By many measures, 1986 was the greatest year of Prince’s extraordinary career. One of the most remarkable metrics was that he recorded over 250 songs that year, many of which were released on his own albums or that he gave away to other artists over the years. But one of those tracks has remained stubbornly locked away in Prince’s vault all these years, and it’s one that the world most needs to hear: the only song that Prince recorded specifically for Dolly Parton. It’s time for Dolly to finally add her vocals to the song, and finish the long-delayed collaboration between these two geniuses that we all didn't know we were waiting for.

Despite the fact that Prince wrote nearly every song that he ever recorded, including hundreds of other songs that year alone, the track that he recorded for Dolly is actually a cover song. It's his own take on Fontella Bass’ 1965 hit “Rescue Me”. The song is a gem, and to modern ears probably sounds like a Motown song by Aretha Franklin, though it is neither. The Chess Records classic has Minnie Riperton on background vocals, and the standout drums are by Maurice White, who would found Earth, Wind and Fire just a few years later. (And who almost ended up producing Prince's debut album.)

Casual fans might be a bit surprised to find out that Prince would record a song for an artist like Dolly, since she seems somewhat outside of the genres he was best known for (especially as he was seen as scandalously controversial at the time, and Dolly is generally seen as extremely wholesome). But in reality, it wasn’t so remarkable that Prince might create a song for Dolly; he was collaborating with all kinds of artists in every genre in that era. For example, the recording of “Rescue Me” in October of 1986 took place just two weeks before the release of Dolly's friend Kenny Rogers’ album They Don’t Make Them Like They Used To, which featured “You’re My Love”, written by Prince.

In fact, the airwaves in 1986 were full of Prince compositions; besides his own recent number one hit, “Kiss”, the Bangles had just had a smash with "Manic Monday" (hear Prince's version), Sheila E.’s "A Love Bizarre" was all over the radio, and in that year alone, Prince was cranking out new tracks in the studio for everyone from Bonnie Raitt to Patti Labelle to Sheena Easton to half a dozen other proteges on his own label.

We know these kinds of details because the Prince fandom keeps meticulous records, like the spreadsheet of all of his recordings and as you can see in that post, Prince wanted to make sure fans knew those details — in that example, he told me the credits himself. This was clearly a part of his legacy he wanted to keep preserved. In 1986, then, we can see that Prince was in a particularly generous phase, and over the course of his career, we can observe that while he gave songs to over 150 different artists, he had a particular respect for fellow songwriters like Dolly.

Unfortunately, though, the collaboration was not meant to be at that time. Dolly said the song wasn’t a fit for her next record, which would end up being released in 1987 as Rainbow. The album got a bit lost amidst the success of Dolly’s work on Trio with Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris earlier in that year. It’s also likely that the production on Prince’s cover of “Rescue Me” had a decidedly pop-oriented sound, and Dolly was clearly veering away from pop at the time as her then-new label shied away from promoting her as anything but a country artist.

Similarly, Kenny Rogers had chosen to completely re-record the song that Prince had given him in that era to give it a more conventional adult contemporary, pop-country sound, rather than go with Prince’s signature production style, even though the Minneapolis sound was extremely popular at the time. (Janet Jackson, for example, was becoming a generational superstar with Control thanks to having embraced and amplified that sound.) At that time, traditional white country audiences were still very likely to be too conservative to embrace songs that were obviously influenced by Black pop music. Radio programmers were often explicit about not playing these songs, and retailers like Walmart would refuse to shelve or promote albums with that kind of material prominently in their stores.

A Heartache

Another factor that likely played a role in Dolly not choosing to record "Rescue Me" at the time was the reaction to Dolly’s work on the film Rhinestone two years earlier, in 1984. The movie was a fairly straightforward premise: a country girl meets a city boy, and she tries to make a country singer out of him, and they show each other their different worlds and fall in love along the way. Unfortunately, instead of casting someone like Dolly’s frequent collaborator Kenny Rogers or some charismatic young singer from the big city, the studio chose to cast… Sylvester Stallone. Stallone was near the peak of his power and influence — he would co-write and star in both Rambo and Rocky IV the following year — and he took it upon himself to rewrite much of Rhinestone, much to the detriment of the film. This “throw the Italian guy into the genius musician’s movie” strategy was a disturbingly common studio pathology at the time; Warner Brothers execs had just made a concerted effort a short while earlier to cast John Travolta in the lead role in Purple Rain. (No, really.)

