The best R&B singers Dolly Parton ever heard: “I just love her”
Being a great singer doesn’t always require a great voice. It requires character, nuance and a deep understanding of how to pair vocals with the song at hand.
The 1970s weren’t the heyday of music culture for its abundance of great singers who represented a homogenised soundscape. No, it was brilliant for its diversity. Diversity of genres, yes, for rock and roll gave space for soul, disco, and its various subgenres of rock to flourish, but within that, a diversity of voices was bred.
Voices that stretched from the flawless Marvin Gaye, the delicate whistle of Joni Mitchell and the Appalachian twang of Dolly Parton. The latter represented an example of how compelling a musician could be, when they wholly adopted the characteristics of their natural voice and allowed it to lead them into a space of unbridled creative honesty.
All of her songs were a window into her world, be it the depths of overwhelming love or the desperation of an aching heartbreak and ultimately her voice was the tour guide. Don’t get me wrong, it was technically flawless and could climb up and down the ladder of musical notes, with relative ease, but not in a way that fell into a sea of vibrato pastiche, just sounding like the next musician who could deliver sonic ideas written by somebody else.
If you’ve ever just why a song like ‘Jolene’ has become a timeless hit, it’s because of how all of those ideas coalesce. Sure, the tale is compelling and painstaking, but it’s the way in which her emotion colours in every vocal intonation that makes it obviously so.
But in 2018, when Parton was in the twilight of her career and no longer mining through her personal life to help inspire her next hit, she took on the duty of soundtrack writer for the 2018 film Dumplin’. Following the story of a young woman, growing in confidence despite all the odds, Parton’s voice became the perfect one of guidance for this young character.
But the more universal angle of the whole film allowed Parton to step away from her own authenticity and try to write songs that encapsulated something more far-reaching for the female experience. In doing so, she could more freely dip her toe into soulful waters and collaborate with an artist who had always been on her radar.
Speaking of the soundtrack and more specifically the song ‘Why’, Parton said, “I wrote a song that reminded me of the old Staples Family music, and I loved Mavis Staples — always loved her, Otis Redding, and Mavis were my favourite R&B soul singers. So I had them contact Mavis to see if she was still around, if she was still singin’ or wanted to perform, and she happened to be a fan of mine too! So she was really as happy as I was about gettin’ to do it, and one of my favorite songs on the whole soundtrack is the one with Mavis. I just love her.”
When the pair collaborated on ‘Why’ it showed just how well the contrast of their voices could pair together, and proved once again, that the voices of the 1970s were quite simply, some of the very best.
