Dolly Parton's First Posthumous Single Released

Dolly Parton's first posthumous single, a tribute to bluegrass pioneers the Stanley Brothers, was released on Wednesday, September 9, two weeks after the country legend died on August 25 at the age of 80. The song, titled Bound to Ride, is credited to Dolly Parton and the First Ladies of Bluegrass and appears on the upcoming album Where the Soul Never Dies: Celebrating 80 Years of The Stanley Brothers, due October 16 on Compass Records. The track is a traditional song the Stanley Brothers helped popularize with their 1964 recording. Nearly every track on the tribute album was recorded live in the studio, but Parton's vocal was an exception. During a COVID-19 surge around 2022, she recorded her part alone at her own studio, singing over a backing track laid down earlier by the First Ladies of Bluegrass, an all-female group featuring banjoist Alison Brown, fiddle player Becky Buller, mandolin player Sierra Hull, bassist Missy Raines and guitarist Molly Tuttle. The band rearranged the traditional song, adding a newly written eight-bar bridge drawn from an obscure verse, and Buller recorded a scratch vocal in what they guessed would be Parton's key.