Dolly Parton’s hit song “Jolene” was inspired by a woman who harbored a crush on Parton’s husband, Carl Dean.
The singer, who died on Tuesday, penned the 1973 hit after a female bank teller flirted with Dean while helping him at the bank.
“[The] song was loosely based on a little bit of truth,” she said during the 2014 Glastonbury Festival, per The Independent. “I wrote that years ago when my husband … was spending a little more time with Jolene than I thought he should be.”
“She got this terrible crush on my husband,” Parton told NPR in October 2008. “And he just loved going to the bank because she paid him so much attention. It was kinda like a running joke between us — when I was saying, ‘Hell, you’re spending a lot of time at the bank. I don’t believe we’ve got that kind of money.’ So it’s really an innocent song all around, but sounds like a dreadful one.”
“She had everything I didn’t, like legs — you know, she was about 6 feet tall. And had all that stuff that some little short, sawed-off honky like me don’t have,” she explained. “So no matter how beautiful a woman might be, you’re always threatened by certain … You’re always threatened by other women, period.”
Parton joked with the crowd at the 2014 Glastonbury Festival that she was ultimately happy “Jolene” flirted with Dean.
“I want you folks to know, though, that something good can come from anything,” she recounted. “Had it not been for that woman, I would never have written ‘Jolene’, and I wouldn’t have made all that money, so thank you, Jolene.
Dean died in March 2025 following an unspecified prolonged illness. The couple had been married for nearly 60 years.
Following his passing, Parton shared that she “long[ed] for him every day…I’m having to really go through a lot trying to figure out how to be without him because I was with him for so long.”
However, the flirtatious bank teller was not named Jolene. The title character’s name was taken from a young Parton fan.
“One night, I was on stage, and there was this beautiful little girl — she was probably 8 years old at the time,” the singer told NPR. “And she had this beautiful red hair, this beautiful skin, these beautiful green eyes, and she was looking up at me, holding, you know, for an autograph.”
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“I said, ‘Well, you’re the prettiest little thing I ever saw. So what is your name?’ And she said, ‘Jolene.’ And I said, ‘Jolene. Jolene. Jolene. Jolene.’ I said, ‘That is pretty. That sounds like a song. I’m going to write a song about that.’”
The song, which became one of Parton’s first hit singles, has only 200 words, but she knew that its simplicity and melody were memorable.
“It’s a great chord progression — people love that ‘Jolene’ lick,” she explained. “It’s as much a part of the song almost as the song. And because it’s just the same word over and over, even a first-grader or a baby can sing, ‘Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene.’ It’s like, how hard can that be?”
The song has been covered by over 30 artists, including Beyoncé, who featured Parton on her 2024 album “Cowboy Carter,” and Jack White of the White Stripes.
Parton died on Tuesday at age 80, prompting a massive outpouring of tributes and remembrances worldwide, including at Buckingham Palace.
Her family revealed that she had been battling an unspecified cancer and will be holding a small private funeral service in Nashville.
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