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      How Dolly Parton’s ‘Jolene’ Was Inspired by Her Husband Carl Dean

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      She wrote the hit 1973 song after a bank teller caught the eye of Dean, who died on Monday. She attributed its success to its simplicity and the universal emotions it evokes.In the early years of her nearly six-decade marriage, Dolly Parton noticed that her husband was spending a lot of time at the bank, where he had developed a crush on a teller. She told him to knock it off.She later channeled her feelings into “Jolene,” a hit 1973 song. Her fans have been singing its haunting chorus ever since.Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, JoleneI’m begging of you please don’t take my manJolene, Jolene, Jolene, JolenePlease don’t take him just because you can.The song is one of several that Parton’s husband, Carl Dean, an asphalt paver who died on Monday at 82, inspired in the decades after they met outside a Nashville laundromat in 1964. It never reached No. 1 on Billboard’s main singles chart, but it topped the Billboard country chart, earned a Grammy nod and became the most-recorded song of any Parton has written.The album cover for “Jolene” by Dolly Parton.Donaldson Collection/Getty ImagesIn interviews over the years, Parton attributed the song’s staying power to a variety of factors, including the simplicity of its chorus and its “kind of mysterious” minor key.She said many women had told her that they found its story — a woman acknowledging Jolene’s beauty while pleading with her to not steal her husband “just because you can” — relatable.When the song appeared, “Nobody had been writing about affairs from that side of it — to go to the person who was trying to steal your man,” she told the entertainment news site Vulture in 2023.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Jay-Z Sues Rape Accuser and Lawyers, Saying They Knew Claim Was False

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      The anonymous woman withdrew her sex abuse suit last month, but the entertainer says in court papers she has since admitted her account was fabricated. She and her lawyer deny that.Jay-Z filed a lawsuit on Monday against the anonymous woman who withdrew her rape lawsuit against him last month, asserting that she and her lawyers knew the allegations were false but proceeded with the claim anyway.The lawsuit, brought in federal court in Alabama, where the woman lives, was filed against both the accuser and her lawyers, Tony Buzbee and David Fortney. In the suit, Jay-Z, born Shawn Carter, said the woman had admitted to his representatives that she had made up the story.But in a statement, Mr. Buzbee said the suit has “no legal merit” and that the woman continues to stand by her account.The woman originally sued Jay-Z last year, naming him as a defendant in one of the dozens of cases that have accused Sean Combs of sexual abuse. In this case, the plaintiff accused Mr. Carter and Mr. Combs of raping her when she was 13, at an after-party following the MTV Video Music Awards in 2000. After an NBC News interview with the plaintiff highlighted inconsistencies in her account, the plaintiff acknowledged that she had “made some mistakes” in presenting the allegations.For about two months, the plaintiff’s lawyers defended the veracity of her allegations in court papers, but last month, they withdrew her claim with no public explanation.In the new lawsuit, lawyers for Mr. Carter assert that the plaintiff — who is not identified — has “voluntarily admitted directly to representatives of Mr. Carter that the story brought before the world in court and on global television was just that: a false, malicious story.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Vienna Philharmonic and Riccardo Muti Return to Carnegie Hall

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      Riccardo Muti, in what felt like a victory lap, returned to Carnegie Hall to lead the Philharmonic’s annual three-day series of concerts.Bow down to the Vienna Philharmonic’s tremolo.This is the trembling, hazy effect that string players can make by lightly quivering their bows. Usually very quiet, signifying tension or expectation, tremolos are often designed to be listened past. They don’t tend to be something anyone dwells on or remembers.But passing details of texture like this are what the Viennese — who had their annual three-concert stand at Carnegie Hall this weekend, with pillars of the repertoire by Mozart, Schubert, Bruckner and Dvorak — do better than perhaps anyone else.In moments as different as the start of the grand Finale of Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony and the opening of the charming “At the Mill” Scherzo of Stravinsky’s Divertimento from “Le Baiser de la Fée,” the Philharmonic’s tremolo was something to take seriously.Soft but alert and full of energy, the vibrating was less a sound than an atmosphere, an almost palpable animating of the air. It wasn’t distracting, but it was arresting — infusing and enriching the music layered atop it.The Philharmonic achieves little wonders like this regardless of who’s on the podium. Still, the proud, vigorous dignity of these concerts can be at least partly ascribed to Riccardo Muti, in programs notable for including two symphonies by Schubert, one of his touchstones.At 83, Muti is basking in the twilight of a storied and beloved career. He officially left the music directorship of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra two years ago, but has been helping to care for it until the 29-year-old Klaus Mäkelä can take over in 2027. In January, Muti toured with the Chicagoans to Carnegie; with these Vienna concerts, his winter in New York has felt like a victory lap.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      A Jazz Quintet Bubbling With Good Vibes? Meet the Women of Artemis.

