(Credits: Far Out / Matthew Barnes / Blue Eye Records / Sugar Hill Records / Library Of Congress)
Sat 4 April 2026 23:00, UK
Any musician would have probably done whatever they could to have Dolly Parton as their parent.
While she might not have been the coolest musician in the world during every era of her career, it’s hard to really hate on nearly anything she did, especially given how many times she was able to transcend what the country genre could mean to so many people. She was much more happy to play by her own rules whenever working on one of her songs, and after years being one of the biggest names in Nashville, she could see a few of her musical offspring popping up every now and again.
But if anyone has ever tried to make a heartwrenching ballad on Music Row, they’re going to be copying from Parton whether they know it or not. The goal of every great country song is to tell a story that leaves someone in tears by the end of everything, but Parton was looking to upset people by any stretch. She wanted to empathise with every single member of that audience, and even if she had a few sad songs, she wanted them to have at least a little bit of a silver lining to them by the time she was finished.
And even when you look at some of her best tunes, they always have a certain sense of pride in where she came from. ‘Coat of Many Colors’ is one of the finest tunes that she ever made, but even though she talks about getting picked on in school because of the way that she looked, she was never going to change herself because of how someone judged her, whether that was music or otherwise.
Because, despite having some of the greatest collaborations that anyone has ever done under her belt, she was always going to be the same girl from the country whenever she made a record. She didn’t bother trying to change up her style too much when she started collaborating with the biggest frontmen of all time on Rockstar, and when she saw the new generation, she was always looking for those who had greater roots in their music than she did.
She never got tired of singing with her friends and working with the Trio, but right around the end of the 1990s, the traditional sounds of country music were starting to come back into style again. The heartland rock genre had been going strong for years, but when looking at the biggest names in bluegrass, Parton was dumbfounded when Alison Krauss first came out. Here was a musician who seemed to arrive fully formed when she first sang, and Parton felt that she was already connected with Krauss before she even met her.
Even though Parton didn’t end up having children, she considered Krauss to be like her adopted daughter, saying, “I just claimed her. It was like she was my little soul mate; like if I’d have had a child, it would probably have been like Alison.” And when you hear her playing off of her bandmates every time she sings, you can hear a lot of what she’s talking about whenever Krauss sings.
She isn’t trying to be the most showstopping voice in the world, but you can hear that wholesome tone in her voice whenever she sings her version of ‘When You Say Nothing At All’ or when she’s duetting with Robert Plant on Raising Sand. And that’s before even getting into her status as one of the greatest musicians in the bluegrass scene, especially when she gets a violin in her hands.
Krauss has definitely carved out a place for herself in history, far removed from what Parton is doing, but there’s always going to be that common thread between musicians who are making the most authentic version of themselves that they can. No one may have been ready for Parton to be so gutsy back in the day, but her bravery to be her own artist is what paved the way for what people like Krauss continue to do to this day.
