Two songs that felt like separate universes met on one seven-inch record, and Dolly Parton refused to let Nashville choose between them.
On October 9, 1978, RCA Victor pressed a daring double-A-side single from Heartbreaker, her twentieth studio album. One groove carried the tender country ballad “I Really Got the Feeling,” written by Billy Vera. The other groove delivered “Baby I’m Burnin’,” a fierce disco track written by Dolly herself. The release arrived when Nashville often demanded artists pick a lane and stay there.
That expectation never fit a woman raised in rural poverty in the Great Smoky Mountains. Dolly honored her roots without accepting creative limits. She pressed both sounds onto the same piece of vinyl and let listeners decide which world they wanted to enter.
Two sides of one record carried two worlds, and Dolly Parton made them dance together.
The story began seven months earlier, far from Music Row. In March 1978, Dolly booked time at Sound Labs in Los Angeles to cut Heartbreaker with producer Gary Klein. She assembled a studio band that pointed toward a wider sonic horizon, including drummer Jim Keltner, bassist David Hungate, keyboardist David Foster, and keyboardist David Paich.
On March 7, she recorded “I Really Got the Feeling” with the traditional phrasing and storytelling warmth that had built her career. Acoustic warmth and lush strings arranged by Nick DeCaro gave the ballad a sound made for country turntables.
The next day, March 8, the room shifted from Appalachian restraint to full West Coast studio energy. Guided by Jerry Hey’s punchy horn arrangements, syncopated rhythm guitars, and synthesized percussion, Dolly belted “Baby I’m Burnin’” with kinetic confidence.
She did not bury the dance cut as a novelty album track. She pushed it to the center of her release strategy. In the late 1970s, traditionalists often saw disco as an invasive threat to country roots, while pop programmers sometimes dismissed country singers trying to cross into mainstream clubs.
Nashville executives urged artists to stay inside safe lanes. Dolly declined. When RCA selected the follow-up single to the album’s title track, the label issued both songs simultaneously on one seven-inch disc. Country disc jockeys received “I Really Got the Feeling,” while pop and dance stations received “Baby I’m Burnin’.”
The plan created friction among purists, but listeners broke the boundaries on their own. Club DJs embraced the track so strongly that RCA commissioned an extended four-and-a-half-minute disco mix for twelve-inch club pressings. It marked the first time a country superstar had an official extended remix spinning in urban discotheques.
The dual release soon produced remarkable momentum. “I Really Got the Feeling” climbed country airwaves and reached Number One on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart in January 1979. It became Dolly’s tenth career chart-topper in the genre, proving her core audience had never wavered.
Meanwhile, “Baby I’m Burnin’” rose into the Top 25 of the Billboard Hot 100, reached Number 11 on the Adult Contemporary chart, and climbed to Number 15 on the Dance Club Songs chart. Jukeboxes in rural roadhouses and mirrors in New York dance clubs were spinning two sides of the exact same record.
Those sessions at Sound Labs were not an attempt to abandon Dolly’s origins. They were an assertion that an artist from Locust Ridge, Tennessee, could command any room she entered. Decades later, she still used the high-energy drive of “Baby I’m Burnin’” to open her live arena concerts.
The physical 45 rpm single remains a tangible record of that conviction, two opposing grooves pressed into the same black wax, turning at the exact same speed.