September 25 is Dolly Parton Day, a fitting date for celebrating the life and music of the late country icon because it can be written as 9/25 — a numerical nod to her signature song, “9 to 5.”
Guitarists marveled for years at Parton’s ability to fret a guitar while wearing her famously long acrylic nails. But those glamorous extensions — part of her signature look — did more than make her guitar playing a little more challenging. They also helped her write one of her biggest hits.
Parton died August 25 at age 80, leaving behind a seven-decade career as a singer, songwriter, actress and philanthropist. Among her many achievements, she wrote thousands of songs and earned 11 Grammy Awards, while her Imagination Library distributed more than 300 million books to children around the world.
But “9 to 5” remains one of Parton’s most instantly recognizable songs. Written for the 1980 comedy of the same name, it became her first number one hit on the Billboard Hot 100, earned her two Grammys in 1982 and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song.
And the story of how she wrote it is wonderfully Dolly Parton.
The movie starred Parton alongside Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin as three office workers who plot to get even with their sexist, egotistical boss. Fonda had championed Parton for the role, and Parton agreed to appear on the condition that she would have a chance to write the theme song.
The song came to her while she was on the set, with her guitar back in her trailer. And, fittingly for a movie about office workers, Parton found an unlikely substitute for a typewriter: her fingernails.
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“I was bored always in between takes because they have so much time between setups with lighting,” she explained on The Graham Norton Show. “And you just sit around, and what are you going to do?”
Part of her deal with Fonda was that she would get to write the theme song. But without her guitar at hand, she began experimenting with the sound of her acrylic nails.
“I would take my nails, and because it was acrylic nails it makes like a percussive sound,” Parton explained. “It sounds like a typewriter, too.”
She began clacking her nails together to create a rhythm while jotting down words and ideas inspired by what she was seeing around the set.
“So I just started to write little words and things that I would see, and things I would think that would fit with that day-to-day nine-to-five job. Then I’d go back at night to my hotel room and put those things down,” she said.
The idea stuck. And the sound of those nails eventually became part of the finished recording.
Parton even gave her manicure an official credit on 9 to 5 and Odd Jobs, the album on which the song appeared.
“I have a credit on the back of the album that says, ‘Nails by Dolly!’”
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That little detail is one of those perfect Dolly Parton stories: her trademark look wasn’t simply decoration. She found a way to make it part of the music.
And those nails had long presented another musical challenge for Parton. How, exactly, did she manage to fret an acoustic guitar while wearing them?
Her solution was to work around them. Parton explained that she often used open tunings and barre chords, allowing her to play without having to curl her fretting fingers as much. She also favored the three-quarter-sized acoustic guitars she had played since her youth.
There were limits, though.
“If I’m really serious about it, I just have to saw ’em down!” she said.
Much of Parton’s distinctive guitar style comes from her rhythmic right hand. Her playing combines the Maybelle Carter-style “thumb and flick” approach with the alternating bass technique associated with players such as Hank Williams and Johnny Cash. Her thumb picks out bass notes while her first finger flicks down across the strings to sound the corresponding chord.
You can hear and see that approach in action when Parton performs the title track from her 1973 album, My Tennessee Mountain Home, all while sporting her trademark nails. Her picking-hand nails even tap against the guitar’s body, adding another percussive element to the performance.
It’s a fitting reminder of something that came through in so much of Parton’s music: she could turn just about anything into an instrument — even her fingernails.
