Not Her Kenny Rogers Duet, Not Her Solo Career: Dolly Parton's Chart-Topping Supergroup
Through her incredible life and career, Dolly Parton was rarely subtle, and was known for her ostentatious style, razor-sharp wit, and immense generosity almost as much as her vast catalog of country and pop classics. Parton, who died on August 25 at the age of 80, was a tremendous duet partner to luminaries such as Porter Wagoner and Kenny Rogers, but the Queen of Country knew more was always more, and her most enduring artistic team-up was a trio.
And not just any trio, in fact. "Trio," her 1987 album with Emmylou Harris and Linda Ronstadt, remains one of the highlights of all three women's careers. Their incredible combination — the result of years of hard work and patience — yielded a chart-topping, Grammy-winning album and even several sequels. As powerful an event as Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson and Johnny Cash teaming up as the Highwaymen and as thrilling as any rock 'n' roll supergroup, "Trio" remains required listening alongside Parton's already-impressive solo discography.
Trio was the result of more than a decade of planning (and a few false starts)
Incredibly, "Trio" was the second attempt by Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris, and Linda Ronstadt to record an album together. They first got the idea in the mid-'70s, and even booked a studio session. At the time, Parton was coming off crossover classics like "Jolene" and "I Will Always Love You," which she'd refused to let Elvis Presley cover. Harris reached the Top 10 of Billboard's country charts with 1975's "Pieces of the Sky," while not long before, Ronstadt made her mark as a master song interpreter with 1974's "Heart Like a Wheel," featuring the No. 1 smash cover of "You're No Good."
Despite their star power, that first attempt was not the success they had hoped for. "We tried to make an album in 10 days," Ronstadt told Cash Box in 1987. "We felt the quality just wasn't up there. We were tired, our voices were ragged, we hadn't thought out clearly enough what we wanted the album to be." It also didn't help that all three recorded for different record labels, making it unclear who would release such an album. Though some of the songs would be released on albums by Harris and Ronstadt in the '80s, each woman spent the next decade focusing on their solo career: Parton ventured into acting, Ronstadt experimented with genres, and Harris added some Grammys to her mantle.
After the success of Trio, its creators found time to reunite again
Eventually, Parton, Harris, and Ronstadt reconvened in 1986 to record "Trio." With an unbeatable selection of songs, including a cover of the Phil Spector-penned "To Know Him is to Love Him" and a Parton original, "Wildflowers," the album was as much a success as it would have been a decade before. "It's like all our little wings and our voices just blended together," Harris gushed to Cash Box.
When "Trio" was released the following year, it was a qualified success, topping the Billboard country chart for five weeks, spinning off four Top 10 hits on the country singles chart, and winning a Grammy for best country performance by a duo or group with vocals. (The album was also nominated for album of the year at the same ceremony.)
Like the best musical partnerships, the trio eventually found more time to collaborate. A planned follow-up in 1994 was initially scrapped, with Ronstadt remixing several of the songs for her solo album "Feels Like Home." After working out new record deals, those tracks, with all three women's voices, were finally released as "Trio II" in 1999, a Top 5 entry on Billboard's country album chart. The terrific trio didn't exactly end there, either: though Ronstadt eventually retired from music for health reasons, the release of "The Complete Trio Collection" in 2016 joined the two albums with another 20 rare and unreleased songs that Parton, Harris, and Ronstadt recorded.