Dolly Parton, James Patterson — in words and music

“He’d give me ideas for the songs. I gave him ideas that he expanded on for the characters and incorporated in the book,” says Parton, whose “Run, Rose, Run” album includes 12 new songs. “So it really was a magical team.”

The collaboration began as just one of countless ideas for Patterson, who reliably turns out several books a year, from children’s stories to a biography of the Kennedys to two best-selling thrillers written with former President Bill Clinton. Patterson spent a lot of time in Nashville in the 1960s while attending Vanderbilt University and thought of an archetypal story — a young, promising and frightened country singer, AnnieLee Keyes, facing a “million to one odds,” and her bond with a retired country superstar, Ruthanna Ryder.

As Patterson and Parton both recall, Patterson contacted Parton’s team and the two soon spoke in Nashville.

“We liked each other right away. And we kind of made the deal right there — no lawyers. We didn’t want anybody in the way,” Patterson says.

“Run, Rose, Run” is a close look at the Nashville music scene, through the eyes of women. The narrative has music and romance and cheering crowds, and lyrics to Parton songs such as the mid-tempo rocker “Big Dreams and Faded Jeans.” On the darker side are unscrupulous executives, unwanted physical advances and the male-oriented ways of the market, defined by a radio consultant’s “salad” theory, in which men are the essential artists, “the lettuce,” the women more like tomatoes, “to be sprinkled into airplay now and again as garnish.”