Robbed Hit of the Week 6/3/13 - Dolly Parton's "Save The Last Dance For Me"...

Dolly Parton - "Save The Last Dance For Me"
from the album The Great Pretender (1984)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #45

This week's "robbed hit" is by the larger-than-life (in a couple a ways) country singer/songwriter Dolly Parton, whose mid-eighties output, while becoming more cosmopolitan in nature, managed to score a #1 pop hit with "9 to 5" in 1980, as well as the classic duet with Kenny Rogers, "Islands In The Stream" in 1983. The album she released after that hit's success, The Great Pretender, was a collection of cover songs from the 50s and 60s produced by new-wave guru Val Garay (the Motels, Kim Carnes' "Bette Davis Eyes" and more). The sound was decidedly not country, but pop with a cold electric sheen, which was sort of jarring in her own context. The first single released from the set was a cover of the classic Drifters soul song "Save The Last Dance For Me". Backing her up on vocals are Elvis Presley's Jordanaires...

"Save the Last Dance For Me" did climb all the way up to #3 on the country chart (she could do no wrong, and at that time country radio was decidedly pop-ish, contrary to today's fans' protestations), while also going as high as #12 on the adult contemporary (easy-listening) radio chart. However although it stayed 3 months on the pop chart, it peaked right under the top-40 at #45.  In fact, Dolly wouldn't reach the pop top-40 again until 2005, when she guested on Brad Paisley's "When I Get Where I'm Going".

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Of course, the Drifters' original is still the best known, topping the pop chart in 1960...

...and most recently, Canadian crooner Michael Buble scraped the chart at #99 in 2006 with his take...