Dolly Parton Actually Saw “Jolene” A Few Years Back & Apparently… She Did NOT Age Well

CLASSIC Dolly.

Dolly Parton of course wrote her iconic song “Jolene” about a real life girl who was getting a little to flirty with her late husband Carl Dean at the bank… released in 1973, it was one of her first big hit singles, and served as the title track for her 13th studio album. She famously wrote it on the same day in 1972 that she wrote her other massive hit, “I Will Always Love You.”

Dolly has talked about how the song is based on a true story many times, and in an interview with Access to talk about her new baking line several years ago, she gave a little more backstory to what really went down with “Jolene.”

She says she started to notice that Carl was going to the bank way more often than he needed to back then:

“Well, actually, it was based on a little truth. Her name was not Jolene, but she was working at the bank, and she was this beautiful girl. And that was bad enough, that he was having to go to the bank as much as he was going. And I kept thinking, we ain’t got that kinda money, not yet anyway. He was in asphalt paving, he and his father, and I said, ‘Why are you having to talk to her all the time?’”

Carl assured her there was nothing more to it, and Dolly wanted to know why there wasn’t someone else he could talk to at the bank if that was the case:

“And he said, ‘I’m trying to get a loan, I’m trying to do this for our asphalt paving company.’ And I said, ‘Well, couldn’t you talk to one of those hairy legged boys about a thing like that?’ And he said, ‘No’.”

Dolly was gonna set him straight regardless of why he was really there, and told him he better act right or else…

“And I said, ‘Look, you better be talkin’ to one of those boys, or it’s gonna be your ** and your fault! So there’s your asphalt.’”

Spoken like a true queen… I have a feeling he never went out of his way to talk to “Jolene” again.

Decades later though, Dolly looks back on the situation and realizes that it was more about her own insecurities than anything else. But hey, at least we got one of the best country songs of all time out of it, right?

“But I was just jealous, ‘cuz she was prettier than me and I think I just felt threatened. He didn’t have a thing going with her, but he was flirtin’. But I’m a flirt, too. Anyways, I thought, this makes a great idea for a song. So I wrote it.”

But in a 2020 interview with Jimmy Fallon, Dolly revealed that she had seen “Jolene” (that wasn’t the girl’s real name) recently, and she was happy to update everyone that she was “not so hot” anymore… her pretty red hair had turned gray, and her “little tight butt” had hard time fitting through the door now. She also apparently went from a “D-cup” to wearing depends.

It’s petty, but it had to have made Dolly feel just a little bit good seeing that… and she seemed happy to admit it on national TV, which makes it even funnier:

“Well, the real story was about my husband, you know. This woman I tell the story about, this girl worked at the bank when we first got married, and this beautiful redhead, and his spend more time at the bank than we had money. And I thought, that ain’t gonna work out too good. but anyway, so that’s kind of what that was based on.

But just so you know, I did see Jolene not that long ago, she’s not so hot now. She’s not, you know, she used to have that beautiful red hair, now she’s gray. She used to have little tight butt, but now she can’t… it’s a tight spot getting her butt through the door now. Seriously. And she used to wear a D-cup, now she’s wearing depends.”

I know we’ll probably never find out her true identity, but I would absolutely LOVE to find out her side of the story… and what she thinks about becoming the jezebel, so to speak, in one of the greatest country song of all-time:

She’s probably smart not to, though, because who on earth would want to be known as the woman who tried to break up Dolly Parton’s decades-long marriage… even all these years later, Dolly still has something to say about her, and she’s not afraid to let it rip. That “it’s a tight spot getting her butt through the door now” line is lethal…

“Jolene”

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