Dailey & Vincent Honor Don Schlitz With His Final Recording

There’s a particular kind of poignancy that comes with recording the last song an artist will ever lay down in a studio. For bluegrass duo Jamie Dailey and Darrin Vincent, that moment arrived when they cut“I Grew Up in Heaven,”a collaboration between Josh Kear and legendary songwriter Don Schlitz. Though they didn’t know it at the time, this track would become Don Schlitz’s final recording before his passing in April.

The story of how this song landed on their new album A Beautiful Life, released today (June 12), carries the kind of warmth and serendipity that defines their career. Dailey had been playfully ribbing Schlitz for years, asking when Dailey&Vincent would finally get to record one of his songs. When Schlitz’s wife reached out to their manager Robert Filhart and confirmed“I Grew Up in Heaven”was the last cut Schlitz had completed, the timing felt almost fated. Jerry Douglas, who played dobro on the track, later texted Vincent with the quiet realization:“I guess we played on Don’s final cut.”

For context, this matters because Schlitz isn’t some footnote in country music history. He wrote“Forever and Ever, Amen,”the Randy Travis anthem that helped define a generation of country radio. His fingerprints are all over the songs that shaped the genre. So when Dailey&Vincent chose to include“I Grew Up in Heaven”on A Beautiful Life, they were doing more than adding another track. They were preserving a piece of unfinished business, a last gift from a songwriter whose legacy will outlive all of us.

The album itself is a masterclass in respectful artistry. Beyond the Schlitz recording, Dailey&Vincent navigate songs from Dolly Parton, Bill Anderson, and Carrie Underwood. They tackle the Osborne Brothers’1970 classic“Ruby”with the kind of reverence it deserves, opening the album with a vocal performance from Dailey that holds a crystalline high note for 18 seconds straight. But it’s their willingness to honor the songwriters—and, in Schlitz’s case, capture a final moment—that gives A Beautiful Life its emotional weight.

The duo’s A Beautiful Life Tour runs through October, with their annual Dailey&Vincent Music Festival set for September 17-19 in Hiawassee, Georgia. For a band that’s spent nearly two decades building something real in bluegrass, they’re still thinking bigger: Vincent mentioned they’ve dreamed about expanding that festival experience to the West Coast. It’s the kind of ambition that comes from artists who understand their responsibility to the music itself, not just their own catalog.

In a year when bluegrass continues to open doors for new listeners through artists like Billy Strings and Molly Tuttle, Dailey&Vincent remain exactly where they’ve always been—rooted in tradition, respectfully pushing forward, and making sure the giants who came before them aren’t forgotten.