I remember in a record shop in Liverpool buying a Dolly Parton single called The Seeker, sometime in the mid 1980’s. Dolly released the song in 1975. I wasn’t aware of the song when it was originally released, but for a while I had really liked it despite it not being one of her biggest hits, yet struggled to find it anywhere. Naturally I was thrilled when I suddenly came across it, and I still have it now.
It’s a song about her faith, a faith that sustained her throughout her life. It’s an uplifting song and brilliantly constructed by the master song-writer that she was.
A couple of years later in October 1987 as I criss-crossed my way across America by Greyhound bus I stayed a couple of days in Nashville. I had no particular plan for what to do in town, it was early in the week and The Grand Ole Opry wasn’t available to visit for some reason, but I had a fascinating few hours in the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum and sitting in a couple of bars on Music Row. That was on the Monday.
The next day I had a trip out to Studio B, one of the most famous recording studios in Nashville. I confess to knowing little about it at the time, but discovered as I went round the studio tour the huge artists that had recorded there, including Elvis Presley and Dolly Parton.
I distinctly recall thinking to myself “what am I doing here, in Studio B in Nashville, on a Tuesday?” The thought of it amused me.
I was then told that one of the songs that Dolly had recorded there was ‘The Seeker’. So there I was, standing in the very recording studio that Dolly Parton had recorded the song that I had purchased in the bargain rack of a record shop back in Liverpool a couple of years before.
If that song wasn’t on most people’s consciousness, another song she had recorded in Studio B certainly was, ‘I Will Always Love You’.
Later I stood outside the studio and took the photograph at the top of this post. It was only a few years later, after Whitney Houston’s version of the song, that I thought of Dolly pulling up in one of these parking spaces, getting out and recording a song that became of the biggest of the late 20th century, in the room I had been standing in on a random Tuesday.
Travelling can create some odd coincidences and memories that can last a lifetime.
( I created this post in response to Terry Websters Sunday Stills challenge Going Back https://secondwindleisure.com/2021/09/12/sunday-stills-going-back/ )
SONGS AND SCRIPTS AND DUNKING BISCUITS 
Leave a comment