The late Dolly Parton sent grieving goddaughter Miley Cyrus a sign from beyond, the singer told fans during her debut weekend at the Hollywood Bowl.
“I’ll tell you something that you don’t know,” she told the sold-out audience Sunday (Oct 18), the second of two shows she did at the renowned amphitheatre.
“I actually have a Dolly mannequin in my bedroom. She gave it to me for Christmas. It’s dressed like her, it looks like her,” said Cyrus, clasping a heart-shaped frame encircling a photo of the late country singer as she paced back and forth onstage, according to Entertainment Weekly.
“And when I was by myself, I actually took my phone and I played Jolene for her on video, holding it up to the mannequin, and lit a candle, and I put a flower down for her, and I said, ‘Dolly, if you’re here right now, flicker the lights.’ ”
Suddenly “the entire hallway started flickering,” Cyrus said, noting that fiance Maxx Morando saw it happen but didn’t know what she’d said.
“So I know she’s here with me tonight,” the pop star told her fans.
Parton died of cancer on Aug 25 at age 80.
The weekend marked Cyrus’s first ever Hollywood Bowl appearance, and her first major show in four years.
At the first concert, on Oct 16, she paid tearful tribute to Parton, first breaking down onstage and revealing that the Hollywood Bowl was the only place she had ever seen Parton perform from the audience.
The Hannah Montana star recalled wanting to be anonymous but said Parton outed her at the first song.
“This memory is gold to me,” Cyrus said before singing Jolene. “Me and Dolly, we are eternal. Nothing in this life could ever tear us apart.” – New York Daily News/Tribune News Service
