“I wish”: The one duet that got away from Dolly Parton
There are a handful of artists who would have killed to have made a song with Dolly Parton during their lifetime.
Despite being one of the single most wholesome characters on Music Row for the majority of her career, it’s impossible not to cheer up whenever listening to any of Parton’s tunes, even when she’s singing about the kind of topics that are enough to break someone’s heart. She was willing to do everything she could to make the best-sounding record that anyone had ever heard, but there were some songs that she admitted had passed her by before she could do them justice.
But for someone who has been at it for over four decades, it’s shocking to think that Parton still has a lot of her original voice left in her. No one was expecting her to hit the same high notes that some of her contemporaries were, but that’s not what country music was about, either. It was about someone sitting down and telling you a story throughout every one of their songs, and while that might have been boring for some rock and roll fans, it was mesmerising hearing her sing songs like ‘Joshua’ and ‘Jolene’.
It’s easy to get turned off by some of the overtly religious tunes if you don’t practice, but even then, Parton isn’t one to preach from a pulpit like everyone else. She wanted to sing what was in her heart, and even if the rest of the music world respected her for following her own rules, her induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame had to have more than a few caveats for her when she got inducted.
While Parton was more than happy to be recognised for her contribution to music, Rockstar was one of the few times where she had the chance to work with the best rock musicians on the planet. There’s hardly anyone who would have said no to one of the biggest country stars in the world, but even when she was working on some of the greatest rock anthems of all time, she felt a little bit of bittersweetness going back to sing the song ‘Open Arms’.
Even if you don’t necessarily mess with hair metal, Journey’s power ballad is still one of the most luscious ballads of the time, especially with Steve Perry’s fantastic tenor voice blaring over the top. But if Parton had it her way, she figured that it would have been a lot better for her to sing the song as a duet the same way that she used to do when Kenny Rogers was still with us.
‘Islands in the Stream’ might still be a divisive song in some circles, but having both of them talk about standing by each other was one of the few regrets Parton had, saying, “My husband [Carl Dean] always loved it and always thought I should have recorded it with Kenny Rogers, but I never got a chance to do that. So, when I started doing the rock album, I thought, well, I’m going to record ‘Open Arms’, and then I’m going to ask Steve Perry to sing it with me. I wish I had written it.”
The song doesn’t exactly scream country music, but then again, neither did Whitney Houston’s version of ‘I Will Always Love You’, and when you hear ‘Open Arms’, it’s actually not impossible to think about it as a country tune. All you would need is to replace the guitars with a pedal steel and maybe take a little bit of echo off the piano, and you’re halfway to making a country hit already.
But even if ‘The Gambler’ ended up checking out before Parton had the chance to sing one last duet with him, the sentiment of the song is still there. They sailed on together and they did drift apart, but when you hear both of them harmonising on any of those classic songs, you would have no problem believing them singing their hearts out side by side on this tune.
