Vince Gill went out on the road two days after Dolly Parton died and tried to sing the song the two of them recorded together. It did not go the way he had planned. Alone onstage at the Midland Theatre in Kansas City on August 27, Gill attempted "I Will Always Love You" and the tears arrived early enough to interrupt the music.
The audience picked it up. Fans sang along through the passages he could not manage, which is a common enough thing at a memorial show but rarer at a regular stop on a weekend run through Missouri and Memphis.
Gill and Parton's version of the song reached the country top 20 in 1995, and they performed it together at that year's CMA Awards. That performance is what he reached for when news of her death broke. "One of the most beautiful sounds I've ever heard was when Dolly and I sang that last note," he said, describing the CMA moment. He also said he and his family were crushed.
Anyone who has followed his career would have predicted the outcome in Kansas City. At the 69-year-old singer is known for struggling through tribute performances, most famously at a memorial for George Jones in 2013, when he could not finish "Go Rest High On That Mountain" alongside Patty Loveless. Since then even telling parts of his own story has been enough to set him off.
"I Will Always Love You" has been the most-chosen song for honouring Parton across the week. Morgan Myles sang it at the Grand Ole Opry on the Tuesday she died, and Chris Stapleton covered it as well. There is no public memorial planned, so the tributes are landing wherever artists happen to be booked.
Gill has a milestone of his own coming. The Opry will mark his 35th anniversary as a member with two shows on Saturday, October 17, joined by Ricky Skaggs, Patty Loveless, his wife Amy Grant and Wendy Moten, with more names to be announced. He made his Opry debut on June 29, 1989 and was inducted on August 10, 1991.
That anniversary sits inside another one. Gill has spent the year on 50 Years From Home, a rolling series of EPs pairing new songs with catalogue tracks, marking five decades since he left Oklahoma. The accompanying 27-city tour ended recently and included a sold-out six-night run at the Ryman Auditorium, where he returns in December for his annual Christmas residency with Grant.
He has added Eighteen Summers to that run of EPs, and is due the country icon award at the Josie Music Awards. None of which was the point on a Thursday night in Kansas City, on a country tour that had not planned to become a wake.
The facts
- Vince Gill broke down performing I Will Always Love You at the Midland Theatre in Kansas City
- He and Dolly Parton took their version into the country top 20 in 1995
- The pair performed the song at the 1995 CMA Awards
- The Opry will mark Gill's 35th anniversary as a member with two shows on October 17
- Gill debuted at the Opry on June 29, 1989 and was inducted on August 10, 1991
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