You would have thought we’d been singing together our whole lives. It was such a beautiful sound.
Released 39 years ago this week!
Linda and Emmylou… I didn’t know they knew that much of who I was, but they had followed a lot of the type singers like me, the old mountain, true, authentic writers and singers. People who had that certain kind of phrasing that they liked, and they latched on to a lot of that music.
They both had wanted to meet me, and at one time I was out in L.A. and Bob Honka, who I guess was working with Emmylou and her people at the time, was there. They all lived up on this hill where they had the studio with Brian Ahern, where Emmylou had recorded lots of her hit songs. She was married to him.
And so they came down while I was in L.A., and Bob Honka had called to see if I would come up to Emmylou’s house, because Linda was coming up. They wanted to meet me. I remember it so well.
When we walked into that living room, of course we were talking and having fun, and then we started singing an old song. I started singing and they said, “Do you know ‘Rosewood Casket’ or one of those kind of songs?” And I said, “Well, you know I do. That’s probably why you know me.” So they said, “Well, let’s sing it.”
So we started singing whatever that song was, and boy, I mean, everybody that was standing around in the room…it was just like a stillness. It was so beautiful. You know how they talk about family harmonies, that nobody can sing harmonies like people in the same family? And that’s usually true, because if you get great harmonies in a family, it’s hard to get any closer than that. But we had that, and you would have thought we’d been singing together our whole lives. It was such a beautiful sound.
And everybody, not just us, when it was over said, “We have to do an album. You have to do an album.” We tried for years to to do it, because Emmylou was as hot as she could be at the time. And of course, Linda was just the hottest thing in rock music. I was growing in my popularity too. I had that picture there when they came on my first Dolly show. So we thought, we’re going to have to do it. And we tried for years until we finally got it done. And when we did, well, the rest is history.
Get more stories from the stage with my Star of the Show book available here.
