At one point in time, Dolly Parton wanted to record an entire album of Bob Dylan songs, but never went through with the project. “I was going to do a whole album of his [songs], and I was going to call it ‘Dolly Does Dylan,’” said Parton in 2005. “Now I’m having second thoughts.”
Though Parton and Dylan had run into one another throughout the years, she said she never felt a “warmth” from him and is afraid she may have offended him in some way.
“I’ve met him a few times, but I never felt any warmth from him to me,” recalled Parton in 2014. “I think I have offended him somehow by the way I looked or the way I was. I love his music, but he’s a weird buckaroo.”
She added, “I don’t feel like we ever connected. Maybe he just thought I was too phony, or he didn’t get to know me too well. I always loved his music. His mind is so deep, but his melodies are so good. They lend themselves so well to harmonies.”
Though Parton and Dylan never did collaborate, she still went ahead and recorded three of his classics from the late 1990s through the early 2010s.
Videos by American Songwriter
“Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,” with Ladysmith Black Mambazo (1997)
In 1997, the South African Isicathamiya group, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, who first gained recognition after appearing on Paul Simon‘s 1986 album Graceland, called on the country legend to sing on their cover of Dylan’s “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” for their album Heavenly. Dylan originally recorded the classic nearly 25 years earlier for the 1973 Sam Peckinpah Western Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, which he starred in alongside Kris Kristofferson and James Coburn.
“Blowin’ in the Wind,” Featuring Nickel Creek (2005)
While working on her 2005 album Those Were The Days, Parton asked Dylan to sing on her cover of his 1962 classic “Blowin’ in the Wind,” but was turned down. In his place, Parton called on the bluegrass band Nickel Creek. “To be fair, I didn’t actually speak to him [Dylan] personally,” recalled Parton. “I’d sent a message to him because I wanted him to say at least one line on ‘Blowin’ In The Wind.’ I got the message back that he didn’t want to do it, so I got Nickel Creek to sing on it, so, in a way, it worked out better.”
“Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” (2014)
Just two years before Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard recorded their duet of “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” from The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan on their sixth and final collaborative album together, Django and Jimmie, Parton also gave it a go on her 44th studio bluegrass-bent album Blue Smoke. Featuring most songs written by Parton, Blue Smoke also includes a bluegrass rendition of Bon Jovi’s “Lay Your Hands on Me,” and a duet with Nelson on “From Here to the Moon and Back,” a song she originally wrote and recorded with Kris Kristofferson for their 2012 film Joyful Noise.
Photo: Richard E. Aaron/Redferns
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