Altan’s Mairéad Ní Mhaonaigh has shared her memories of working with Dolly Parton and the late country legend’s kindness when the recording light was on and off.
The Donegal singer joined Dermot Whelan at the start of The Oliver Callan Show on RTÉ Radio 1, describing Parton as someone with “a great sense of humour”, who had “a total dignity within her as well” and was “the best at everything she ever tried”.
“She was extremely smart,” Ní Mhaonaigh told the show. “What a great trailblazer for women musicians and businesspeople.”
Ní Mhaonaigh’s friendship with Parton began in 1994, when Altan were asked to join Parton on the live album Heartsongs: Live from Home, which she was recording in Dollywood.
“She sent us these tapes, which were cassette tapes of her just singing at her kitchen table, singing all the songs she wanted us to sing along with.
“Then, we arrived in Dollywood, and to our surprise, she was just so welcoming and so nice. [She] rehearsed with us and had great fun with us. Whenever we’d be playing tunes in a corner with the Alison Krauss Band or Del McCoury, she’d arrive over and start joining in and said: ‘This is what I love!’
“She was just very, very [welcoming] without being pretentious. She just opened my eyes to how generous this star was.”
Ní Mhaonaigh explained that Parton became aware of Altan’s music through Riverdance composer Bill Whelan and the late Shay Healy, writer of the Eurovision-winning What’s Another Year.
“Both of them recommended [us],” Ní Mhaonaigh recounted.
“She wanted to go back to her roots on that album and to go back to Tennessee and to the old songs that she used to sing with her family.
“I suppose Riverdance was just the most amazing thing happening [at the time], and Bill Whelan was asked who would he recommend to sing along with her, and he recommended myself and the band.”
Ní Mhaonaigh said the experience of duetting with Parton on the song Barbara Allen was “just a dream come true”.
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“That’s an old song,” she told the host. “If you go back centuries, the Ulster and the Scotch people went to the Appalachian Mountains… They brought their music and songs.
“So that song was one of the songs she asked me to sing along with – but she specifically asked me to sing it in Gaelic.
“It’s a song that really isn’t in the Gaelic language, so I rang my father (the late Proinsias Ó Maonaigh), who happened to be a great translator. He said, ‘Sure, that’s the same song your granny sang!’ He didn’t even need the words; he knew the song well and sent me the translation.
“That’s what I really loved about her: she loved us to be ourselves on her album. She specifically asked for the Gaelic language. She just loved it. She loved the sound of it, and she felt it was part of her roots as well.”
“It was effortless, really,” said Ní Mhaonaigh. “She made you feel good about your singing. You know, that’s a great skill to have. She knew I was a little bit intimidated but just made us all feel at ease.”
In 1999, Altan again worked with Parton on the album Little Sparrow, on which the band performed In the Sweet By and By, a song Ní Mhaonaigh described as “very poignant today to me”.
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“She asked me then if I wanted her to sing on one of our albums,” she recalled.
“So, Altan were recording The Blue Idol at the time, and she loved An Cailín Deas Óg. She asked would Francie, my dad, God rest him, would he translate that one for her, which he did, very quickly.
“She invited me to go to her studio in Nashville, and we recorded The Pretty Young Girl with her.
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“So, she’s always been part of our lives and part of our, you know, this joy and generosity that is in the music business anyway, but she was something special.”
Ní Mhaonaigh said that when her late husband and bandmate Frankie Kennedy died, Parton sent flowers.
“I was actually reminded last night of the bouquet of flowers that she sent to his funeral.
“And then at Christmas, she would send flowers – these mega-big arrangements that I wasn’t even able to fit into the car!
“She never forgot who helped her. Like I mean, she didn’t have to do that, and it just shows her generosity and how down-to-earth she was, really.”
The Oliver Callan Show, weekdays, 11am, RTÉ Radio 1