"Gone Gone Gone (Done Moved On)" (Robert Plant & Alison Krauss)

I didn't quite know what to make of Robert Plant and Alison Krauss's collaboration when I first read about it back in 2007.  Don't get me wrong; I was a fan of Plant and Krauss, individually.  But together?  (I imagined a combination along the lines of cappuccino-flavored potato chips—a crime against nature if there ever was one.)

Thankfully, I was wrong about my assumptions.  In fact, I still marvel at how naturally and effortlessly their voices mesh on Raising Sand, an album featuring beguiling covers of Americana, blues, and roots rock tunes.

My favorite cut from the album is "Gone Gone Gone (Done Moved On)," a true-to-the-original cover of a 1964 single by the Everly Brothers that captures all of the nuance of Phil and Don's close harmonies.  Krauss's voice is as pure and smooth as clover honey against Plant's bluesy, whiskey tenor.

The reason the blend works so well, though, is T. Bone Burnett's tasteful production and arrangement of the song.  It retains the same rumba/rock drum groove of the original and adds some tasty tremolo guitar, amplifying the rockabilly quotient a bit.  Quite simply, Burnett creates the perfect backdrop: it rocks and rumbles like the engine of a rod hod yet doesn't outcompete the raw horsepower of the duo's vocals.