The Bank Teller

Lyrics

[Intro]
(a fiddle holding one note a little too long)

[Verse 1]
There was a bank in Nashville and a woman who worked in it
with red hair and green eyes and a way of leaning on the counter
when Carl Dean came in to do the banking, which he did rather often,
rather more often, actually, than a man needs to do the banking.

[Chorus]
And she went home and wrote it. That's the response. That is the entire response.
No confrontation, no accusation, no scene in a bank in Nashville —
she went home and wrote a song asking the woman, politely, please,
and the song outlived the bank and the woman and very nearly the marriage's whole century.

[Verse 2]
The name came from somewhere else. A little girl at a signing,
red hair, green eyes, up at the front of the line, and Dolly asked her name,
and she said Jolene, and Dolly said that is the prettiest name I ever heard,
and kept it, in the way that writers keep things, for later, for something.

[Chorus]
And she went home and wrote it. And the strangest thing about that song
is that she is not angry in it. Listen to what the woman in it actually does.
She begs. She flatters her rival. She says you could have anyone, please not him.
It is a song about being outmatched and knowing it, sung by the most beautiful woman in Tennessee.

[Bridge]
Carl thought it was funny. Carl thought most of it was funny.
Sixty years married and he came to almost nothing, gave almost no interviews,
and the deal was simple and they both kept it: she did the world, he did the house,
and he liked to hear her sing, and that was the entire arrangement, and it held.

[Outro]
(the fiddle finally releases the note)
The bank is gone now.
Nobody knows the woman's real name.
The song is in eleven hundred versions.