Linda Ronstadt Slammed Dolly Parton as Not ‘Reliable’ and Said She Wouldn’t Work With Her Again
When Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt, and Emmylou Harris released the album Trio in 1987, critics and fans alike lauded the collaboration. The album’s success made a follow-up seem inevitable, and they began working on a new record in 1994. Ultimately, Trio II wouldn’t reach fans until 1999. Scheduling conflicts and disagreements delayed the record by five years. Ronstadt complained that Parton was so difficult to get a hold of that she wouldn’t work with her again.
Linda Ronstadt didn’t enjoy working with Dolly Parton
When Parton, Ronstadt, and Harris began work on Trio II, they ran into scheduling problems almost immediately. Parton had a particularly difficult time finding space in her schedule.
“She gave her word,” Ronstadt said, per the book Dolly: The Biography by Alanna Nash. “Her exact words at the time were, ‘I get so many irons in the fire, sometimes I burn my own a**.’”
Ronstadt said Parton canceled at the last minute for reasons that felt slightly trivial.
“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.”
On top of being frustrating, the delays were costly.
“It was twenty grand every time we got one of these faxes. And we couldn’t get her on the phone,” Ronstadt said. “Then she put out her live record [Heartsongs: Live from Home] right on top of our release schedule, at the beginning of August. She said it was going to sell so good and would help the Trio record sell.”
Parton ultimately finished recording her parts, and the album was released in 1999. Ronstadt said she had no intention of recording a third Trio album, though.
“I can’t work with her,” she concluded. “She didn’t represent herself as being reliable.”
Dolly Parton said she was most proud of singing with Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris
While their schedules did not mesh, Parton, Ronstadt, and Harris’ voices fit well together. They sang together on Parton’s short-lived television show, and she knew they had something special.
“I did manage to do one show, however, that I will always be proud of. It is probably the best half-hour of television I ever did,” she wrote in her book Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business. “My guests were Emmylou Harris and Linda Ronstadt. The three of us really got comfortable with just us, our voices and guitars. The result was some of the most unspoiled, pure country music I have ever been a part of.”
After hearing the way their voices melded together, they knew they had to work together again in the future.
“It was a forerunner of our Trio album, something else I will always be proud of,” she wrote, adding, “The way that Emmylou Harris, Linda Ronstadt, and I had blended so beautifully on that little local show made it seem obvious to me that the three of us should do an album together. We all thought so and tried to coordinate everything to do just that, several years before the Trio album actually happened, but it didn’t work out at that time.”
The ‘Light of Clear Blue Morning’ singer later blamed the problems on menopause
Tempers flared while recording Trio II, but the women were able to move past their issues. Parton joked that their disagreements were a result of menopause.
“I realized we’re now just a bunch of old crotchety, cranky women, set in our ways and getting up there ‘round fifty, goin’ through change-of-life mood swings,” she said. “You never know a true feeling from a hot flash. I thought, ‘I don’t need this. I ain’t that old.’”
