In 1987, Dolly Parton released her 28th studio album, Rainbow. The record was an attempt by her record label for Parton to cross over, with Rainbow mostly a pop album. Not surprisingly, Rainbow failed to produce any hit singles. So when Parton determined that she wanted to keep her feet firmly planted in country music, she tapped Ricky Skaggs to produce White Limozeen, the follow-up to Rainbow.
Parton held her ground that it should be Skaggs who produced White Limozeen, even though he wasn’t as experienced as other producers that her record label wanted her to choose.
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“I felt very strongly about Ricky Skaggs producing this record, because I feel that Ricky is more like me musically than anybody else I know,” Parton explains in Songteller. “He understood the ‘old Dolly,’ as far as the pure mountain music and what country music really is. What I wanted to do was an album that was really authentic sounding.”
“Why’d You Come In Here Looking Like That”, the first single from White Limozzeen, became a No. 1 single for Parton.
The Story Behind ‘White Limozeen’ by Dolly Parton
“Yellow Roses”, the follow-up to “Why’d You Come In Here Looking Like That”, also became a No. 1 single. The record also includes “He’s Alive”, “Time For Me To Fly”, and the project’s title track.
Although “White Limozeen” didn’t become as big a success as some of Parton’s other singles, it remains a song the Country Music Hall of Fame member is rightfully proud to have been part of writing.
Parton wrote “White Limozeen” with Mac Davis. The song was inspired by Parton’s desire to get back to writing songs that she loved again, telling Davis they were going to “write like we’re hungry again.” It wasn’t until Parton arrived in her limousine at Davis’s Beverly Hills mansion that she realized the absurdity of her statement.
“When I got out of the car, I said to Mac, ‘I feel like such an idiot telling you we were gonna write like we were hungry. We have got to write something about a white limousine!’” Parton remembers. “He said, ‘Well, let’s just do it.’ He got out his guitar and started picking. It turned out that we were very complementary as songwriters. We were matching each other line for line. We were impressed with each other. That was the first song we ever wrote together.”
The unique spelling of limousine is due to the fact that Parton didn’t know how to spell the word, so she spelled it as it sounds.
Photo by Paul Natkin/Getty Images
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