The song was originally written and performed by Dolly Parton in 1974. She wrote it for her mentor and partner Porter Wagoner after leaving their band.
The song was originally written and performed by Dolly Parton in 1974. She wrote it for her mentor and partner Porter Wagoner after leaving their band.
I knew this but Whitney’s is better.
I heard that back in the 50s kind of era people would be releasing “cover” versions of songs that were still in the charts. Apparently it wasn’t unusual to have several different versions of the same song in the top 50. I don’t know how that worked.
I’m more used to the Whitney version so the original is more interesting. But I agree that the song and Whitney’s performance match perfectly.
I don’t know how to describe it but there feels like a more “personal” or “honest” touch to Dolly Parton’s. With Whitney’s, her version is so beautiful because her voice is like an instrument and she plays it beautifully. However with Dolly’s … I could hear her words more.
That’s just to me, obviously everyone takes things differently.
Back in the day singles were targeted to juke boxes in bars. So the charts kinda depended on who shipped a bunch of vinyl to a bunch of bars, and not just on what people wanted to listen to.
This was also somewhat exacerbated by the fact that the different diameter of the center hole in vinyls was made solely to lock the purchaser of a jukebox to the label’s releases (namely iirc RCA make the wide hole for that).
To add to my previous comment: afaik covers could actually be released before the ‘originals’, because the earlier-recorded song was stuck somewhere in the pipeline, and meanwhile the songwriter shopped the song around to different singers whose labels turned out to be quicker with the release.
Not quite the same, but: Carl Perkins’ ‘Blue Suede Shoes’ was recorded in December 1955 and released in January 1956, while Elvis Presley’s version was recorded in January 1956 but not released until August 31. This thankfully preserved the order, but the story could be different if the labels had a different sense of urgency.