How Dolly Parton Said No to Elvis Presley
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In the mid 1970s, a young Dolly Parton did something that made almost no financial sense at the time. Elvis Presley, the biggest star in music, wanted to record one of her songs. All she had to do was hand over half the publishing rights, standard practice for anyone who wanted "the King" to sing their material. Dolly said no. She cried about it the same night, by her own account, certain she'd just turned down the biggest break of her career. Two decades later, that stubborn refusal had quietly made her one of the richest songwriters in American music history, and it happened because of a completely different singer.
AT A GLANCE
The song: "I Will Always Love You," written by Dolly Parton in 1974
Originally written for: Porter Wagoner, as a farewell when she left his show
Elvis Presley's request: mid 1970s, declined over publishing rights
Whitney Houston's version: 1992, for The Bodyguard, 14 weeks at number one
Reported royalties to Dolly from Houston's version: around $10 million in the 1990s alone
A Girl Who Wanted More Than Porter Could Give
By 1974, Dolly Parton had spent seven years as the female half of The Porter Wagoner Show, ever since Wagoner brought her on as his TV duet partner in 1967. It made her a name, but it also boxed her in. She was earning a reported sixty thousand dollars a year, good money for the time, but a fraction of what Wagoner himself was pulling in off her popularity. She'd long since outgrown her original five year commitment, and she wanted things Wagoner's show couldn't offer: her own management, movie roles, a genuinely national audience rather than a syndicated country program. "I wanted to have big time management," she later said. "I wanted to get in movies. I wanted to be worldwide." Staying meant giving that up.
The Song Written to Say Goodbye
Rather than have it out with Wagoner directly, Dolly did what she did best. She wrote him a song. On 19 February 1974, she announced she was leaving the show, and not long after she sat Wagoner down and played him "I Will Always Love You," a tender goodbye dressed up as a love song, the closest she could get to telling him "just because I'm going don't mean I won't love you" without having the argument out loud. By most accounts Wagoner was moved to tears and offered to produce the record himself. For a moment, it looked like the split might stay amicable.
A Stubborn, Very Expensive Friendship
It didn't stay that way for long. Both of them were, in Dolly's own words, "very much alike" and "both stubborn," and the professional split soured fast. In 1979, Wagoner sued her for breach of contract, seeking three million dollars. The case was eventually settled out of court, but the two didn't speak for years afterward. They didn't properly reconcile until decades later, performing together again in 1988 and finally patching things up for good before Wagoner's death from lung cancer in 2007. Dolly visited him in hospice, held his hand and prayed with him the day he died, then later held a memorial concert for him at Dollywood. The song written to soften one goodbye ended up outliving the friendship it was meant to save, by years.
The Night She Said No to Elvis
The song sat quietly as a country hit for a couple of years until Elvis Presley's camp came calling. Elvis wanted to record it, which for most songwriters of the era would have been a dream come true and an instant payday. But Colonel Tom Parker, Elvis's famously controlling manager, had a standard condition for any outside song Elvis recorded: half the publishing rights, handed over for good. Dolly initially agreed, then changed her mind. "I wrote it and I've already published it, and this is the stuff I'm leaving for my family when I'm dead and gone," she later explained. "I wanted to hear Elvis sing it, but I had to keep that copyright in my pocket. You have to take care of your business."
Elvis never recorded it. Dolly has said the decision "broke my heart" at the time, and she's admitted she still wonders what his version would have sounded like. Decades on, Priscilla Presley told her that Elvis used to sing the song to her himself, unrecorded, during their divorce.
It's a strange footnote that long before Colonel Parker was making demands on Elvis's behalf, Elvis himself was just a kid trying to get noticed. His earliest documented public performance was a children's talent show, a competition he came fifth in, decades before he was famous enough for his manager to be turning away songwriters like Dolly.
Whitney Houston's Nearly Missed Song
"I Will Always Love You" might have stayed a well loved country ballad if not for a casting decision on a completely unrelated film. When Kevin Costner co-produced The Bodyguard in 1992, he wanted, in his words, "a world-class voice, a world-class beauty in a sense and a world-class presence" for the female lead, and considered Whitney Houston the only real option. He delayed production so she could finish touring first.
The soundtrack's signature song wasn't even the original plan. Costner initially wanted Jimmy Ruffin's "What Becomes of the Brokenhearted," but another film had already used a version of it that year. Music supervisor Maureen Crowe suggested alternatives, and Dolly's old ballad made the cut. Producer David Foster arranged it, and when he sent over a version with a stark a cappella opening, soundtrack executive Clive Davis knew immediately it was the one, calling it "chilling and spine-tingling." Houston's recording spent fourteen weeks at number one, won Record of the Year at the Grammys and sold more than four million copies on its own, helping push the Bodyguard soundtrack past 45 million copies worldwide, still the best-selling film soundtrack ever released.
What the Money Actually Built
None of that success belonged to Whitney alone. As the song's sole writer, Dolly kept one hundred percent of the publishing rights she'd refused to sign away years earlier, and the royalties from Houston's version reportedly earned her around ten million dollars over the following decade. Rather than quietly banking it, she put some of that money into a very specific place: an office and retail complex in a predominantly Black Nashville neighborhood. "It was mostly just Black families and people that lived around there," she later explained, "and I thought, this is the perfect place for me to be, considering it was Whitney. I'm going to be down here with her people, who are my people as well." It was, in her telling, a way of honouring exactly whose voice had turned her old farewell song into a fortune.
A single act of nerve, saying no to one of the most powerful men in music over a song most people would have handed over without a second thought, ended up funding a theme park's expansion, a Nashville neighborhood investment and a fortune that's still paying out royalties today. Dolly got the credit for writing it. It took Porter Wagoner's exit, Colonel Parker's greed and Whitney Houston's voice to actually cash it in.
Quick Questions About Dolly Parton and "I Will Always Love You"
Did Elvis Presley ever record "I Will Always Love You"?
No. Colonel Tom Parker demanded half the publishing rights as a condition, and Dolly Parton refused, so Elvis never recorded it.
How much money did Dolly Parton make from Whitney Houston's version?
Reports put her royalties from Houston's 1992 recording at around ten million dollars during the 1990s alone, with royalties continuing since.
Why did Dolly Parton leave Porter Wagoner's show?
She wanted her own management, movie roles and a wider audience than his syndicated show could offer, and felt she'd outgrown their arrangement after seven years.
What did Dolly Parton do with the royalties from Whitney Houston's cover?
She invested some of the money into an office and retail complex in a predominantly Black Nashville neighborhood, saying she wanted to honor Whitney Houston's community.
