The greatest female voice Dolly Parton ever heard: “There’s a mutual respect”
Dolly Parton didn’t get into the music industry trying to compete with anyone.
There was hardly anyone who could match the sincerity she brought to her music. Other artists may have rivalled her output, but few, if any, shared the same warmth when speaking about her fans or her love of performing. She was happy to sing for anyone who wanted to listen, but even she had her heroes. Over the years, there were a handful of musicians who left her completely awestruck from the moment she worked with them.
Then again, Parton never claimed to be one of the almighty giants of country music by any means. She was still learning the ropes when working with Porter Wagoner, and even when she decided to venture off on her own, she wasn’t going to do what everyone expected out of her. She wanted to make the music that best further, and sometimes that meant going outside the traditional country music mould every now and again.
There was no way that anyone was going to listen to a full Dolly Parton hip-hop album or anything, but the idea of giving her songs to someone like Elvis Presley did make a little bit of sense. That may have fallen through due to business concerns, but when looking at her career, Parton wasn’t going to let that get her down. She was still used to making great country music, and if anyone else was willing to sing along with her, that was fine by her.
At the same time, no one really expected an album by the Trio to work as well as it did. The 1980s weren’t exactly the most fertile time for Parton to become one of the biggest names in music all over again, but if you look through what was going on around the same time in Nashville, the idea of a country-rock supergroup was perfect for the time. Country music wasn’t exactly in the best spot or anything, but if The Highwaymen could bring the biggest guys in country together, Parton was willing to give it a shot with Emmylou Harris and Linda Ronstadt.
That’s not to say that all of them had the best time working together, though. Make no mistake, the first Trio album is an absolute delight and features some of the greatest tunes that they would ever make together, but after one too many times trying to get their schedules together, Ronstadt and Parton did have more than a few moments where they could get a little bit too tense before they walked into the studio.
But even before they were able to get together for a full project, Parton couldn’t deny that Ronstadt had one of the finest timbres she had ever heard, saying, “She is one of the greatest female voices I ever heard. [An album is] somethin’ we’ve always wanted to do. We have talked about it for years. We are friends; there’s a mutual respect and admiration among the three of us. If it was a matter of business, it would have been a rush release.”
” We want it to be free and happy, a labor of love”.
And while the first record definitely delivered on being a labour of love, the second album actually managed to come out at the best time. 1999 was a much different musical environment than the late 1980s, and with country going through a massive resurgence with everyone from Faith Hill to Shania Twain to The Chicks, hearing the Trio come back together to sing tunes like ‘After the Gold Rush’ was the perfect way of reminding everyone of the kind of legends that they all were in their prime.
It’s tragic that Ronstadt had to step away from the microphone for the last time in the 2000s, but Parton is probably happy that she at least has those recordings of when they used to sing together. Ronstadt wasn’t going to do a disservice to her audience by forcing it, but Parton was more than willing to use her voice that she had left to carry on the tradition that singers like her and Ronstadt had done in the past.
