A little girl, nine or ten years old, held out a piece of paper to be signed. Parton admired her long, auburn hair. “You sure are pretty,” Parton would recall saying. “What’s your name?” “Jolene,” the girl said. Parton had never heard that name before. She remembered it a year later when, according to her, she sat down to write a song inspired by a flirtatious connection between her husband and an auburn-haired woman who worked at their bank. She needed a name for the character of the woman who represented a threat. The name she picked, plucked from that young fan she met while on the road
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