IT COSTS. ALOT OF MONEY TO LOOK THIS CHEAP

Once upon a time, I was blessed to be The Tonight Show with Jay Leno’s Website Producer. It was a wonderful gig that came with a great deal of perks. Quite possibly the best one allowed staff to attend the camera blocking and run-through of the musical acts, which occurred at noon right after the morning production meeting.

I didn’t take advantage of that nearly enough, but when I found out that Emmylou Harris, Linda Ronstadt, and Dolly Parton were going to appear on February 8, 1999, promoting the release of their second Trio album, I made sure I didn't miss out.

Right after our production meeting with all the departments, we reviewed the other guests on that night’s show: Arsenio Hall and Rachael Leigh Cook.

The meeting ended quickly enough. I scrambled over to the commissary to grab something to go, then hurried back over to the Tonight Show studio. Normally, I would sit up in the elevated seats, but as long as you weren’t obnoxious about it, you could sit right down on the floor. I picked an aisle seat about three rows back from the front.

The Perfect Man

Nobody was there yet. Then, the first to walk in was Dolly. To my eyes, she was glamorous and looked like a million bucks, just like always. For rehearsal, she was wearing a smart denim skirt-and-jacket combo with a light-colored shirt underneath and cute, dangling blue earrings. The hair was clearly a placeholder, as someone pointed out to me afterward. It had little bobby pins holding the sides back, making her look put together, but it wasn't the full Tonight Show wig, if you know what I mean. Still, I grew up in Woodstock—this was Dolly Parton, and six feet away from me, she was pure glamour.

The Tonight Show’s Music Segment Producer was a dour woman who had little time for this "internet foolishness", or perhaps she just had little time for me, probably both. Her name was Barbera Libis.(BARR-Berra)  She showed up, and Dolly asked a few routine questions: "So, the usual—camera blocking and all that?" Barbera replied that it would be nothing out of the ordinary.

As they were talking, in strolled Emmylou Harris. If Dolly looked like a million bucks and ready for the Oscars, Emmylou walked in wearing a dress that looked indistinguishable from a burlap sack. Very plain Jane, no visible makeup, and her striking hair pulled back into a single long ponytail. If Dolly hadn’t made a huge deal out of her arrival, I might have missed her entirely. With that durable, practical wardrobe, she would have looked right at home running a table at any farmers' market in New Brunswick.

About thirty seconds later, in walked Linda Ronstadt. Her hair a wig no doubt but looked striking and right on her. She was wearing a dark gray or black muumuu/caftan-style outfit.

Sitting there as I was, reading the room from twelve feet away, it immediately felt like the two singers who were not Dolly Parton suddenly felt severely underdressed for a blocking rehearsal of a song they had already been practicing and recording for the better part of six months.

Dolly picked up on the tension instantly. Without skipping a beat, she immediately turned to the cameras, lighting crew, and segment director: "I’m sorry, y’all! I just rolled out of bed, put this ratty old denim thing on, and threw on my 'going to the bank' wig. Somewhere out there, a nice lady who always makes me look so good is working up my hairdo for tonight. I can’t wait to see how she’s gonna make me look, we are all gonna hafta wait, cuz even tho I'm here now, my hair won't arrive 'til 4 o'clock!"

The sheer ridiculousness of the comment shattered the awkward silence. The room erupted in laughter, and Dolly dropped one of her classic, legendary lines: "It costs a lot of money to look this cheap, ya know!" More laughter, smiles all around, and the tension evaporated.

The lighting and camera crew assured them that stage outfits weren't necessary yet—this was just to check for set shadows obscuring their faces and to help the operators map their camera moves for maximum impact during the key moments. The crew asked for one run-through, noting, "It can be a little rough, as long as we work out the sections and major key changes."

The ladies took their positions. Backed by the same studio musicians from the record, they launched into the track. They performed in breathtaking three-part harmony—the quintessential Trio experience. All three sounded like absolute angels.

If ever there was a masterclass in not judging a book by its cover, it was those three women on that stage. They could not have had three more different careers, each marked by unique artistic paths, triumphs, heartbreaks, and setbacks, yet they blended effortlessly.

The way these musical rehearsals worked, the acts would usually play through the song twice. The first run allowed audio to lock in the mix and the camera operators to explore angles, getting a proper sense of the framing and scope. The second pass tightened everything down, locking in the final camera cuts and cues. Often, aside from the lack of heavy makeup, high-end wardrobe, and a packed house, that second run was nearly indistinguishable from the final broadcast.

In between the two takes, there was a brief pause while lighting, camera, and sound worked through adjustments with the director and producers. When the Trio wrapped that first pass, a polite smattering of applause broke out among the crew, a handful of staff who had stopped by to watch, and members of the artists' entourage. Since I was essentially the only person sitting out in the audience seats, I stood up, gave them a solo standing ovation, and clapped enthusiastically. As I leaped to my feet, I also managed to knock the rest of my lunch clean off the seat next to me and straight onto the floor.

As I bent down to clean up the mess, Dolly looked over, flashed that trademark smile, and called out to the other two: "Our one fan today, and he was so excited he lost his lunch!" The entire room, myself included, completely lost it. I finished gathering my scattered food off the studio floor and dumped it into a nearby trash can.

Returning to my seat, I brought back a damp rag courtesy of the custodial crew prepping the green rooms and wiped down the floor where a stray French fry and a smear of ketchup had landed. As I stood up, Dolly caught my eye and asked what I did on the show. I told her I led the team running the website and offered that we could link our site directly to a retailer where TONIGHT viewers could purchase the new Trio II album that night.