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      The pianist Renee Rosnes formed the group in 2016, and it has evolved into a five-piece drawn from different nations and generations with a common goal.The multinational, intergenerational jazz quintet Artemis is, as they might say, bubbling. Last fall, it topped Downbeat magazine’s reader’s poll as jazz group of the year for the second time running. On Friday, the band released its third album, “Arboresque,” which captures both the hard-bop strut of the most beloved 1960s recordings by its storied label, Blue Note Records, as well as Artemis’s own fresh take on jazz tradition.“We’re not here to prove anything,” said the pianist Renee Rosnes, 62, the group’s musical director and, in her words, “organizational force.” “We’re just playing music together, in conversation, with reverence for each other.”At the suggestion of a French promoter, Rosnes formed Artemis in 2016 to perform concerts in Paris and Luxembourg for International Women’s Day. “I never had such a proclivity to put together a band of all female musicians before,” she said. “But here’s a lot of players that I love.”She assembled an all-star septet, featuring the trumpeter Ingrid Jensen — who named the group for the Greek goddess of the hunt and wilderness — the drummer Terri Lyne Carrington, the bassist Linda May Han Oh, the clarinetist Anat Cohen, the saxophonist Melissa Aldana and the singer Cécile McLorin Salvant. “I love their playing, and who they are,” Rosnes said, “and I thought it could be fun.”“We’re not here to prove anything,” Rosnes said. “We’re just playing music together, in conversation, with reverence for each other.”Scott Rossi for The New York TimesIt was fun, of course — and a commercial draw. A European tour in 2017 introduced the group’s permanent rhythm section (Allison Miller on drums and Noriko Ueda on bass), and Don Was, the president of Blue Note, signed Artemis on the spot after its set at the Newport Jazz Festival in 2018, a performance preserved on NPR’s “Jazz Night in America” program.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Khalil Fong, Hong Kong Singer-Songwriter, Dies at 41

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      Singing in both Mandarin and English, he brought a soul and R&B sensibility to Chinese pop.Khalil Fong, a Hong Kong singer-songwriter who infused a soul and R&B sensibility into Chinese pop songs, died on Feb. 21. He was 41.His death was announced on Saturday by his record label, Fu Music. The announcement did not say where Mr. Fong had died or specify a cause of death, but it said he had battled a “relentless illness” for five years.Beloved for its soulful vocals and distinctive blend of soul and Mandarin pop, Mr. Fong’s music found an audience in Hong Kong, mainland China and much of the wider Chinese-speaking world.“Trying to introduce soul music, or soul R&B, was not the easiest thing,” he said in a 2016 interview with The South China Morning Post, noting that the genre was not widely embraced in the region. “One of the things I wanted to do was to introduce this type of music within the context of Chinese language.”He broke into the popular music scene in 2005, when Warner Music Hong Kong released his funky, syncopated debut album, “Soulboy.” In the following decade, he released eight albums and performed in stadiums and large concert halls around the world, wearing his signature thick black glasses.But Mr. Fong’s career was cut short by health problems, and in recent years he had largely retreated from the public eye. Inspiration never stopped flowing, however, and he sporadically released singles.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Jake Heggie’s Adaptation of ‘Moby Dick’ Comes to the Metropolitan Opera

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      Jake Heggie and Gene Scheer’s 2010 adaptation of Melville’s unruly novel opens this week at the Metropolitan Opera.When “Moby Dick” opens at the Metropolitan Opera this week, audiences will experience a deeply American story of unchecked ambition, fomented grievances and a self-destructive desire for revenge.Based on Herman Melville’s 1851 novel, the opera delivers an economical and resolute retelling of the fateful tale of the Pequod, a ship in pursuit of a vengeful white whale. The libretto, by Gene Scheer, hits the book’s main conflicts without losing track of the action. The score, by Jake Heggie, is graceful and propulsive. The opera’s ending is certain and clear.It’s probably fair to say that more people know the story of the white whale from parodies or synopses than from reading “Moby Dick.” But an adaptation is not just a summary of the book’s major events. A society obsessed with efficiencies can be overly focused on directness.Skillful though it is, the opera, which had its premiere in Houston in 2010, has a kind of scrubbed and airless storytelling that leaves the singularity of the novel behind. This is the sort of adaptation that audiences have long responded to — a simplification of the book’s billowy structure to emphasize its plot. But can a tidy adaptation truly represent this unruly book, with its dramas born of endless uncertainties? Or is the purpose of adaptation something different?The tenor Brandon Jovanovich, center, sings Captain Ahab at a dress rehearsal of the Metropolitan Opera’s production of “Moby Dick,” which opens on Monday night.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesA composer decides what aspects of the narrative can be told through music, while a librettist shapes the story through words that can be thrown out into the air by way of song. An aria reveals a character’s singularity and ambition. Characters sing them to announce what they want and what lengths they must pursue to get it. Each creative turn adds distance from the book.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      David Johansen, Who Fronted the New York Dolls and More, Dies at 75

