Parton's show of good fun, music

A force of nature in a glittering gown and a blonde wig piled high, Dolly Parton filled up the Event Center at the Borgata Hotel, Casino & Spa in Atlantic City on Saturday with her outsized personality and an unstoppable combination of down-home musical dazzle and showbiz pizzazz.

The 62-year-old feminist heroine is touring behind the inconsistent

Backwoods Barbie

, her first mainstream country album in years. Its title track gives Parton the opportunity to tell her loyal audience - older than the usual Borgata Entourage demographic - what she's been showing them in the 3,000 or 4,000 songs she figures she's written: that looks can be deceiving, and that she's anything but a dumb blonde. "I'm just a backwoods Barbie, in push-up bra and heels, I might look artificial, but where it counts I'm real."

In the course of a two-hour show that started off terrifically then lost steam after a momentum-killing intermission, Parton sang country and pop songs in a still-gleaming, glowing voice, and maintained a monologue of heartfelt and hokey Smoky Mountain autobiography while playing autoharp, dulcimer, penny whistle, banjo and guitar.

For "Lonesomes," a mix of Hank Williams honky-tonk and supper-club jazz, she sat at a rhinestone-studded grand piano, joined by her versatile 10-piece band in close harmony. "Eat your heart out, Norah," she shouted out to buddy Norah Jones.

An American original if ever there was one, Parton served up self-help tips born of hardscrabble practicality in "Better Get To Livin' " ("I'm not the Dalai Lama, but I'll try to offer up a few words of advice"). And before delivering a lovely "I Will Always Love You," she thanked Whitney Houston for her 1992 cover version. "She made me lots of money," Parton quipped. "I'll always love her."

Along with singing big hits both brilliant ("Jolene," "Coat Of Many Colors") and bathetic ("Islands In The Stream," a duet with brother-in-law Richard Dennison), she kept the one-liners coming. Saturday's show was slated for March but rescheduled because of back troubles widely reported to have been caused by Parton's cartoonish cleavage. "They don't give me those kind of problems," she said, "though I haven't seen my feet in 30 or 40 years."

Not taking sides for Obama, Clinton or McCain, she denied presidential aspirations of her own: "Do we really need any more boobs in the White House?" And Parton observed that if we ever do elect a woman president, "every 28 days, those terrorists better get to runnin'."

Before the workaday "9 to 5," Parton said she's written new songs for a musical based on the 1980 hit, with a targeted Broadway opening in 2009. And she plans on punching the clock until the end: "I'll fall dead on in the middle of a song in front of y'all," she said cheerfully, "high heels to heaven."

Here's hoping that doesn't happen anytime soon.