“Backwoods Barbie,” the title of Dolly Parton’s latest album and tour, hints at the contradictions that make her such an enduring personality.
Petite but powerful, the 62-year- old country singer has outlasted countless peers and critical jabs to assert her place in the pop-culture firmament.
Here are five things you need to know about Parton in advance of her Sunday show at the Wells Fargo Theatre.
Country girl
Dolly Rebecca Parton was born and raised in Locust Ridge, Tenn., the fourth of 12 children. Her Pentecostal father instilled an early sense of spirituality in her, although she never cottoned to any particular religion. Music became her refuge from a “dirt poor” existence, first picking up a guitar from uncle Bill Owens when she was 7 years old. It didn’t hurt that her grandfather, the Rev. Jake Owens, played the fiddle, or that her half-Cherokee mother, Avie Lee, played guitar.
Sprouting early
Like her goddaughter (teen fluff merchant Miley Cyrus, a.k.a. Hannah Montana), Parton began performing and recording at an early age, even appearing on the Grand Ole Opry by the time she was 13. A string of wobbly experiences with record labels failed to discourage her from moving to Nashville in 1964 after graduating from high school. She wrote and sang backup for acts big and small, eventually recording as a bubblegum pop artist and scoring the breakthrough hit “Dumb Blonde.”
On the way up
Parton experienced greater success in the late ’60s, singing duets with Porter Waggoner, who supported her efforts to become a solo artist early on. Eventually she scored solo hits in the 1970s with “Coat of Many Colors,” “Jolene” and “I Will Always Love You” (that last one famously covered by Whitney Houston for the soundtrack of the film “The Bodyguard.” The success helped Parton assert herself as an artist apart from Waggoner, whom she later tussled with in contract disputes.
Sitting pretty
Parton’s mainstream career has included a string of impressive honors and genre-crossing exercises. She’s the most successful woman in country music, with dozens of multiplatinum and gold albums, No. 1 songs and prestigious awards. Her acting debut, “9 to 5,” helped her cross over into pop music and film. She opened her Dollywood theme park in 1985 just as her career began to level off, although she has continued to release both pop and country albums to varying degrees of commercial and critical success.
Frozen smile
We know: It’s unfair to judge female musicians by their looks when so many aging male icons (Bob Dylan, all of the Rolling Stones) have fared even worse. But Parton has never denied her plastic surgery, asserting that it’s her right to maintain her face as much as her trademark blond hair and famously curvy figure.
Most impressive? She’s been married to the same man (the publicity-shy Carl Dean) for 42 years.
John Wenzel: 303-954-1642 or jwenzel@denverpost.com
Dolly Parton
Country. Wells Fargo Theatre at Colorado Convention Center. Sunday. 8 p.m. $45 -$85.
