The one album Dolly Parton will always regret not making: “I have a big heartache”
There aren’t many pieces of musical history that Dolly Parton hasn’t been able to take part in.
Most artists would be happy to have one iota of what she did with her career during their lifetime, but sometimes the greatest strengths were when she could say no to certain choices. She knew when her career could have gone in the wrong direction at any given time, but there were more than a few times when she felt like she missed her opportunity to work among her favourite artists as well.
Granted, Parton did at least have a keen eye for what she was looking to get out of every one of her collaborations. Her partnership with Kenny Rogers resulted in one of the greatest duets of all time, and even if some of her songs could have come off as a little bit cheesy whenever she sang, she did have standards for what she wanted. The fact that she turned down Elvis Presley is one of the most badass moves anyone has ever made, but it was all about her looking out for herself.
It took a lot for her to turn something down, but there were also more than a few times when she felt like some of her greatest partnerships fell through in the wrong way. Her relationship with Porter Wagoner was always going to be a bit too awkward to carry on for too long, but when you look at the tension that she had with Linda Ronstadt when putting together their records together, there’s a good chance she would have sung with her more if she knew that Ronstadt would be leaving music.
But that didn’t mean that Parton needed to walk around with those regrets all the time. She has the kind of spirit that was always about picking herself up when she fell and keeping moving forward, but that did mean leaving more than a few people behind as well. She was devastated when hearing about Rogers passing away, and even after becoming one of the biggest country stars in the world, not being able to work with George Jones in any capacity always left a void in her heart.
Jones was already one of the titans of country music well before Parton became famous, and his tunes wrote the rulebook on what great country music could sound like. ‘He Stopped Loving Her Today’ is still the most tear-jerking love song that anyone in Nashville ever made, and when he passed away in 2013, Parton did have a few regrets about never being able to do an entire album with him.
She always looked up to Jones as one of the greatest of all time, and the idea of her voice blending with his was one of her dreams, saying, “Oh, yeah. I have a big heartache over the fact that I never did an album with George Jones, who was my favorite singer. I really, really wish, and I had a few opportunities to do it, but it just never worked out for somebody’s schedule til it was too late, so I hate that.”
But even if that broke Parton’s heart, it was never about trying to check musicians off her musical bucket list. She wanted the chance to learn from what someone like Jones could do every time he sang, and even if she had a much sweeter voice, she knew that she could inhabit songs and make them as impactful as Jones could whenever she talked about the sentimental side of Music Row.
It is a shame that we never got to see the true potential that Parton had working with one of her heroes, but it really doesn’t matter who she works with at this point. She has ascended to the kind of superstar level that very few people have been able to reach, and there’s a good chance that somewhere in the ether, Jones is out there proud of influencing someone with one of the sweetest personalities in the music world.