But Stallone was cast, and the film became a farce. Rhinestone was savaged by critics, Stallone openly distanced himself from the movie almost immediately upon its release (he would mock it as his worst work in the later years, and won a Razzie for Worst Actor), and original screenwriter Phil Alden Robinson carried out a public campaign against the film after he saw what Stallone and the producers had done to it.

The biggest victim of Stallone’s ego on Rhinestone was Dolly’s work, as she had not only (naturally) turned in a charming performance in the film, but had also created an extraordinary soundtrack. This had been particularly promising because the film came out in 1984, the year of a soundtrack's peak potential impact on popular culture through MTV's massive social resonance, as shown in everything from Footloose to Ghostbusters to Beverly Hills Cop to, yes, Purple Rain. Rhinestone could easily have been a moment of massive cultural impact for Dolly if her musical work had been allowed to shine.

This is particularly true because the soundtrack contained a career highlight of Dolly’s catalog. Lost in the shuffle of Rhinestone’s failure was “What a Heartache”, a song Dolly cites as a personal favorite amongst all the songs she’s ever written. She loved the track enough that she’d end up recording it two more times over the following years. As a Prince fan, it seems to me that, in a world where someone else’s ego hadn’t stepped on her film, this song easily could have been her “Purple Rain”. At the very least, it could have been a hit like Dolly's iconic “I Will Always Love You” was for Whitney Houston, but under her own voice.

So, it also seems possible that some of the reticence two years later to record "Rescue Me" might have also been reluctance to be attached to a song written by someone associated with a big soundtrack record from 1984, as it might have brought up unfortunate or unkind mentions of Rhinestone.

Ready to be Rescued

Now it's been almost forty years. Prince is of course in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with the greatest induction performance ever, to match the greatest Super Bowl halftime performance ever. Dolly is in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Country Music Hall of Fame.

Dolly has embraced her status as a living legend. As Tressie McMillan Cottom definitively documented, Dolly traces the boundaries of our ability to parse race and class in America. And Dolly exists now fully, belatedly, as a rock star. On her album of that name, she finally covered "Purple Rain", deftly and subtly, imbued with her own fluency in crafting anthems every bit as powerful and culturally important as Prince's signature song. Indeed, if we look at the story of how the song "Purple Rain" was created, we see that many of those who were around for its genesis consider it to have had a significant country influence, and it feels like Dolly senses that innately in her version.

Just as important as the musical connections they've made, both of these artists have changed the fabric of the industry they shaped, paving the way for the artists that followed to have more agency, control, and empowerment. Prince said that the quote he most wanted to be remembered for was his pithy articulation about ownership of one's artistic legacy, especially as a Black artist: "If u don't own your masters, then your masters own u." Dolly evoked that exact sentiment, along with their shared gift for being incredibly prolific, in a 2023 interview when she was asked about Prince:

There are so many more parallels between these two titans. Paisley Park and Dollywood are both nearly-mythic places that seemed too fanciful, almost too magical to be real, but have somehow become real, tangible locations that fans from around the world can make their pilgrimages to whenever they need inspiration or connection or just some entertainment. We're constantly finding out new and surprising ways in which the philanthropy that Dolly and Prince supported for decades has sustained and uplifted those in need behind the scenes, whether it's the hundreds of millions of books that Dolly has gifted to children, or Prince being the surprise benefactor behind everything from solar panels in Oakland to the largest individual donor when the Black Lives Matter movement was getting off the ground.

There's no anecdote too wonderful that we couldn't believe it's true about either of them. There's no quote from either that isn't the best goddamn thing you've heard all day. "Find out who you are and do it on purpose." "A strong spirit transcends rules." "It costs a lot of money to look this cheap." "People say I wear heels because I'm short. I wear heels because the women like 'em."

It is time. Though Prince's estate had been in disarray of late, mismanaged by stewards who weren't up to the task, it finally seems to have stumbled to some semblance of stability. Dolly is, unbelievably, hitting her prime at nearly 80 years old. She has nothing left to prove to anyone, a legacy that is unimpeachably secure. The only remaining items are unfinished business for the joy of it, for delight, to remind people that unlikely and surprising things are possible. It's the sort of thing that both Dolly and Prince did routinely for decades, making the impossible look effortless, to toss out multiple era-defining tracks in a single songwriting session, or give other legendary artists their signature songs. To command a stage with just a piano and a guitar , and then impishly smile at an audience after knowing they just saw the best show they'll ever see in their life. To have Beyoncé tell folks that she's trying to get on your level. To risk a career and a catalog on ownership of one's music, label and legacy.

Dolly: Get in touch with Prince's people. Get on that track. Rescue me!