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      David Johansen, the singer and songwriter who was at the vanguard of glam rock and punk as the frontman of the New York Dolls, died yesterday at his home on Staten Island. He was 75.His death was confirmed by his stepdaughter, Leah Hennessey.Mr. Johansen revealed last month that he was suffering from Stage 4 cancer, a brain tumor and a broken back. He announced a fund-raising campaign through the Sweet Relief Musicians Fund to assist with his medical bills, saying, “I’ve never been one to ask for help, but this is an emergency.”Mr. Johansen was prolific in multiple genres, from blues to calypso, and achieved his greatest commercial success in the late 1980s and early ’90s with his pompadoured lounge-lizard alter ego, Buster Poindexter. But his 1970s heyday with the New York Dolls, a band of lipstick-smeared men in love with trashy riffs and tough women, had the most cultural impact, inspiring numerous punk, heavy metal and alternative musicians.One of those musicians was the singer-songwriter Morrissey of the Smiths, who first witnessed the band as a 13-year-old living in Manchester, England. It was 1973, and the BBC was broadcasting a Dolls show. As the young Morrissey watched the Dolls flail through “Jet Boy,” he had what he called his “first real emotional experience,” according to Nina Antonia’s 1998 book, “The New York Dolls: Too Much Too Soon.” Morrissey soon became the president of the band’s British fan club.The New York Dolls were notorious for transgressive behavior; they were especially notorious for cross-dressing. “Before going onstage, the Dolls pass around a Max Factor lipstick the way some bands pass around a joint,” Ed McCormack wrote in Rolling Stone in 1972.“We used to wear some really outrageous clothes,” Mr. Johansen said in the prologue to the 1987 music video for Buster Poindexter’s hit song “Hot Hot Hot.” “These heavy mental bands in L.A. don’t have the market cornered on wearing their mothers’ clothes.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      David Johansen: 15 Essential Songs

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      He was the frontman of the New York Dolls, an adventurous solo performer and the lounge act Buster Poindexter. Listen to highlights from his eclectic catalog.It’s a paradox that Staten Island, New York City’s most conservative borough, produced David Johansen, one of its most outrageous frontmen. Johansen led the New York Dolls, five bright-eyed boys who dressed flamboyantly and dreamed of sounding like the Shirelles crossed with a midtown traffic jam. He died on Friday, at age 75.The Dolls’ self-titled first album, released in 1973, peaked at No. 116 on the Billboard album chart. Dismal, but they never got any higher. The title of their second album, “Too Much Too Soon,” told the story: The Dolls’ ecstatic form of rock ’n’ roll is credited as a chief influence on punk rock, but at the time, they were dismissed as talentless charlatans in drag. Mick Taylor of the Rolling Stones supposedly called them “the worst high school band I ever saw,” and even if their A&R man Paul Nelson made up this quote, it summarizes a widely held opinion.Overwhelmed by rejection, the Dolls disbanded, and Johansen started a solo career that was distinguished by his bonhomie and panache. He took stylistic diversions that included disco, Latin music, folk and vaudeville, and in the late ’80s, he began acting in movies, including “Scrooged” and “Car 54, Where Are You?” He also performed as Buster Poindexter, a lounge singer whose taste in oldies was more cruise ship than Café Carlyle. Regardless of style or medium, his work retained a sense of humor, a love of individualism and a distaste for conformism.Johansen seemed to know every good song ever written, a breadth he displayed on Mansion of Fun, the weekly SiriusXM satellite radio show he began hosting in 2004. He didn’t distinguish between low and high art, or between kitsch and classics. In May 2019, he tweeted a reminder to tune in to Mansion of Fun, and added, “a passion for music is in itself an avowal. We know more about a stranger who yields himself up to it than about someone who is deaf to music and whom we see every day.”He yielded himself up to a passion for music as much as anyone who’s ever lived. Here are 15 of his best songs.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More