Credit: Far Out / Album Cover
Wed 2 September 2026 3:00, UK
Dolly Parton spent an entire career chasing some of the best songs that she could.
Anyone else would have tried to redo the same kind of song every single time they got onstage, but even when Parton was firmly in country territory, there was never a moment when she didn’t think about switching things around and giving her audience the kind of story that made you want to fall in love, cry your eyes out, or something in between on every other track. But even with so many songs in her catalogue, there were only a few times when she captured the kind of excitement that every musician is chasing after.
Because a lot of Parton’s songs revolved around being so effortlessly perfect. Not all of her songs needed to call attention to themselves all the time, but whenever she made one of her records, there were always going to be sleeper hits that could come in and become the next great country song, next to the other classics of the genre. But Parton could only do that so much when working with someone like Porter Wagoner.
Wagoner was only going to hold her back after a while, and even though the thought of going solo was going to be a little bit scary, Parton didn’t need much to worry about. She was one of the finest songwriters of her generation, and even if she was dominated by male singers left and right, she was just as willing to go out on a limb and make records that anyone could enjoy, no matter what anyone said.
And the reason why all of her solo tunes worked was that people could feel the heart that she put into all of them. Not a single person could sit there with a dry eye listening to a song ‘I Will Always Love You’, but after a while of having some of the biggest hits of her career, there had to come a point where Parton missed having a band of people working with her. And when she formed the Trio with Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris, she found the musical sisters she never had.
There had been times when Parton would make off-and-on appearances in bigger bands, but all three of their voices blended perfectly to create the kind of sound that most people thought only Crosby, Stills and Nash could create. These were beautiful songs that were given that angelic sheen, and that kind of magic wasn’t lost on Parton for a second when she first started picking away on her acoustic guitar.
She could have kept moving through the country world without a care, but Parton felt that nothing satisfied her more than listening to the three of them singing together, saying, “When we heard our voices it was like injectin’ some kind of serum into your veins. It was like a high like you’ve never felt.” And in the different songs that were preserved over the years, you can really hear why they were so special.
Further reading: From The Vault
Even before they started making albums together, hearing their performance of ‘Bury Me Beneath the Weeping Willow’ is one of the most heartbreaking tunes you will ever hear. It’s Dolly Parton, so of course, there’s going to be a little bit of sunshine poking through the song, but the thought of all of them harmonising together on anything else after that one tune was too much for most people to handle.
And while they did have their fair share of gripes over the years, the reason why each of them could come back and play together had a lot to do with the way that all of them played off each other. Their songs weren’t that complicated, and most of them didn’t need to do vocal acrobatics every time they sang, but their voices singing together is one of the closest things that we will get to hearing angels singing while we’re on this Earth.