Without skipping a beat she turned to Emmylou and Linda and says "Y'hear that girls?  He's got a good job, he's cleans - we just saw him do that, and he is gonna help us sell some of our records!  Linda, I think we've found the perfect man." More laughter all around, she asked for my name, and turned to one of her handlers to make sure they coordinated with me directly.

The Dolly Parton Personality 

Here's what blew me away. For the rest of that day, and for the next three years, whenever Dolly was on The Tonight Show and saw me, it was always, "Oh hello, John, how are you?" as we passed in the hallway. That blew me away. On one of those occasions, we stopped and she asked a bit more about where I grew up. I told her that my family originated at the northern end of the Appalachian Mountains, up past Maine, in Canada.

I briefly got to mention how my dad had introduced me to her music, playing several of her and Porter Wagoner's albums on 8-track in our station wagon during family road trips. She complimented my dad's taste in music and added, "I need to give ol' Porter a call, he's been having a rough go lately."

Taping started around the usual 5:15 PM. When it was their turn, they joined Jay on the couch. Dolly naturally took the lead chair opposite Jay—the clear network choice as the most colorful personality of the group. Each woman had her moment to speak, and Dolly delivered a relentless string of one-liners that easily outshined anything in the opening monologue.

Looking back on that footage brings both awe and deep emotion. Linda had to step away from singing around 2011 after being diagnosed with progressive supranuclear palsy, which cruelly took away her vocal control. And with Dolly now gone, the sense of loss is profound.

Even saying those words doesn't feel entirely real. Dolly always seemed like she was going to live forever. As she once joked to a late-night host, "I’ve got more aftermarket parts than a ’74 Camaro! ..... Oh and way more than Cher."

A Business Woman Above All

I revered Dolly not for her physical attributes— that's others people's thing —but for her sheer brilliance, deviousness, and outright cleverness. She understood the patriarchal machinery of show business - music, movies and television - better than the men who thought they ran each. 

While industry executives saw a blonde caricature they thought they could exploit and discard, Dolly recognized their condescension as her ultimate strategic advantage. She weaponized their misogyny, disarming them with exaggerated folksiness and a self-deprecating smile while quietly out-negotiating them at every turn.

Dolly felt honored to be able to be the one to award Whitney Houston with her Grammy for her recording of Dolly's "I Will Always Love You"

Her career was defined by masterstrokes of commercial foresight, some paying off immediately and others yielding fortune decades later. In 1966, barely twenty years old, she established her own publishing company so she would retain complete control over her copyrights. That decision led to her legendary showdown with Colonel Tom Parker in the 1970s. When Elvis Presley wanted to record "I Will Always Love You," Parker demanded half the publishing rights as his standard gatekeeping toll. Everyone in Nashville told her she was insane to pass up an Elvis cut, but Dolly held her ground and walked away. It broke her heart at the time, but nearly twenty years later, Whitney Houston recorded it for The Bodyguard, generating generational wealth and making Dolly tens of millions simply because she had the foresight to never surrender her intellectual property.

Dolly rides the Ferris Wheel at Dollywood in a promotional image celebrating 30 Years of Dollywood.  Dolly attended the opening day of the park, almost every spring without exception.  She could attend this past spring due to her failing health.

When theme park developers approached her in the 1980s hoping to pay a licensing fee to slap her name on a tourist trap, she refused to be a novelty act. Instead, she demanded a 50/50 partnership, creating Dollywood and transforming an entire regional economy while anchoring her wealth in appreciating, tangible assets. 

Behind the scenes in Hollywood, her production company, Sandollar, stealthily developed groundbreaking entertainment—including co-producing the original Buffy the Vampire Slayer film and television franchise—cashing royalty checks long after television critics forgot who was holding the purse strings.

Dolly intentionally gave men the cartoon they thought they could manage, all while quietly building an unassailable empire that out-earned, out-smarted, and outlasted the system built to sideline her. She took a system built by men, to be run by men, and designed to exploit her, minimize her, and exclude her, and [to be blunt] she made it her bitch.

Watch how she handles the patronizing interview questions from Barbara Walters, owns the term Hillbilly but at the same time, redefines for Barbara and her millions of viewers in a way that not accepting Barbara's definition... which clearly meant uneducated.  Dolly was having none of that.

Her brand was never a cynical mask; it was her authentic self-identity amplified and writ as large as her silhouette. She owned the caricature so completely that no one could ever use it as a weapon against her.

I loved that woman unconditionally. If she had ever booked a local theater just to read the phone book aloud, I would have paid top dollar to sit in the front row.

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Dolly, on Her Own Terms

"If I see something sagging, bagging, or dragging, I'm gonna get it nipped, tucked, or sucked!"

"I have nips and tucks and trims and sucks, boobs and waist and butt and such, eyes and chin and back again, pills and peels and other frills, and I'll never graduate from collagen." (from Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business)

"It costs a lot of money to look this cheap!"

"People say you shouldn't have plastic surgery because if God wanted you another way he would have made you that way, but I say that's a lot of crock. If God didn't want plastic surgeons, he wouldn't have given them hands to work with."

"I may look fake, but I'm real where it counts."

"I have done it, and I will do it again when something in my mirror doesn't look to me like it belongs on Dolly Parton."

"Oh Lord, and I've outlived so many plastic surgeons."

On Death and Retirement

 

"I would rather drop dead right in the middle of a song on stage."

"I never will retire unless I have to. I’m just going to hopefully drop dead in the middle of a song on stage someday—and hopefully one I’ve written!"

walmart"I'm not one to sit around doing nothing. I'm gonna die in the harness."