How Dolly Parton silenced Don Henley: “Pixie dust all over the studio”
It takes a lot for anyone to stop a trained professional in their tracks in the studio. It’s understandable for someone to be working on their chops every now and again before they’re ready for the red light to come on, but it takes a rare breed to go out onto the studio floor and bring some electricity in no time. Don Henley may be one of the few who possesses that ability, but he was far more interested in observing the geniuses he had to work with.
While Henley was the face of Eagles in many respects, throughout his career, he was far from the strongest piece of the puzzle. Each of them brought something different to the table, and while ‘Golden Throat’ inhabited so many classic songs, it was nice to have people kick back when they all harmonised on ‘Take It Easy’ or when Joe Walsh stepped up to the microphone to treat everyone to a good time when singing ‘Life’s Been Good’.
That was back when the band wanted to emphasise their rock and roll chops, but Henley always had a taste far more eclectic than The Byrds and The Beach Boys. He was a child of everything he listened to, and even when he was working his first gigs in Linden, Texas, it was all about playing whatever came on the radio, be it jazz music or the occasional bluegrass song that got the crowd moving.
But for the many great moments of his career, all roads led back to country music in one form or another. Despite the band’s insistence on outrunning the “country-rock” label most people put on them back in the day, it’s easy to hear them drawing from everything from Hank Williams to Gram Parsons to even Ray Charles’ country records. And when Henley unveiled Cass County, he found the perfect way to get in touch with his Americana roots.
Much of the album feels like it could have been written on a couple of lawnchairs at dusk decades prior to its release, but Henley knew he had plans for some of his favourite country classics as well. So, once ‘When I Stop Dreaming’ came up as a potential song, he knew that bringing in Dolly Parton was a must to get the right voice for the tune.
For all of the songs that he has annihilated over the years, Henley remembered being brought to a standstill the minute that Parton opened her mouth to sing, saying, “She said, ‘This key is a little bit high for me’, and we said, ‘Well, that’s the only key we recorded it in’. And she said, ‘Well, I guess I’ll just have to rare back and get it then’. So she rared back, and she did it in two takes, and she was gone. Me and my production team sat there in stunned silence for five minutes going, ‘What the hell just happened here?’ It was like someone sprinkled pixie dust all over the studio.”
But for anyone even remotely familiar with Parton’s music, her voice can do that even if she’s singing the most rudimentary children’s song. Even after half a century in the business, Parton’s voice is the type of kind-hearted voice that’s almost forgotten in country music today, always having the precision of a true professional but with the same good-natured cadence that comes from someone who genuinely enjoys what they’re doing.
So while Henley has been proud of working with many different artists throughout his career, this duet always felt a bit more special compared to the other country juggernauts he has worked with. Some of his contemporaries on the same record may have reached far greater heights in the business, like Mick Jagger, but having Parton on a record is like performing with a slice of American history.
