Backwoods Barbie

Dolly Parton's hair is too blonde and too high, her mouth is too big and too bright, her boobs are just too mountainous and gravity-defying to be real, she’s got a hillbilly voice that squeaks, twangs and pouts and she dresses somewhere between cow-girl chic and can-can frilly, but it’s all part of the Barbie Doll act which has made Dolly Parton a living legend of country music.

And she certainly has worked hard at it (both The Look and The Music), producing no less than 26 number one singles and an all-time record 42 top ten albums in a career that spans more than 40 years.

OK, so with much thanks to modern science and skilled cosmetic surgeons she looks nothing like the Big Six Oh she is. But then in mitigation, she doesn’t take herself all that seriously, full knowing that she has to play-act a role the public know and love.

Who will forget her classic reply during an Oprah Winfrey show when asked about cosmetic surgery and her rather common looks: "If I have one more face lift I'll have a beard… it takes a lot of money to look this cheap."

When it comes to performing she certainly doesn't lack energy, as she flits between stage, film shoots, recording studios, live shows and world concerts. Last year she sang at 21 concerts in Europe and grossed a whopping $16-million.

She really is in the super star bracket with world-wide record and CD sales said to top 100 million — and still she churns ‘em out. 'Backwoods Barbie', her latest album, is Parton at her best and her fans are going to love it.

She’s good with soppy sentimentals, love-lost renditions and happy-clappy, foot-stomping Gentle Jesus numbers and on this album she does them all, with the old twanging guitar, happy fiddle and one, two, three – one, two, three beat featuring throughout.

Of the 12 songs on this collection, 'Made of Stone' is a typical Parton tear-jerker about a two-timing lover, 'Jesus & Gravity', is about, yep religion, and 'Cologne', about another three-party love affair destined to end in tears, is probably the best of the lot.

She also does a tongue-in-cheek self-portrait called 'Backwoods Barbie' about a simple country girl with "too much make-up, too much hair" and who has "always been misunderstood because of the way I look".

As Parton goes this one is destined to become yet another huge money-spinner, in spite of (or maybe even because of) the CD cover photograph of the tussled blonde sitting on straw bales in the back of a yellow bakkie, nogal, wearing a baby pink and mock leopard skin outfit that will bring tears to the eyes of many an envious kugel.