The one voice Dolly Parton never got tired of hearing
The country music world Dolly Parton grew up in was never interested in making decent tunes.
Throughout her entire career, she had learned that the best way to get to the top was to make sure that the songs never dried up, and even if not every one of her records was a home run, she quickly transformed from being a humble female songwriter to a damn song institution by the time that she made ‘Jolene’ and ‘9 to 5’. But whether it’s in Nashville or Bakersfield, Parton understood that the greatest strength that any songwriter could have was to get the right singer on one of their tracks.
But at the time, the fact that Parton sang all her own material was a bit of a rarity. Sure, she had the kind of tunes that she would sing with Porter Wagoner whenever she had the chance, but there was a lot more she had to offer than that sweet voice. There were complex stories in a lot of her tunes, and while they might not have all been hits, it’s impossible to relate to that little girl that is proud of being different on a song like ‘Coat of Many Colors’.
That said, it’s not like she was going to throw any old song out into the world without having something to say about it. ‘I Will Always Love You’ remains one of her most popular songs thanks to Whitney Houston’s version of the song, but even though Parton’s version is excellent, the fact that Elvis Presley wanted a co-writer credit for a chance to sing the tune made her stand up for herself and make sure that no one took her songs away from her.
She revelled in being that strong female force in country music, but that doesn’t mean that she didn’t have a lot of respect for what her contemporaries were doing. For as dorky as Willie Nelson looked when he first came to Nashville, songs like ‘Crazy’ were already masterpieces, and when Parton began working with Kenny Rogers, she knew that she had found a musical soulmate when they made the song ‘Islands in the Stream’.
Admittedly, the song isn’t necessarily one of the coolest duets in history, and there are a few factions of people that would put it next to ‘Ebony and Ivory’ as one of the worst songs of all time, but there’s no conceivable way to outright hate it. Rogers and Parton’s friendship can be felt in every single word that they sing, and even after ‘The Gambler’ passed away, Parton said that she was always moved by hearing his voice.
Despite singing the song countless times over the years, Parton would always get sentimental whenever she sang ‘Islands in the Stream’ because of Rogers, saying, “I would always lighten up when that particular song was due in the setlist. It just always made everybody feel so good in the audience and the audience always loved singing it. I never got tired of Kenny’s voice.” And it’s not like Rogers was any slouch compared to what Parton was doing, either.
Even if all you know from him is ‘The Gambler’, Rogers’s weathered voice is still one of the most natural gifts that country music gave to this world. He was a natural storyteller in a lot of his tunes, and even if he was telling someone else’s story, it’s easy to look past all of the pageantry of a song like ‘Islands in the Stream’ and look at two friends that loved nothing more than sharing their lives with each other.
And while Rogers is on the other side these days, his soul lives on whenever Parton sings their signature tune live. Because when it comes to the world of country, it all comes back to singers that can sell whatever track they’re working on, and if Johnny Cash was ‘the Man in Black’, Rogers was a ray of sunshine over the genre.
