I’m pretty sure Dolly Parton could essentially snap her fingers and record with just about any artist on the planet that she wants to.
I mean, she’s the queen of country music, a national treasure, and I think any artist, country or not, would jump at the change to do a song or album with her.
She recently sat down with Kelly and Amber on Amazon’s Country Heat podcast to talk about her ACM hosting gig, as well as some of the other projects she has going on right now, like her new book with James Patterson Run, Rose, Run.
When they asked her who her dream collaboration would be with, she said she always regrets that she didn’t get to do an album with George Jones or Merle Haggard:
“Oh, yeah. I have a big heartache over the fact that I never did an album with George Jones, who was my favorite singer, and with Merle Haggard.
Those two guys I really, really wish, and I had a few opportunities to do it, but it just never worked out for somebody’s schedule til it was too late, so I hate that.”
Of course, Dolly and Merle were always good friends, and Merle had a longtime, not-so-secret crush on her that lasted pretty much his whole life.
Can you imagine a collaborative album by Dolly with either one of those country legends? It would’ve been so incredible to have a project like that.
She says if she could pick any current artist to work with, though, it would be pop star Ed Sheeran:
“But right now, there’s a lot of great people out there. I love Ed Sheeran. I’ve always thought in his early days when I would hear his little voice, or his big little voice, his emotional, wonderful voice, I used to think ‘Boy, I bet we could sing something beautiful together’.
Like to pick the right song, that really has the way that we both can sing with emotion, cuz we feel it. Maybe some day I could do something with him, I’d like to.”
I’m sure all she has to do is ask… and that duo would really be something. I’d love for them to get together on a song just out of sheer curiosity for what it would sound like.
Of course, though Dolly never did an official album with Merle, they toured together back in the day and even did a cool medley of his biggest hits on her show back in the late ’80s:
And Dolly teamed up with George Jones for a cover of Hank Williams Jr.’s “The Blues Man”
