Many people find it hard to take Dolly Parton seriously as a musician, despite a long and distinguished songwriting career full of hits and songs which are now seen as country standards. I find it hard to take Dolly Parton seriously as a musician because of her long and distinguished songwriting career full of hits and songs which are now seen as country standards. But then whenever I see more than one musician in a room together I am braced for seeing a couple of huge tits. The only difference with Dolly it all-comes in one Tennessee Smokey Mountain bluegrass plasticked up package. If only someone had taken the advice of the bloke of Junior Antiques Roadshow who told us not to take our Dolly’s out of the packaging we may never have been troubled by 9 To 5 or I Will Always Love You*.
Joshua itself is one of her many songs about her Tennessee Mountain Home-life, though one which somewhat contradicts a lot of her other songs about her Tennessee Mountain Home, such as In My Tennessee Mountain Home. Dolly was one of twelve children (unfortunately the wrong ones died in childbirth), and in a lot of her more bluegrass numbers she discusses having many siblings. Such as Coat Of Many Colours where her mother makes her a coat of rags in the hope that her other siblings will sell her to the Pharaoh in Egypt and finally stop her big breasted singing around the house. Perhaps this is why she imagines herself to be an orphan in Joshua.
Joshua himself, star of the song, is described as follows:
His beard and his hair was long and black
And he was the biggest man I’d ever seen
When he spoke his voice was low and deep
He is also described as being quite fearsome: though from this description he sounds a lot more like Tom Ewing to me, who couldn’t scare a fly. Anyway, Dolly wanders around the ramshackle gaff of this Appalachian Tom Ewing-a-like and without a by-your-leave, and despite this frightening reputation, moves in. The song is pitched as a meeting of two unlikely soulmates, but when you think about it, this freakishly large mountain man, and this freakishly breasted mountain woman fit together perfectly. Let’s be fair, this photo of Dolly from 2005 makes her look not so much like a Mountain mama as Pete Burns. Ans as Pete will tell you, you can’t get plastic surgery when you are dirt poor and living in a shack. So clearly somewhere along the line Dolly left Joshua and ditched it all for the bright lights. Indeed one imagines the entire song is actually a lie, as she is not an orphan, and you’d think Joshua would be suing for some sort of alimony. If he wasn’t he would feel a bit of a tit. As opposed to the two massive ones he used to feel.
*Which is more than ample reason to always hate her.