Watch Vince Gill Cover Dolly Parton’s ‘I Will Always Love You’ for Upcoming ‘Country Music’ PBS Special
A week ahead of the Sept. 15 debut of Ken Burns' long-awaited docu-series Country Music, Vince Gill and other genealogists within the family circle will appear on PBS in Live at the Ryman, an all-star, history-spanning concert filmed at Nashville's Ryman Auditorium in March. Gill, a recurring narrator throughout the series, revisits one of the most important country songs of the 1970s: Dolly Parton's "I Will Always Love You."
Readers can watch a snippet of Gill's performance above. "I Will Always Love You," said to be written on the same day as the equally famous "Jolene," served as a farewell and apology to Parton's longtime television and duet partner Porter Wagoner as Parton decided to end their creative partnership and strike out on her own.
After topping the charts with two different recordings of "I Will Always Love You," the 1974 original and a 1982 version recorded for the Best Little Whorehouse in Texas soundtrack, Parton teamed with Gill in 1995 for a Top 15 duet version. Gill's solo interpretation of the song relies on the raw emotion of Parton's original -- a resignation letter more so than a statement of appreciation. It's a meaning lost of fans more accustomed to Whitney Houston's equally vital interpretation.
Country Music: Live at the Ryman will air on Sept. 8 at 8PM ET. Burns' Country Music documentary, meanwhile, is scheduled to debut on Sept. 15 in the same time slot. Its eight episodes, each two hours long, will across two Sunday-through-Wednesday blocks: Sept. 15-18 and Sept. 22-25.
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