Country singing icon, Dolly Parton appeared on Seth Meyer’s Late Night show last week and gave her song Jolene a drag makeover.
She talked to the late-night host about the inspiration of her award-winning classic song, explaining Jolene was a bank-teller.
Parton said the bank-teller was stunning and she became intimidated when her husband spent time down there.
“This beautiful girl was working at the bank,” she said.
“She had everything I didn’t like legs and stuff, she was tall and beautiful.
“And he was just spending a lot of time down there.”
Parton said her husband had been trying to get a loan for his business, but that didn’t stop her from getting jealous.
“I said ‘look, you can talk to some of these men about that. You’d better get your butt to the house or it’s gonna be your ass and your wallet’,” she said.
“I learned early on though that I didn’t want to be jealous because everyone has those Jolenes in their lives.”
Dolly changes ‘Jolene’ to ‘Drag Queen’
Seth Meyers then mentioned his young son loves the song and Parton offered to sing part of it on the show.
But, she changed it up, dedicating the chorus to her queer audiences.
“This is for my gay crowd!” she said.
Parton changed the lyrics from ‘Jolene’ to ‘drag queen’ and left audiences clapping and cheering.
“Drag queen, drag queen, drag queen, drag queen…please don’t take him just because you can,” the new rendition sang.
After the impromptu performance, Meyer’s asked Parton what would happen now if she came across another Jolene.
She responded with: “I’d just hide his Viagra.”
Parton appeared on the show to promote her new Netflix series, Dolly Parton’s Heartstrings.
The show is an anthology which gives viewers an in-depth background on some of Parton’s inspiration behind her classics.
The episodes detail the stories and inspiration felt by Parton when she wrote the songs.
Episode two, titled Two Doors Down, reimagines one of Dolly Parton’s heartbreaks as a gay love story.
Watch Dolly Parton’s appearance on Late Night below:
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