Dolly Parton has ruled out touring her forthcoming album, saying that these days she prefers to stay closer to home and her husband.
The country music legend, 77, and the infamously reclusive Carl Dean, 80, have been married for almost six decades.
They first met in 1964 on Parton’s first day in Nashville when she was just 18 years-old, and two years later they were engaged.
Parton had originally been due to come to the UK earlier this month but postponed the trip due to Dean suffering an undisclosed health issue.
Adressing this at a rescheduled press conference in London on Thursday, she assured that he is “fine now” but that she’s mindful of both his age and hers when venturing too far from their Tennessee abode.
“The reason I don’t tour now is because I don’t want to be that far away from home,” she explained. “You know, we’re getting older my husband and I, and I’ve got a lot of business that I do at home and the movies that I do now we’re doing out of Atlanta, so we’re close to home.
“I had to cancel [this visit to the UK] once and make it towards the end of the month because my husband was sick at the time. He’s fine now, but you do plan. You make that out of wise choices and I do not plan to tour this album.”
Her spouse was also at the forefront of her mind when making her latest record.
Dean is a die-hard rock fan and, despite being married to the Jolene hitmaker all this time, “can’t stand” country music.
Parton’s debut rock collection Rockstar, which is due for release on November 17, and features a Wrecking Ball cover duet with her goddaughter Miley Cyrus, therefore serves as a love letter to him.
“We’ve been together 59 years and all my life in the car, in the truck, on the tractor, in the house, he’s always blasting rock and roll music and he loves Led Zeppelin and he loves Stairway To Heaven,” she said.
“Years ago, I was doing different covers of rock songs and kind of making them a little bit my own – a little bit country, a little bit bluegrass or whatever. When I said to him that I was gonna do Stairway To Heaven he said ‘Oh, don’t do that, that’s a classic. That’s a big mistake’. He never liked that cover – he called it ‘Stairwell to Hell’!
“But when I played him this whole album which I chose songs that he loved and some of my favourites to make this album, I made him sit down and listen to the whole thing.
“You know, he’s kind of a quiet person and he didn’t say anything. I said there’s 30 songs and he said ‘Well, we’ll take an intermission’. So he did, but at the end he said, ‘It’s really good’, just like that.
“To me, that was like somebody else jumping up and down saying that’s the best thing they’d ever heard. Well, anyway, he was proud of it so that made me feel good.
“I want to please him, to be honest with you – more than anybody else,” she concluded sweetly.
