When the news came on August 25, 2026, that Dolly Parton had died in Nashville at 80, Vince Gill did not write a long tribute. He posted a piece of old television footage instead: the two of them on the stage of the Grand Ole Opry House on October 4, 1995, singing “I Will Always Love You” at the CMA Awards.
Above the clip, he wrote two sentences.
“We are all crushed here at our house. One of the most beautiful sounds I’ve ever heard was when Dolly and I sang that last note of ‘I Will Always Love You’ the year we performed it on the CMA Awards.”
Out of everything he had shared with her over the decades, he went back to one held note. To understand why, you have to go back to the summer it began.
A goodbye song, sung for the third time
Dolly wrote “I Will Always Love You” in 1973 as her way of telling Porter Wagoner she was leaving his show to go out on her own. She cut it at RCA Studio B in Nashville that June, and it went to No. 1 on the country chart in 1974. When she recorded it again for The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, it went to No. 1 a second time in 1982. Ten years after that, Whitney Houston turned it into one of the biggest records in the world.
In 1995, Dolly went back to it one more time. For her album Something Special, she wrote seven new songs and chose to re-record three of her classics: “Jolene,” “The Seeker” and “I Will Always Love You.” For the last one, she asked Vince Gill to sing it with her.
The version they made together is a stripped-back arrangement, a little over three minutes long. When the album came out in August 1995, a Billboard reviewer singled out the duet as one of the strongest things on it.
Radio did not wait for permission
On August 26, 1995, Dolly appeared on the Grand Ole Opry to promote the album. She sang “Something Special” and “Jolene,” and then Vince joined her for “I Will Always Love You.” The Opry broadcast went out on TNN.
What happened next was unusual. Columbia had not released the duet as a single, but country stations began playing it anyway, taking it straight off the album. That airplay alone was enough to put the song on the Billboard country singles chart, where it entered at No. 53.
The night Vince was running the show
Less than six weeks later, the 29th annual CMA Awards were broadcast live from the Grand Ole Opry House. The host that night was Vince Gill. He was 38, and the whole live broadcast rested on him.
For a few minutes, he set the host’s job down and stood beside Dolly. He became the harmony voice beside the woman who had written the song in 1973, when he was still a teenager in Oklahoma.
At the end of the song, the two voices held the last note together. That is the moment he described 31 years later as one of the most beautiful sounds he had ever heard.
He had not waited for her death to say how much it meant. Back in 2015, when he talked with an interviewer about his favorite duet moments, singing “I Will Always Love You” with Dolly was right at the top of his list.
What the song did next
After the CMA performance, Columbia officially released the duet as a single in November 1995. It appeared on Dolly’s Something Special and on Vince’s own compilation Souvenirs, released that same month. It climbed to No. 15 on the country chart and earned a Grammy nomination. At the CMA Awards the following year, it won Vocal Event of the Year.
For Dolly, it meant “I Will Always Love You” had now been a hit in three different decades. For Vince, it became the duet he kept coming back to.
Kansas City, two days later
On August 27, 2026, two days after Dolly died, Vince was booked to play the Midland Theatre in Kansas City, Missouri. He was 69. Before the song, he told the audience that he and his family were crushed by the news. Then he sang “I Will Always Love You” on his own.
He did not get through it cleanly. Fan video shows him choking up more than once. At points, he stepped back from the microphone and the crowd sang the lines for him until he could pick the song back up. Members of his band were wiping away tears.
This time there was no one beside him for the last note. He finished it alone. Then he stepped back, put his hand on his chest and bowed his head while the theater applauded.
The song becomes the farewell
On October 21, 2026, the Country Music Association aired a two-hour tribute on ABC. It was titled after the same song: I Will Always Love You: A Celebration of Dolly Parton. Vince was among the artists who performed, and the night closed with more than 20 country stars singing it together.
Dolly wrote it more than 50 years ago to say goodbye to someone she cared about. In 1995, she and Vince Gill shared it on a stage in Nashville and held its last note side by side. In 2026, it became the way a whole genre said goodbye to her.
Do you remember watching that 1995 CMA broadcast, or where you were the first time you heard Dolly and Vince sing it together?