1001 Albums You Must Hear Before you Die: 586. Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris – Trio (1987)

 

Three giant(esses) of country music combine forces here. Only Ronstadt hasn’t appeared on this list as a solo artist (but she does crop up a few times as backing vocals, most recently on Paul Simon’s Graceland). I’m disappointed that this album doesn’t have their cover of Neil Young’s After The Gold Rush on it (that’s on the follow-up, the imaginatively titled Trio II). But you can’t have everything. 

The tracks on here tend towards the American folk end of “country”, so expect plenty of dobro and mandolin, some fiddle, a bit of autoharp. While some are original compositions by the trio, for example Wildflowers by Parton, continuing her theme of flowers and butterflies, others are traditional. There’s one hell of a rabbit hole to go down with Jean Ritchie who wrote My Dear Companion (about a dead love) - she was a pioneer on collecting folk, not only Appalachian but English and Irish as well, with links to Vaughan-Williams, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Bert Jansch, Fairport Convention and loads of others. Another old school folk artist who wasn’t on Will The Circle Be Unbroken but was connected to many of the musicians thereon was Jimmie Rodgers, master of the train song, with a cover of his Hobo’s Meditation. This is another musing on mortality, about whether there will be boxcars in Heaven. 

A project like this stands or falls on the strength of the collaboration. Each of the three are pretty generous performers. These are three strong voices, but each song largely is given over to one of the three, with some harmonies in the chorus. In that respect, what I’ve heard of the follow-up album is better because it features some glorious three-part harmonies throughout the songs that are unwordly. Here, I think less is made of the fact these are three of the best female country voices in the business all in one place. Yes, each track is nice (although overall the album tends to the slow and wistful side of emotions and gets a little bit monotonous), but to my ear the sequel really puts to good use what resources there are with such a team-up.