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OTTAWA - It took about a half hour for Dolly Parton to make fun of her two most famous assets last night at the Corel Centre.
"I don't know if I'm tryin' to put old wine in new bottles or new wine in old jugs," she said, sparking immediate laughter among the 4,600 rapt, diehard fans who gathered for her show. "You can count on me to fall back on the boob jokes."
Parton spent 90 minutes entertaining the crowd with some of her most memorable hits. And, as this is the Vintage tour, she drew heavily on covers from an upcoming album of her favourite '60s and '70s tunes, Those Were The Days.
The show began with Parton's fiddler standing in front of a curtain, playing a lonesome-sounding intro to that Mary Hopkin title track.
Soon he disappeared behind it, joining the band in an Age of Aquarius-style drum and guitar swell. Then, with the spotlights whirling, Parton's trademark giggle amplified, several audience members joining together to scream "Dolly!" as the curtain fell to reveal her.
Clad in a form-fitting lime-and-kelly-green tie-dyed top and denim skirt with matching tie-dyed fringe, Parton bounced along to the music, her bright, bold soprano soaring as the crowd clapped and sang along. She moved quickly onto 1980's 9 to 5 and dug back to 1974's ode to a beautiful, red-haired, would-be husband stealer named Jolene.
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Parton saw Jolene awhile back, she told the crowd, joking "She's as broad as a barn and ugly as mud." Parton moved through Kris Kristofferson's Me and Bobby McGee, Cat Stevens' Where Do the Children Play? The Byrds' Turn, Turn, Turn and Bob Dylan's Blowing in the Wind and her show-closer, John Lennon's Imagine. All were lovely odes to the originals, if a bit cheesy and bearing a slight "Dolly Parton does some covers" feel. That amiable, delicate lilt to her voice is just too distinctive for anything else.
The talented and relentlessly upbeat Parton pitched in to play more than a half-dozen instruments, including banjo and harmonica. And though "Dumb Blonde" has long been her persona, there's a savvy brunette business woman under that impossibly high white hairdo.
Parton mesmerized near the end of the show with I Will Always Love You, the 1974 No. 1 hit Whitney Houston made famous again almost 20 years later on The Bodyguard soundtrack.
Some of the show's nicest moments came as the perky Parton slowed down to remember her childhood in the Smoky Mountains with odes to that time, like the tender Coat of Many Colours and Tennessee Homesick Blues.
She also paused to remember her father, who raised 12 children on nothing and made sure his superstar daughter didn't forget her roots. When her home town erected a bronze statue in the courthouse yard, recalled Parton, her father said, "to your fans you might be some sort of idol, but to the pigeons you're just another outhouse."