Tuning Up: Jolene

This is the first in a series of post centered on music I’ll be exploring with my voice students. Today’s pick is the classic Dolly Parton song, Jolene.

The song, which has been named one of Rolling Stone Magazine‘s “500 Greatest Songs of All Time” was  released by Parton in 1973.

Here’s the queen singing it…

I’ve always loved the heart ache and haunting melody of the song, so I approached my older voice students to see if they might want to add it to their repertoire. They loved it. The girls and I universally agreed that we would not “beg” anybody to not take our man — if he was fool enough to cheat on us, he’d better be the one doing the begging! (And good luck with that.)

Here’s a version with my student Bailey and I covering the song…

Hope I’ve got your toes tapping now. And I hope you like this new musical feature.

Comments welcome.

Related articles

• The Infinite Lives of ‘Jolene’
• Here Is a Haunting, Slowed Down Version of “Jolene.”
• Glastonbury 2014: So who’s Jolene?