Twenty six years ago today, Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton were celebrating their second week at #1 with “Islands In The Stream.” The country stars’ 1983 duet marked the second time each had enjoyed such huge crossover success on the Billboard Hot 100, having previously done so with “Lady” (1980) and “9 To 5” (1981), respectively.

Written by the Bee Gees and produced by Barry Gibb, “Islands In The Stream” was originally penned as an R&B tune that “could easily have been done by Marvin Gaye,” according to brother Robin:

“We were writing a song for Diana Ross, but she never got around to hearing it, and Kenny wanted a song and we came up with this one. It was written as an R&B song, so it just shows you the relationship between the two types of songs that it could, in fact, turn into a country song very easily.”

The title is taken from a 1970 novel by Ernest Hemingway, the first of the author’s works to be published posthumously. (Interesting bit of trivia: The Old Man And The Sea, one of Hemingway’s most famous works, began as the story’s fourth act, before deciding to issue it a separate novella.)

In the intervening years, the platinum-selling “Islands In The Stream” (also a #1 hit on the Country and Adult Contemporary charts) has continued to resonate in pop culture. In 1998, Pras Michel inventively reworked the song’s chorus for “Ghetto Supastar (That Is What You Are),” featuring Ol’ Dirty Bastard and Mya. In 2005, fans voted the Rogers-Parton pairing their Favorite All-Time Country Duet at the CMT Music Awards, while on an episode of The Office later that year, Michael and Jim performed a karaoke version. And just this past March the stars of the UK sitcom Gavin & Stacey recorded the song as a single for Comic Relief (with Robin Gibb and Tom Jones on backing vocals) and took it to #1, besting the original’s #7 showing. But there’s a more straight-ahead version that’s worth a serious listen.

In April 2008, Constantines and Feist released a cover of “Islands In The Stream” as a limited-edition 7″ single, in advance of the Constantines’ fourth album, Kensington Heights (the band’s first for the Arts & Crafts label), and the song was later included on Feist’s The Reminder Deluxe EP issued that November. While the pace is considerably slower than what Rogers and Parton captured on tape, the intertwining vocal performances of Bryan Webb and Leslie Feist reveal a new intimacy. Hear here:

“Islands In The Stream” wasn’t the last time Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton teamed up. They recorded the 1984 Christmas album, Once Upon A Christmas (featuring one of my all-time favorite yuletide tunes, “Hard Candy Christmas”) and an accompanying TV special. Another duet, 1985’s “Real Love,” was a #1 country hit (followed by a tour and HBO concert special).

Last month, Rogers’ lent his unmistakable voice to an episode of How I Met Your Mother, reading the fictional book-on-tape, Goodbye, Sparky, while his erstwhile partner-in-song Parton issued her first career-spanning box set, a 4-CD package simply titled Dolly.

Purchase Constantines/Feist – “Islands In The Stream” via iTunes, Amazon MP3.