In the early 1970s she was on such a roll that a single session in 1973 yielded both Jolene and I Will Always Love You. She has written, by her estimation, around 3000 songs, 175 of which are featured in a new book, Songteller: My Life in Lyrics. She can play around 20 instruments, including the fiddle, dulcimer, mandolin and pan-flute. As a writer and performer, she sits at country music’s top table with Hank Williams and Johnny Cash. Parton’s fame used to have two distinct lanes. Festival-goers enjoyed the music but they loved the person even more. Her between-song patter, polished to a high shine, was the primary source of delight. Throw in the floor-filling 9 to 5 and the showstopping I Will Always Love You, and she still has just four undeniably famous songs in her vast catalogue: far fewer than Kylie Minogue, Barry Gibb or other artists to have played the Sunday afternoon legend slot in the past decade. I witnessed the Dolly effect first-hand at Glastonbury in 2014, when she drew one of the biggest crowds in the festival’s history, an achievement made all the more remarkable by the fact that only two of the songs she recorded – Jolene and the Kenny Rogers duet Islands in the Stream – have ever made the UK Top 40. The news inspired a joke (“It’s 9-to-5 per cent effective”), a fond YouTube parody (Vaccine, to the tune of Jolene), and yet another outpouring of love for a woman who inspires as much affection as any celebrity on Earth. Last month, it was revealed that Dolly Parton had donated $1m (£744,000) to Moderna’s successful effort to develop a vaccine for Covid-19.
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