Dolly Parton's first posthumous song debuts on Stanley Brothers album

Dolly Parton's first posthumous release arrived Wednesday, two weeks after her death at 80. It is a version of the traditional song "Bound to Ride" that she cut alone in her own studio during a Covid surge around 2022.

We didn't know what we would get back, and she really did over-deliver. We were shocked. We couldn't have gotten anything better.

The track belongs to Where the Soul Never Dies: Celebrating 80 Years of The Stanley Brothers, a years-in-the-making tribute album due Oct. 16. Almost everything on the record was cut live in the studio, according to Rolling Stone. Parton was the exception. She was taking no chances during the pandemic, so she recorded her vocal alone at her own studio while the band behind her laid down a backing track separately.

An exception in the sessions

The album was produced by the banjo player Alison Brown and the bassist Garry West, the husband-and-wife team behind Compass Records. The sessions were cut live at the label's Nashville headquarters, the former Glaser Brothers studio, where outlaw country got its name.

For Parton's track, the First Ladies of Bluegrass rearranged the song and added a newly written eight-bar bridge drawn from an obscure verse. The group is Brown on banjo, Becky Buller on fiddle, Sierra Hull on mandolin, Missy Raines on bass and Molly Tuttle on guitar. They worked up the arrangement masked around a studio coffee table, and Buller sang a scratch vocal in the band's best guess at Parton's key.

Parton called out each of the First Ladies by name as she sang, a flourish that left the five musicians deeply moved.

Who else is on it

Willie Nelson's contribution also came together remotely. He first sent back a take on which he simply harmonized with the guide vocal, and after the producers asked his longtime producer, Buddy Cannon, to have another go, Nelson delivered a lead vocal and a guitar solo. West decided there was room for another voice and a different generational take, and recruited Sierra Ferrell to make "I'll Fly Away" a duet.

Other tracks include Jamey Johnson and the singer-songwriter Shawn Camp on "Rank Strangers to Me," the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band with Alison Brown on "Think of What You've Done," Ralph Stanley II and Tim O'Brien with the Clinch Mountain Boys on "Mother No Longer Awaits Me at Home," and the group I'm With Her on the hymn-like "Going Up Home to Live in Green Pastures." Steve Martin and Ed Helms perform "Pardon Me, Stranger," a new song Martin wrote with Brown that reworks a Stanley Brothers comedy routine.

The project was conceived by the industry veteran J. Tayloe Emery with Ralph Stanley's son, Ralph Stanley II, who brought it to Brown and West. Compass Records, the couple's label, works across bluegrass and the wider Americana field, and they produced every track on the album themselves.

Brown's own banjo turns up on most of the album, not just on the track recorded for Parton to sing over.

A long-delayed induction

The album was timed to the Stanley Brothers' induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame, which Rolling Stone described as long delayed. The duo is part of the 2026 class, in the Veterans Era Artist category, the Country Music Association announced in March.

Carter and Ralph Stanley started out in the mid-1940s with their band, the Clinch Mountain Boys, and cut their first records in 1947. They combined the string-band music of Bill Monroe with the mountain ballads and church singing they had learned in southwestern Virginia, plus harmonies modeled on the Carter Family.

"Bound to Ride" is a traditional number that the brothers helped popularize with a recording of their own in 1964.

The producers hope to remind listeners how much country, bluegrass and Americana owe the Stanley Brothers, whose influence Rolling Stone traced from Bob Dylan to Bruce Springsteen.

Songs taken for granted

West's case for the album is that the Stanley Brothers' repertoire has outlasted their name in the credits. He said he would bet many of the musicians who play these tunes in pickup bands do not know their origins as Stanley Brothers songs, or at least from the brothers' recordings.

I feel like a lot of their stuff is just in the ether. It's just there, and it's taken for granted.

Whiskey Riff reported that the producers hope the presence of current artists will bring a new audience to the brothers' music. The single has been posted on YouTube ahead of the album's release, according to TODAY.

The estate's project roadmap

After Parton's death, her longtime manager, Danny Nozell, released a list of projects she had been working on. It includes Dolly Dolls, Dolly's Cup Of Ambition Coffee, Dolly's Dog Treats and a Broadway musical, TODAY reported, with an avatar show, a biopic, a docuseries, a scripted series and a Billy The Kid animated series also named. Nozell said more details would come soon.

Nozell said Parton had spent the past several years building a project roadmap with a team she handpicked, one meant to guide the estate for decades.

Her final weeks

Parton's estate announced her death on Aug. 25 and said it followed a brief battle with cancer, without disclosing the type, TODAY reported.

Whiskey Riff reported that Parton had dealt with undisclosed health problems for about a year and had earlier said she was having trouble with severe kidney stones. She died in Nashville. Tributes followed from her peers and from fans, who pointed back to hits including "9 to 5" and "I Will Always Love You," TODAY reported.

Dolly worked up until the day she died. She loved seeing her dreams come to life, and loved knowing her work brought people joy.

Her official Instagram account posted a lyric from her 1977 song "Light of a Clear Blue Morning" on Sept. 6, alongside a butterfly, a symbol closely associated with her.

The bluegrass records behind it

Parton grew up on traditional folk and mountain music and on Appalachian gospel, and she returned to bluegrass as a recording artist. She cut The Grass Is Blue in 1999, which won the Grammy for best bluegrass album, Little Sparrow in 2001 and Halos & Horns in 2002, which carried her bluegrass version of Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven."

It is not clear whether Parton had other music set for release. Her manager's list promised more announcements without saying when they would come, and he said anything appearing on her official channels carries her personal stamp. The album is due on Oct. 16.