Dolly Parton "Two Doors Down"

Very interesting observation regarding "Two Doors Down". I checked the few domestic cd's that this song appears on and all of them feature the 45 version. What I found personally interesting was that the LP version and the 45 version are two different vocal takes. On the LP version you will find the line "I ask him if he'd like to be alone so we start walkin'" while on the 45 version the word "so" is sung as "and". I'll go add this right now to the errata/corrections page.

Record companies do that sometimes, unfortunately -- replace a track on an album with the hit single version. Whitney's "Greatest Love of All" is one that comes to mind. On the original CD, it was a completely different mix. Even some parts of the vocal were different.

The opposite is done, too. "The Way We Were" is a good example, where the hit single version was actually a different recording (vocally) than the later LP version. But the hit version has never appeared on any album -- even in pre-CD days -- so it's sort of become the "standard" version, and few people (perhaps even Streisand herself) remember it's not the original.

EdisonLite wrote: Brian, what parts of the vocal are different? I can't believe I never noticed this. Was there anything else different as well?

It's been a long time since I listened, so I just went back and checked. Here's what's different on the original LP mix:

- At the end of the first chorus, different take on the line "learning to love yourself." "Learning" is not belted quiet so strongly, she goes up on "love" rather than down, and breaks it into two notes (luh-uve), plus she does a little "your se-he-he-helf," which is not present on the single. (It sounds like the single may have dubbed in that line from the second chorus.) So in the first chorus she sings, "learning to luh-UVE (breath) yourse-he-he-helf."

- The second chorus has a whole section that's a different take, from "at least I'll live" straight up to "dignity." She sings the whole section more smoothly, does not take a breath between "as I believe" and "no matter," does not punctuate "FROM" on "no matter what they take from me." Plus, though she still punches the "MY" in "MY dignity," there is NO GROWL.

That's all the differences I can hear.

I think you're misunderstanding, Ed. The 45 version WAS on her first album... but not till after the single was released. They substituted it in the re-pressings of her album.

The difference in instrumentation is very obvious right from the beginning -- the original mix starts out with an acoustic piano, plunking out the notes by itself -- you could play it on one hand. The 45 (and later LP) version starts out with some sort of electronic keyboard playing the notes.

thx for the clarification...