To Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson has been part of her family for years and years.
In a wholesome interview with the Pensacola News-Journal from 2018, the country music songstress talked about her special bond with Nelson, saying the 88-year-old Texan “feels like family.”
“Well, I love Willie as much as I love anybody outside of my own family,” Parton told the Pensacola News-Journal in a conference call. “And he feels like family to me. I’ve known Willie since we both came to Nashville in the early ’60s.”
Parton, 75, said the two wrote together for Combine Music and recorded for Monument Records. She said they’d sit out in the same building or same basement and write songs back then.
That was back before Nelson had the beard and the long hair.
Fast forward to now. The duo has made hits, sang duets together, won awards separately, and can look back on their lives proud of what they’ve done.
Interestingly, Parton won the Willie Nelson Lifetime Achievement Award at the 50th annual CMA Awards show in 2016. Her “9-To-5” co-star Lilly Tomlin presented her with the award.
Parton added: “Willie is one of the sweetest, most generous people I know.”
She went on to call him one of the greatest songwriters and stylists of all time, relating that, “for me to be receiving the Willie Nelson award, this is a real ‘high.'”
Did Parton Ever Get Together With Nelson?
Dolly Parton told CMT in 2014 that he called her to do an album called “All the Girls He’d Loved Before” or “Made to Love To.” The singer said: “I was one of the girls he loved,” during his career.
But Parton said things never worked out.
“We never had a thing going. It’s a wonder, though,” Parton said.
One time Nelson said he wanted to do a duet with her for her song “From Here to the Moon and Back.”
Parton recalled that he said he could really “play the hell out of the guitar on that particular song. “So I said,’ Well, let’s go for it!'”
Special Bond for Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson for Christmas
Dolly Parton fell in love with Nelson’s “Pretty Paper” when she heard it for the first time in the 1960s.
When she made “A Holly Dolly Christmas,” the legend said in an accompanying video that she put it at the top of her list to sing for the 2020 album.
“So I called Willie, and I told him I wanted to record “Pretty Paper.”
She asked Nelson if he’d be willing to sing with her on that album.
“He said, ‘Hell yeah, I’ll sing on it,'” Parton recalled. “‘And I’ll pick on it too.”
