Dolly Parton's Best Covers Of '70s Rock Songs

By the numbers alone, Dolly Parton, the Queen of Country, has long reached a level of success that's practically incomprehensible. She's sold over 100 million albums and has 11 Guinness World Records under her belt. This includes the most Top 10 entries on the U.S. Top Country Albums chart by a female artist (49), the longest span of No. 1 hits on the U.S. Hot Country Songs chart (35 years, 26 days), and the most decades with a Top 20 hit on the U.S. Hot Country Songs chart (7). This was all possible because of Dolly's absolute charm, disarming sweetness, and pure songwriting talent. The glitz and the glam are just part of the package (including her guitar-tapping, percussive nails), as is her connection to her musical roots, right down to her choice of songs to cover.

At current count, Dolly has covered songs by 77 other artists over the course of her career, including some unexpected choices such as Madonna and Queen. Her music has, in turn, gone on to inspire multiple generations and get covered countless times. She's such a prolific songwriter, having written about 3,000 songs over the course of her seven-decade career, that it's practically impossible to keep track of her entire body of work. She's even produced entire cover albums, like 2005's "Those Were the Days." Her repertoire of recorded covers includes "Son of a Preacher Man," "In the Ghetto," "Peace Train," "Turn! Turn! Turn!" and "I Walk the Line."

But Dolly hasn't merely covered or taken inspiration from country, pop, or folk songs. She's crafted her own renditions of rock songs, too, even from the '70s. This includes well-known hits like "Me and Bobby McGee" and lesser-known songs like "If" by Bread. Here are five of Dolly's best '70s rock covers.

Long before the plucked intro to Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven" made guitar shop employees want to pull out their hair, the track was a mere non-radio-friendly non-single on the band's 1971 album, "Led Zeppelin IV." But who could resist that ascending chord progression that resembled the very unascended stairway described in Robert Plant's lyrics? Not even Dolly Parton, who no one ever envisioned as a likely candidate to cover the Zeppelin song. But cover it she did — twice. 

When it came time to assemble the tracks for Dolly's 2002 "Halos and Horns," Dolly drafted a banjo-and-fiddle-filled, gospel-tinged bluegrass reimagining of the Zeppelin classic. It's extremely well composed, builds and layers perfectly over time, remains quintessentially Dolly while honoring the original, and generated no negative feedback whatsoever for her "walking on sacred [rock] ground," as she feared (per The Tennessean). After recording her version, she hesitantly reached out to Plant and company hoping for approval and got exactly that. 

Dolly's late husband, Carl Dean, however, didn't want her to cover "Stairway to Heaven" to begin with. As one of rock's "most sacred anthems," as Country Thang Daily reports, Dean was fearful of critical blowback and wasn't too keen on the final version. But that's alright, because Dolly went back and covered it again for her 2023 album, "Rockstar." This version, which featured Lizzo on the flute, of all things, is pretty much a straight-up, blow-for-blow cover with a few unique touches here and there. Dean approved. Although at this point, who'd begrudge any decision of Dolly's? Here's hoping for cover number three.

Imagine there's no cover. It's easy if you try. We say that not because Dolly Parton's cover of John Lennon's 1971 hit "Imagine" is bad, but because it's not exactly well known. Dolly's take on a song perfectly suited to her — about sorrowful sweetness, light, and universal brotherhood — sits at the very end of her 2005 cover album, "Those Were the Days." Co-written by David Foster, a composer and producer who worked on enormous tracks like Whitney Houston's cover of "I Will Always Love You," Dolly's "Imagine" is pretty much a beat-for-beat cover enriched by Dolly's sometimes-warbling, but ever-soaring, vocal rendition. But of course, much of the strength of her version comes from the strength of the original, a song that ranks among the most beloved tracks of the entire 20th century.

Dolly's reasons for covering "Imagine," however, were personal. Parton was a massive Beatles fan growing up, right back to when they released "I Want to Hold Your Hand" in 1964, when she was 18 years old and used to drive around listening to the song. And like others of her generation, she was heartbroken when John Lennon was murdered in 1980. 

