The one band Dolly Parton always wanted to join: “I should have”
There are no real limits to where Dolly Parton can go in the music industry.
She has earned enough goodwill from pretty much everything she has done, and considering her status as one of the greatest living country singers of all time, most people would have let her get away with making an electronic song if she had the idea to make a collaboration with Daft Punk. But even though she hasn’t run short on powerful duets throughout her career, she felt like there were more than a few records that seemed to slip through her fingers.
Then again, Parton isn’t the kind to go to bed at night wondering about how she would have done things differently. Her mantra has always been about moving forward, and even if she isn’t one of the biggest chart toppers in Nashville these days, it’s hard not to smile every time her voice comes on the radio. But what makes her great is her ability to adapt to pretty much anyone she works with.
Porter Wagoner was the one who introduced her to duet singing, but there was no shortage of people who seemed to fit in with her. It takes a certain kind of superpower to be able to work with everyone from Kenny Rogers to Brad Paisley to Pit Bull and still manage to sound great, but of all her collaborations, her turn as a rock star wasn’t anything that most people saw coming.
She was already one of the biggest country stars, so having her dip her toes into rock and roll might not have been the worst idea in the world. Rock had already borrowed from country more than a few times, but when you listen to the songs that she made with everyone from Stevie Nicks to Joan Jett, she feels right at home on every single song. And yes, that includes songs that don’t seem to make any sense.
The idea of her doing ‘Stairway to Heaven’ was going to take a little bit of convincing, but she actually managed to pull it off fairly decently. Plant wasn’t going to be playing the song any time soon, but even if the frontman left that part of himself behind, Parton was happy to see that the singer formerly known as ‘Percy’ actually found his way towards rootsy music when working with Alison Krauss.
They were a natural fit when Raising Sand came out in the 2000s, and while Parton heard that they were working together, she would have loved the opportunity to turn the duo into a trio, saying, “Alison and Robert are great. I probably should have got to sing a song with them. I didn’t even know they were doing an album until it was almost done; if I’d have known about it, I’d have said, ‘Hey, don’t you have a trio that we could do on that?’ I’m not going out looking for it, but I’m open to anything.”
Which begs the question: which Zeppelin songs could Parton do justice to? A lot of Raising Sand was comprised of old traditional tunes, but for someone who was as larger than life as Plant used to be, it would be interesting hearing her add harmonies to ‘The Battle of Evermore’ or maybe try and turn a song like ‘Gallows Pole’ into a more bluegrass-style number if they were to play together.
Since all of them are still working, there’s no rule that says she can’t, so maybe there’s still hope that we could get a bit more of a rootsy Zeppelin tune out of the deal. Parton wasn’t going to say no to having some fun with music, and with someone like Plant by her side, making her own rock and roll traditional tune is the kind of idea that sounds just crazy enough to actually work.
