Dolly Parton sang “I Will Always Love You” to Kenny Rogers at his Nashville farewell. That alone would have been quite an ending.
But they still had one more song to get to, and of course it was “Islands in the Stream.”
It was October 25, 2017, at Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena. The concert, All In For The Gambler, celebrated Kenny Rogers’ six decades in music.
Lionel Richie, Reba McEntire, Chris Stapleton, and plenty of others were there to pay tribute. Dolly had a different job. She was there to sing with Kenny one last time.
The song that brought them together in the first place
“Islands in the Stream” had already been around for 34 years by the time they sang it that night.
The Bee Gees wrote it, which makes perfect sense once you listen to how the melody moves. It came out in 1983 on Kenny’s Eyes That See in the Dark album and went all the way to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Kenny gets the first verse on the record, so if you’re hearing it for the first time, it takes a little while before you hear what Dolly brings to it.
Then that bright voice comes in against his low, slightly grainy one, and by the time they’re singing together, the whole thing opens up. It’s easy to see why people still want to sing both parts.
Dolly and Kenny saved it for the end
The show played an old clip of them performing “Real Love” in 1985 before they came out together.
There was some teasing between the two, as there usually was, and then they sang “You Can’t Make Old Friends,” their duet from 2013.
Dolly followed it with “I Will Always Love You,” singing it solo to Kenny.
Then came “Islands in the Stream.” After two songs that fit the occasion almost too well, they got to finish with the one that was just plain fun to sing. And for anybody who’d been waiting all night to hear that chorus, there it was.
Watch Dolly and Kenny at the 2017 farewell concert:
One detail that can get a little confusing when the footage turns up online is the year.
The Nashville concert happened in 2017, but CBS aired the special in September 2021, after Rogers died in 2020.
So if you see both years attached to the performance, they’re referring to the same night.
The old “Real Love” footage at the start of their segment was a nice touch, too. The crowd got to see the two of them in the middle of their hitmaking years, then watch them walk out and pick up right where they left off, wisecracks and all.