Dolly had already covered the Beatles' "Help!" the year prior to Lennon's death on her 1979 album, "Great Balls of Fire." So, she decided to tap "Imagine" for 2005's "Those Were the Days." The song comes with a music video featuring snippets from fictional lives intercut with shots of Lennon and Yoko Ono. But despite all the heaviness, Dolly did have a sense of humor about her cover. "Imagine how much money I would have made if I wrote the song," American Songwriter quotes her.

To most people, "Me and Bobby McGee" means Janis Joplin's version off of her 1971 posthumous album, "Pearl." Her rocky rendition blasted off to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. But Joplin's version is actually a cover of a Kris Kristofferson song off his 1970 debut, "Kristofferson." However, Roger Miller got the jump on recording Kristofferson's song first, in 1969. Kenny Rogers also recorded a version in 1969, and Gordon Lightfoot released one in 1970, the same year as Kristofferson. This means Dolly Parton was quite late to the "Me and Bobby McGee" cover binge when she released 2005's "Those Were the Days," the album that also featured "Imagine." And yet, she nabbed Kristofferson himself for her cover, who has since sadly passed away.

The Parton-Kristofferson combo probably services "Me and Bobby McGee" the best, seeing as both it and Kristofferson's original version are firmly country. Kristofferson even calls out his song as "country" in his official, recorded version. Dolly's version has less fingerpicking, more palm mutes, more harmonica, more of an accompaniment, and more oomph, but still sits firmly within the larger country songwriting wheelhouse.  

This time, there's no unique tale to tell about how Dolly chose to cover "Me and Bobby McGee." Given how many people have covered it since its release, the question might have been more, "Why wouldn't she cover it?" The list of performers who've covered "Me and Bobby McGee" is longer than most people's tax forms, includes folks like Willie Nelson and Johnny Cash, and continues to the present.

It will raise some folks' ire to call REO Speedwagon "rock." These most softcore of radio-friendly, hum-and-strum-along, crossover, power ballad brothers 100% fall into the soft rock category (at least their biggest hits, like "Can't Fight This Feeling"). Nonetheless, they lay claim to one of the most spectacular album titles ever conceived, 1978's "You Can Tune a Piano, But You Can't Tuna Fish." It's on that album that we find "Time For Me to Fly," an inspirational, if schmaltzy, song that Dolly Parton covered way back in 1989 on "White Limozeen."

In a 2020 interview with Pitchfork, Dolly said that "White Limozeen" was supposed to be a playful and creative album, qualities that shone through even in the title's misspelled name (which might have been because she didn't know how to spell "limousine," she said). Dolly explained that the album tells the story, song-by-song, of a woman who heads to Hollywood to make it big. This is why it features tracks like the hit single "Why'd You Come in Here Lookin' Like That" and circles back around to "Take Me Back to the Country." This is also why it starts with the aptly titled "Time For Me To Fly." True to the album's playfulness, Dolly's version of the REO song is basically an uptempo, jubilant knee-slapper complete with slide guitar, banjo, and fiddle. And just for extra punchiness, it's almost a minute shorter than the REO version. 

Finally, we come to a song that's very difficult to search for on the internet unless you pair the song name and artist together: "If" by Bread (1971). Definitely the least known and least discussed out of any of the songs that Dolly Parton covered, Bread's "If" nonetheless reached No. 4 on the BIllboard Hot 100, proving that the general public had a much, much higher tolerance for simple and slow songs back then. While Bread's catalog skews rock, it falls onto the softer end of the spectrum. "If" is a very mellow song playable and singable by one person on one guitar. And while Dolly can certainly do that in spades, and her version of the song does feature some lovely solo, even sprightly, fingerpicking, the song also has a lush accompaniment that matches the sweetness of the track.

Dolly's version of "If" appeared on 2002's "Halos and Horns," the album that features her first cover of "Stairway to Heaven." We already mentioned that her initial interpretation of "Stairway to Heaven" was more a bluegrass reimagining than a copy-pasted version of the original. This back-to-her-roots approach extends to every song on the album, including "If." Dolly said as much in a 2002 interview with The New York Times, stating that she intended the album to highlight her love of songwriting and the mountains of her youth. Indeed, besides the two covers on "Halos and Horns," she wrote everything else, herself. She also hired lesser-known session musicians to record the album, including folks who worked at Dollywood. Ultimately, she said, she was proud of how "If" turned out but more proud of her own songs.