang classics like Jolene,Coat of Many Colors, Why’d You Come in Here Looking Like That? and many more.
She bounced around from instrument to instrument, rocking out on the fiddle, electric guitar, dulcimer, acoustic guitar and banjo, and cackled with glee as she cracked jokes with the audience.
The new songs were just about as great as the classics and everyone was having a wonderful time watching that tiny country lady enjoying the heck out of herself.
When I tell people about my love for Dolly the responses are always the same. A joke about the size of certain body parts, a scoff at some of her sillier songs or a comment about how lowbrow my taste in music is, but this is beyond infuriating for many reasons!
Mainly, Dolly Parton is a skilled artist, who writes thousands of songs, composes all of her own music and has provided major hits for other singers including Whitney Houston, who was basically unknown before she covered Dolly’s I Will Always Love You.
Ms. Parton came from the dirt-poor Smoky Mountains of Tennessee with nothing but talent, chutzpah and a dream, and climbed her way through the grimy music industry to get to the very top. The woman plays her instruments with 3-inch-long red painted talons, marches along at 60-some years of age in 5-inch heels, and has been in the music business for longer than anyone in Coldplay or Maroon 5 has even been alive.
I would say that Dolly Parton is totally mondo bananas, but that language isn’t really appropriate for someone of her status. She is a music god, sent from the Tennessee hills to bring us beautiful melodic love. As the tears of joy rolled down my face in row H of the Rose Garden, it was all I could do to keep from kowtowing right then and there on the floor.
Long live Dolly and her beautiful, inspirational talent, and please, everybody, give her the respect she deserves!
