A “Jolene Hangover” in Dollywood (Pocket Opilogue)

It’s an amusement park extra ordinaire in Pigeon Forge City, precisely about seven miles away from Sevierville, the birthplace of Dolly’s. It’s about four hours drive from Nashville, the capital city of Tennessee.

The 168-acre resort spreads from the foot hills of the legendary Great Smoky (not SmokEy) Mountains that Dolly featured prominently in her life story and musical career.

An evening in the resort sometime ago was like a rendezvous with the Queen of Country Music…

A guided tour of the luxury home-on-wheels BUS was the highlight of my visit to Dolly, sorry, Dollywood on this appointed day. I was star struck!

Whaat?!

Ehn ehn…

Then I saw an effigy of hers. The slimy version of SHE that must be adored for her talent, vivacious nature and uncommon kindness.

More to see in the Palace theatre and plenty of hamburgers and hotdogs “and even plus including “hottigers”!

Hottigers?

Did I say that?! Pardon my nightmarish absentmindedness. O my! What a further evidence of being overwhelmed with being wrapped up in the aura of the petit queen in physicality but a pretty giant of unstoppable talent with which she mesmerized the whole of humankind for 60 of her 80 years on earth…

Dollywood I saw, Dolly I hugged in my mind of minds. Farewell, Dolly Rebecca Lee Parton aka Dolly Parton.

I will always be back to Dollywood though to pay homage to a STAR I had known for more than four decades before her being summoned to the Celestial headquarters to play with the angels.

Let the Banjo continue to ring over there!

Mourning a ‘Darlin’ Called Dolly

Dolly Parton was more than a country music star to me. She was a musical 'Darlin' who came into my life during my NYSC days in Kano State, precisely in Government Secondary School, Kazaure (now Jigawa State) where I was doing “Ogunmefun” (teaching) as my primary assignment.

That was a pretty long time ago when national service meant a lot to the youths, when being posted out of one’s geographical environment was a thing of joy and pride.

It was a fellow youth corper, an Igbo guy from then Bendel State, who introduced country music to me through the richly endowed crooner from the Smokey Mountains, Tennessee, US of A!

The Bendel corper belonged to the category of oversea graduates who made sure they came back home to participate in the NYSC programme. The guy, a power dresser was not only loaded with assorted clothes and apparels he also came back home with a “trailer” load of HMV record plates and audio cassettes. He gave some out. He knew I was a crazy lover of music and a crazier tiger on the dance floor. Yes, music always beckons to me. Now I can’t remember what actually beckoned to me here. Was it the “traffic stopper” of a Dolly Parton figure or her cool, romantic, serenading country music?

Jolene Jolene…

The song sounded good in my ears. So did “Coat of Many Colours”. And of course, “I Will Always Love You” made more popular later by Whitney Houston.

By the way, Who the hell was this Dolly Parton gan?

Country girl nah…

A pretty figure 8 lady who used her sonorous vocal chord coupled with her unique physicality to wow music patrons and admirers alike, Dolly a star among stars in her family where three of them, Dolly, Stella and Randy are singers and song writers and even authors.

Dolly, in particular, had always been on my mind just like Miriam Makeba and Tina Turner are female music icons that I admire a lot. Unfortunately none of them is alive today. Theirs (Makeba and Turner) is a story for another day.

Before Dolly passed I was always eager to meet her in person. In Nashville, Tennessee, where I have been a couple of times , she was always on concert tours in her legendary home-on-wheels bus now a mini museum in Dollywood, an expansive amusement park in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. That’s a place to be, a product of the astute business woman in Dolly.

Now she is no more.

She will surely be missed by millions of her fans all over the world, whether they are dead or living like late Chief Duro Onabule who loved her music as passionately as I do. May the two of them “jam” for heaven where the Show, hopefully, Goes on.

After “jamming” nko?

I pray “the two both of them” continue to rest in peace. As for me, the mourning period is not over until it is over.

Hmmmm?

Don’t say “hmmm?”. That’s the language of football commentators. Not mine.

Adieu, Dolly.