Dolly Parton 1946-2026

In the heat of Sunday afternoon I happened to find myself at a country music festival by the Thames, listening to Definitely Dolly — a Dolly Parton impersonator and her four-piece band. When I told an American neighbour where I was going, she predicted that there would be “heartbreak — and trucks.” She was wrong about that. Instead there were hats and boots. And beer. And a lot of people having a good time listening to decent renderings of immortal songs like “I Will Always Love You”, “Jolene” and “Coat of Many Colors”, while laughing at stage patter based on Parton’s much loved jokes about her hair, her body and her clothes, delivered in a passable imitation of that bright East Tennessee drawl. Definitely Dolly lost me when she inserted “We Are the Champions” into the repertoire, but she won me back near the end when she shattered the fourth wall by suddenly announcing, in a broad Scouse accent, that she was actually Dani Graham from Liverpool, before reverting to a Dollyness which…