Today’s DOTD - Drink Of The Day - is a Jolene’s Bittersweet Cocktail inspired by Dolly Parton, who turns 80 today!
Ms. Parton brings good-natured levity to the party. After all, who else would throw fun at themselves and say, “The higher your hair the closer you are to God.” Or “it costs a lot to look this cheap.” Her signature style failed her once, though, when she entered a Dolly Parton lookalike drag contest and lost.
Dolly has become a cultural icon and a noted philanthropist. That’s pretty good for someone that can’t read sheet music yet has somehow had 25 number one singles on the Billboard country music charts. And she wasn’t relying on songs about how her dog died and the pickup truck broke down.
Dolly Rebecca Parton was born on January 19, 1946, in a one-room cabin in Tennessee. She’s the fourth of twelve children, raised dirt poor in shacks and cabins without heat, indoor plumbing, electricity or running water. Her father, a sharecropper, and later a tobacco farmer, paid the doctor for her delivery with a sack of cornmeal.
Dolly started singing on local TV and radio stations as a child and moved to Nashville immediately upon graduating high school. By 1967 she had earned a spot on the syndicated TV show The Porter Wagoner Show, but significant success still eluded her.
But one afternoon she wrote two songs that would become major hits. Jolene was released in late 1973 and was a major hit. But the 1974 release of I Will Always Love You was bigger and has become one of the most performed songs of all time. Even Elvis, whose birthday we celebrated with the Velvet Elvis cocktail, wanted to record it. She liked the idea, but refused when Elvis’ manager insisted she sign over half the publishing rights. That savvy decision has been credited with earning her many millions in royalties.
What she’s done with all that money is a story of its own. When Whitney Houston did a bestselling cover of I Will Always Love You she took the royalties and invested in a large complex in a Black neighborhood in Nashville. She put her own recording studio there in honor of Houston. She launched her Imagination Library in 1995, which gifts one book a month to a child until they begin school. Her philanthropy is so noted that Jeff Bezos gave her the change from his sofa cushions, or rather $100 million, to donate as she pleases. That’s pretty impressive for the Backwoods Barbie.
Dolly Parton even helped to fund Moderna’s COVID vaccine - so she literally helped save the lives of millions.
A woman like that deserves a bigger salute than we can provide here at The Politics Bar - but as you know, even if we don’t always hit the mark, we aim to please. So we’re doin’ our best today by making today’s Drink Of The Day Jolene’s Bittersweet Cocktail.
Ingredients
Here’s what you’re going to need for this drink:
