Dolly Parton’s fascinating and incredible life story is officially coming to Broadway, as the country music legend announced the world premiere of Dolly: An Original Musical.
The “Jolene” star, 79, told fans this week that her long-awaited musical will have its first production in her home state of Tennessee, as she revealed the moving reason why she was keen to stage it this year.
Speaking at a press conference in Nashville on Tuesday (28 January), she remarked: “Well, I ain’t getting no younger, but as I tell my husband [Carl Thomas Dean], I ain’t getting no older either.”
Parton, who was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1999, continued: “I’ve outlived so many plastic surgeons. But I actually have always wanted to do my life story as a musical.
“And I just thought that I wanted to see it done while I’m still around, to be able to oversee it and make sure that it’s done properly in a way that I would want to see it, rather than to wait ‘til I’m gone and let somebody else decide how they think it should be done.”
Previews of Dolly: An Original Musical will begin on 18 July, with a limited 8-17 August run taking place at Belmont University’s Fisher Center for the Performing Arts in Nashville.
The show will tell the story of how Parton went from one of 12 children raised in a one-room cabin in the Smoky Mountains to one of the world’s most successful stars, known as much for her towering blonde perm and jewel-encrusted outfits as for hit songs such as “9-5” and “I Will Always Love You”.
Parton already has a Tony Award nomination for composing the songs to her Broadway musical 9-5, which ran in Manhattan in 2009.
A decade later, 9 to 5 was revamped for London’s West End, where it opened in 2019 before ending a year later.
As well as producing her new show, she has co-written the book with Emmy-winning producer Maria S Schlatter along with a number of original songs.
In November last year she released a new album, Smoky Mountain DNA: Family, Faith and Fables, which explored the legacy of the Partons and the Owens (her maternal family) through performances with five generations of family members.
“My grandpa used to say when I got famous, he said, ‘Well, she came out crying in the key of D,'” she told The Associated Press last year. “I think we all did.”
“We're kind of like the Carter family. We go back generations,” she said of her heritage, referring to how the Partons are widely considered the first family of country music.
“I would imagine this will be my favorite album,” she continued. “This really involves, you know, my grandmas and my grandpas, my uncles and my aunts and all the people going all the way back that had the biggest influence on my life. The ones that I remember from being little, and it even goes on farther back from there.”
Tickets for Dolly: An Original Musical are on sale now.
