Dolly Parton legacy: Of all the music and lyrics Dolly left us, there is no more searing song than Jolene

Dolly Parton is rightly remembered for writing one of the greatest love songs of all time.

In 1974 she released I Will Always Love You which became a hit for her and then a dual-Grammy winning anthem for Whitney Houston in 1994.

But the kindest woman in the world also wrote from the heart when crafting a tune gripped with envy.

Of all the music and lyrics Dolly left us, there is no more searing song than Jolene.

It’s the ultimate ballad of insecure jealousy where the vulnerable victim knows there’s nothing more she can do but beg.

The haunting song starts with the creeping pluck of guitar strings that build up to a repetitive rhythm of a racing, fearful heartbeat.

Dolly then delivers her opening line: “Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Joleneee, I’m begging of you please don’t take my man” — repeating Jolene’s name over and over, as if that persistent plea is the only way to stop her love rival stealing her paramour and plunging a knife through her worried heart.

Dolly wrote the song in 1972 after two moments that moved her.

The first was when she noticed her husband of seven years was spending too much time at the bank where she believed a beautiful teller was flirting with him.

“(The bank teller) got this terrible crush on my husband,” Parton told NRP in 2008.

“And he just loved going to the bank because she paid him so much attention.

“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. So no matter how beautiful a woman might be, you’re always threatened by certain . . . you’re always threatened by other women, period.”

The second moment was when she was on stage one night and a “beautiful little girl, about eight years old” asked Parton for an autograph.

Dolly said: “You’re the prettiest little thing I ever saw. So what is your name?’ And she said, ‘Jolene.’ And I said . . . that is pretty. That sounds like a song. I’m going to write a song about that’. ”

And Parton did, bringing the two moments together into one of history’s most haunting tunes.

Parton’s raw honesty comes out in the lyrics where each foreboding line is an admittance of resignation. That the choice of where her husband walks isn’t Dolly’s, but a decision her rival will make.

Lines such as, “I cannot compete with you, Jolene”, “you could easily take my man”, “my happiness depends on you”, and “please don’t take him even though you can” reveal her futility.

Adding to the pain is the weeping whine of a pedal steel guitar crying in the background as the lyrics note the long-legged vixen making her husband look twice has eyes of “emerald green”, the colour of the jealousy that Dolly feels.

The song was recorded in May 1973 and then released as a single in October of that year.

She scribbled the lyrics in lead pencil on notebook paper that now sits behind glass in America’s Country Music Hall of Fame.

Ranked at 63 in Rolling Stone’s 2021 list of ‘500 Greatest Songs of all Time’, it’s the highest of three songs written by Parton that make the list. The other two are Coat of Many Colours at 263 and Houston’s version of I Will Always Love You at 94.

And from a woman full of kindness it’s an admittance that as much as love will bring happiness, there are times when it can also hurt.