Dolly Parton

1998 Ronstadt interview ———————

Q: Emmy sang on Feels Like Home, your 1995 album. That was originally to be the sequel to Trio, wasn't it? (Note: he means sequel to the trio sequel. ie, third album.)

A:Emmy wanted us to do a project that wasn't a trio project. She wanted to involve some of the writers and singers that we loved, like the McGarrigles. I had suggested Alison Krauss. We invited Dolly as a courtesy, to see if she wanted to sing on some tracks. And she was busy, but about six months later she sent word that she wanted to do it. I said great, maybe this should be a trio record. And Emmy, who's more practical than me, was remembering how difficult it had been to get our schedules together, and how difficult it had been to schedule time to promote the record, which we'd felt was really crucial. And we thought that if Dolly was on the record, and then pulled out and couldn't promote it, the two of us couldn't go out and promote it, if it was a trio record. So Emmy strongly wanted to keep it a record of ours. Plus, she remembered the taste discrepancy. I felt that what the trio had done was so stunning, I would love to repeat it, so I fought for that. I asked Dolly if she would sing on a couple of tracks, and Dolly said no, she wanted it to be a full-on trio or nothing. And then Emmy said, "I really would rather not do that. Don't let her talk you back into a trio record." And Dolly talked me back into a trio record, because she's very charming, and I loved that sound and thought it would be a wonderful thing if the three of us could go and promote it. Bob Krasnow, the head of [my record label] Elektra, wasn't a fan of Dolly's. He didn't want us to do another trio record, either. But I said, 'We'll ram this record down country radio's throat. We'll make it sell.' I asked for Dolly's personal word of honor, and she gave it. I showed up, Emmy showed up, and the night before we started, Dolly sent us a fax, saying there was something wrong with her infomercial and she had to go back for 10 days. I had booked all these triple-scale players from Tennessee, and it was going to be very expensive to put them up. Emmy stayed at my house, so that we could save money. When she did arrive, Emmy and I took her in another room, sat her down and said, "Look, we don't feel like you have the same commitment to this project that we do. We're asking you now to tell us whether you're going to really give us three weeks of time at the end of the record, for promotion and a short tour. We have to have the release date written in stone." And she gave her word. Her exact words at the time were, "I get so many irons in the fire, sometimes I burn my own ass." And we thought, how lovely. But we had her word of honor. Krasnow was still very reluctant and said, "She has a reputation for being unreliable.' I said she gave me her word, that's good enough for me. We got to the point where we had only Dolly's vocals left to record. We had a week left to do them. She canceled again. It cost us another $20,000. It was 20 grand every time we got one of these faxes.