Last week, while speaking and consulting in Nashville, I visited the Country Music Hall of Fame.
My client was hosting a dinner in its beautiful ballroom.
My favorite piece in the museum was this:
An early, handwritten draft of Dolly Parton’s “Jolene” — a song my family and I have been listening to and loving for years.
I was thrilled to stumble upon this artifact. It represented the physical manifestation of sound, lyrics, and music that have been a part of my life for a long, long time.
It was like stumbling upon the Dead Sea Scrolls or the Rosetta Stone.
Sitting there, behind glass, was pen and ink that became song and meaning all over the world, tens of thousands of times a day.
The story behind the song is a great one:
In the early days of their marriage, Parton noticed her husband, Carl Dean, was spending a suspiciously large amount of time at their local bank. He had developed a friendly rapport with an attractive, red-headed bank teller who clearly had a crush on him. Though the flirting was entirely innocent and Dean never took it seriously, it sparked an idea in Parton.
While the bank teller inspired the narrative, her name wasn’t Jolene. Parton stumbled upon that iconic name during a meet-and-greet while signing autographs. A young fan named Jolene, with striking red hair and green eyes, approached her, and Parton instantly fell in love with her name.
Parton promised the girl that she would one day write a song about her.
On her bus ride home that day, Parton kept repeating the name “Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene” to make sure she didn’t forget it. That rhythmic chant soon became the song’s famous chorus.
Parton ended up writing “Jolene” on the exact same day she wrote another one of her biggest masterpieces:
“I Will Always Love You”.
A red-letter day for both Dolly Parton and music fans everywhere.
As I stood before the case in that museum, staring at Parton’s lyrics, my only regret was that Elysha and the kids weren’t standing beside me, looking at this thing that has come to mean so much to us.
A simple idea taken from real life.
A name borrowed from a little girl.
A little ink and paper.
“Jolene” was born.
Creation is hard. It’s often ephemeral, elusive, and indescribable.
But sometimes, the dots connect quite clearly, and the result is greatness.
