Dolly Parton wants to save Jessica Simpsons country music career

Jessica Simpson career switch from pop music to country has been less than successful. Her album only sold 200,000 copies and she ended up dropped by her record label, Sony Nashville, in April. When she opened for Rascal Flatts during a tour at the beginning of the year she made plenty of headlines for sharing too much personal information with the crowd and forgetting the lyrics to her songs while on stage.

Simpson may get a chance to reboot her country career with the help of big-hearted country legend Dolly Parton. Although Simpson famously flubbed the words to Parton’s hit “Nine to Five” while performing at her Kennedy Center Tribute, Parton still has a soft spot for her and wants to help her out.

According to The National Enquirer, Parton has offered to fully fund Jessica’s next country music CD on her own label:

After Jessica’s debut country CD tanked, Dolly personally offered to bankroll Jess’ second country album on her label, Dolly Records, sources say.

“Dolly sees a lot of herself in Jessica. Her personal life has been the focal point of unwanted attention, and like Jessica, she’s had to battle her own doubts and demons,” a friend divulged.

“But Dolly is a pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps kind of gal, and she’s tried to instill some of that in Jessica.”

Back in 2003, Jessica’s pop album “In this Skin” sold a whopping 5 million copies…. [she] tried to recapture that glory by courting a country crowd, but her CD “Do You Know” sold fewer than 200,000 copies, and her record label Sony Nashville dumped her…

Despite all [of Jessica’s problems performing] Dolly was quick to defend her.

“I think every entertainer’s had nights when things go wrong,” the 63-year-old music legend declared on CNN’s “Larry King Live.”

“But I know that Jessica is a good girl. She’s beautiful to me. I’ve never been around a person any sweeter in my life.”

[From The National Enquirer, print edition, May 25, 2009]

Simpson is lucky to have help from Parton, and let’s hope she also gets some much-needed advice from her and takes it to heart. It’s not helping her career to let it all hang out and discuss her bad gas and the state of her relationship every chance she gets. Still, Jessica somehow landed on the cover of Variety this month so she must be doing something right. I wonder if that had something to do with Dolly Paton’s influence. Given that Jessica’s country album was a failure, why doesn’t she just go back to making bland pop music though? She was earning a lot of money and it seems like that’s where her talent lies.

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