Have you seen the old photo of Dolly Parton flying around social media right now? It’s a photobooth shot she took in 1966 when she was 20.
Everyone’s reposting it and making the same joke. How could “Jolene” or ANY woman have been a threat? (Here’s the photo.)
Dolly was in her mid-20’s when she recorded “Jolene”, where she begs a woman who’s prettier, “Please don’t take my man.” (Here she is performing it in 1974, right after it came out.)
She wrote it about a bank teller who kept flirting with her husband. But she got the name from a little girl she signed an autograph for. It stuck in her head because she’d never heard that name before.
In other words, it’s a mish-mash of a few different things. There wasn’t really some hussy named Jolene who tried to steal her guy. But here’s a fun theory . . .
One person reposted the old pic and asked what if Dolly IS “Jolene” . . . and she “wrote the song from the point of view of every OTHER woman in her town.” (Yahoo)