Dolly Parton’s voice is back, one last time. Two weeks after her death at age 80, the country legend’s first posthumous song has arrived: a rendition of the traditional “Bound to Ride,” recorded for the new Stanley Brothers tribute album Where the Soul Never Dies: Celebrating 80 Years of The Stanley Brothers.
The Stanley Brothers helped popularize “Bound to Ride” with their 1964 recording. Parton’s version takes her back to her deepest mountain roots, and it nearly didn’t happen the way fans might expect. During a Covid surge circa 2022, Parton was taking no chances with her health. She recorded her vocal alone at her own studio, while the virtuoso musicians known as the First Ladies of Bluegrass laid down the backing track separately.
You’d never know it from the performance. The track is playful and vibrant, a full-band feel that hides the remote recording process entirely. The album is due Oct. 16, and fans can preorder and presave it now.
Hall of Fame Timing
The tribute album is timed to a milestone decades in the making: the Stanley Brothers’ long-delayed induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame. Beginning in the mid-1940s, Carter and Ralph Stanley, along with their band the Clinch Mountain Boys, forged a sound that combined the string-band music of Bill Monroe with the mountain ballads and church singing of southwestern Virginia, plus Carter Family-inspired harmonies.
The album was produced by banjoist Alison Brown and bassist Garry West, the husband-and-wife team behind Compass Records. They recorded almost every track live in the studio at their Nashville headquarters, the former Glaser Brothers studio — the very room where outlaw country got its name.
Industry veteran J. Tayloe Emery conceived the project with Ralph Stanley’s son, Ralph Stanley II, and brought it to Brown and West.
Meet the All-Star Lineup
The record is stacked with names from across country, bluegrass, and Americana. Here’s who appears on the album:
- Willie Nelson and Sierra Ferrell on “I’ll Fly Away”
- Jamey Johnson and Shawn Camp on a stark “Rank Strangers to Me”
- Dierks Bentley with Della Mae on “How Mountain Girls Can Love”
- Jim Lauderdale with the Travelin’ McCourys on “Riding That Midnight Train”
- The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band on “Think of What You’ve Done”
- Rhiannon Giddens and Dirk Powell on “Little Birdie”
- Ralph Stanley II with Tim O’Brien on “Mother No Longer Awaits Me at Home”
- I’m With Her on “Going Up Home to Live in Green Pastures”
Steve Martin and Ed Helms round out the album with a take on a Stanley Brothers comedy routine.
Why the Stanleys Still Matter
The producers want listeners to remember how much modern country, bluegrass, and Americana owe the Stanley Brothers, whose influence reached artists from Bob Dylan to Bruce Springsteen. West worries that influence has become invisible.
“I feel like a lot of their stuff is just in the ether,” West says. “It’s just there, and it’s taken for granted. Some of these things are such classics that a lot of people that play these tunes now — because they’re so commonly played in pickup bands — I would bet a lot of the musicians don’t even know the origins of them as Stanley Brothers songs, or at least from their recordings.”
Building the Parton Track
The First Ladies of Bluegrass — co-producer Brown on banjo, Becky Buller on fiddle, Sierra Hull on mandolin, Missy Raines on bass, and Molly Tuttle on guitar — rearranged “Bound to Ride” for Parton. They added a newly written eight-bar bridge drawn from an obscure verse.
The band worked up the new version while masked around a studio coffee table, and Buller sang a scratch vocal in the band’s best guess at Parton’s key. Then they sent it off and waited.
“We didn’t know what we would get back, and she really did over-deliver,” West says. “We were shocked. We couldn’t have gotten anything better.”
West calls the result “the full Dolly.” Parton ended up calling out each of the First Ladies by name during the song, a gesture that left the musicians deeply moved.
Nelson’s Remote Duet
Parton wasn’t the only one who recorded from a distance. Willie Nelson’s contribution also came together remotely. The country legend initially sent back a track where he simply harmonized with the guide vocal.
The producers asked Nelson’s longtime producer, Buddy Cannon, to take another shot at it. Nelson responded with a strong lead vocal and even a guitar solo. West then decided “there was room for another voice, a different generational take on it,” and recruited Sierra Ferrell to turn the song into a duet.
A Comedy Routine, Rewritten
Then there’s “Pardon Me, Stranger,” which reinvents “How Far to Little Rock,” the comedy routine the Stanleys performed for years onstage. Brown and Martin each wrote part of the new song, while Martin and Helms came up with new jokes to replace the old-timey ones from the Stanleys’ original bit.
The finished track features three banjos, with Helms picking alongside Brown and Martin.
Inside the Recording Process
Brown’s banjo turns up on most of the album, a fact she jokes about. “I’m the best in my price range,” she says.
Her production work with West covered every track on the record. The couple produced every track themselves.
What Comes Next
The celebration continues Oct. 28, when Brown and West will convene many of the record’s artists — they’re not ready to announce which ones — for a live tribute at Nashville’s CMA Theater. The producers hope the album, the concert, and the Hall of Fame induction are just the beginning.
West laid out what he wants to see happen next:
- Younger players pick up the Stanley Brothers’ music again
- The songs keep moving forward and stay alive
- Artists keep reinventing the material without fear
- The music gets freshened up for new generations
“Our hope is that younger players just pick up on the music again and keep it moving forward and keep it alive and keep reinventing it,” West says. “Not being afraid of reinventing it, not being afraid of freshening it up.”
For now, Parton’s “Bound to Ride” stands as a final gift — a playful, mountain-rooted performance from an artist who never stopped delivering.
Source: rollingstone.com
Get the Notebook.
The day's best stories and every fresh verdict, in plain English, in your inbox by seven. One email a day, no more.