I Will Always Leave You
( Christine De Carvalho )
Listener supported. WNYC Studios.
Jad Abumrad:
This is Dolly Parton's America. I'm Jad Abumrad. We are at the second of nine trips into the Dollyverse. In this one, I want to tell the story behind the greatest selling song by a female artist of all time. You probably know the song I'm talking about, but if you don't, I'm not going to tell you. It's just going to happen, organically. It's going to be beautiful. This is a song that hit number one in three consecutive decades. Think about that. One song just keeps hitting number one over and over. Behind that song are so many stories. The story of a collaboration, a historic collaboration, and the story of Dolly's grand metamorphosis.
Dolly Parton:
I'm going to sit on this pillow. That one was better for height.
Male:
I can bring that one up if you want to.
Dolly Parton:
Can you? Yeah, bring it up. I'm so little. I don't want to feel like I'm sitting in the floor.
Jad Abumrad:
Maybe not just hers, but so many people. I talked about it with her back in Nashville in that studio.
Dolly Parton:
My chair's squeaking.
Jad Abumrad:
On that squeaky chair. We got to this story at hour three of the interview. I'd love to ask you about Porter Wagoner.
Dolly Parton:
Now that's when I needed a weapon.
Jad Abumrad:
Earlier we'd been talking about rumors that she carried a gun in her purse.
Dolly Parton:
That's why I had the weapon. No. Porter and I had a love-hate relationship. You couldn't even begin to, you could never untangle all of that.
Jad Abumrad:
We're going to try. It's 1966. You're 21. Who was he at that time, for those of us-
Dolly Parton:
Porter Wagoner was and is a legend.
Porter Wagoner:
Woo-hoo! Wow. Thank you so much and welcome to Grand Ole Opry.
Dolly Parton:
In country music.
Porter Wagoner:
(singing)
Male:
This syndicated TV show has been one of the most popular in country music history.
Dolly Parton:
Porter had the number one syndicated television show at that time.
Porter Wagoner:
Pull up a chair and don't even move out of the room for the next 30 minutes. Thank you!
Robert Oermann:
Porter put together a hell of a road show.
Jad Abumrad:
Journalist historian Robert Oermann.
Robert Oermann:
When you went to see a Porter Wagoner show, you got a show.
Male:
(singing)
Robert Oermann:
Top notch comedians, top notch singers, killer instrumentals, the whole deal.
Marty Stuart:
Consider the fact that ...
Announcer:
CBS presents this program in color.
Marty Stuart:
... this is when the advent of color television was taking root in America.
Jad Abumrad:
This is country music singer-songwriter Marty Stuart. He worked with Porter toward the end of his life.
Marty Stuart:
Produced the last record he ever did. Porter Wagoner and his band would come on.
Porter Wagoner:
Thank you, gang, for helping me open up the show.
Marty Stuart:
In those pretty costumes.
Robert Oermann:
Bright blues, pinks, purples.
Marty Stuart:
These beautiful costumes that were made by Nudie the Rodeo Tailor. Nudie Suits they were called.
Male:
The suit itself is about 10,000 three or four hundred dollars.
Dolly Parton:
Porter always dressed in rhinestones.
Marty Stuart:
He was a magical character, because those rhinestone suits made him twinkle.
Dolly Parton:
Also, he had great records and great songs. He had a great ear for music. He had one hit record after another.
Jad Abumrad:
Now Dolly at this moment.
Male:
June 7th, 1967.
Dolly Parton:
I was a young girl.
Dolly Parton:
I'm 21 years old now, and I've been here three years.
Dolly Parton:
New in Nashville at the time.
Dolly Parton:
I got married a year ago, the 30th of last month, on Memorial Day last year.
Jad Abumrad:
She had, as she says in this interview, just gotten married.
Dolly Parton:
My husband's name is Carl Dean, C-A-R-L D-E-A-N.
Jad Abumrad:
To a guy named Carl, who from that point until now has been seen in public almost never.
Dolly Parton:
I have at least two or three songs placed a week.
Jad Abumrad:
Any case, at this point, 1967 ...
Dolly Parton:
The publishing company always checks to see who's in town and who's recording. We pick out songs that we think would fit a certain artist, and then we take them and leave them.
Jad Abumrad:
Dolly was just one of them wave of songwriters ...
Record Exec:
A thousand a week come through Nashville.
Jad Abumrad:
... who were in Nashville trying to make it.
Male:
What percentage of them make it?
Record Exec:
Probably one 100th or 1%.
Jad Abumrad:
That's how one record exec put it at the time.
Dolly Parton:
I was really having some major hard times.
Sarah Smarsh:
She's just trying to get by. She's stealing food scraps in hotel hallways off of deserted room service trays.
Jad Abumrad:
This is writer Sarah Smarsh.
Sarah Smarsh:
Stealing might be the wrong word, I don't know. Discarded food is how she ... She can't-
Jad Abumrad:
That's true that you did that?
Dolly Parton:
Oh, plenty of times. I would get whatever little saveable, and then I would get a jar of mustard and a jar of ketchup. You can work wonders, make little soups.
Sarah Smarsh:
She was struggling those first few years in Nashville.
Jad Abumrad:
The real money was in performing your songs, not just writing them. At the time, as she describes in the interview, she was trying to make it as a performer, but the label that she was hooked up with, Monument Records, just thought that her voice ...
Dolly Parton:
My voice, for people that are familiar with the way I sing, my voice is pitched real high.
Jad Abumrad:
They just thought her voice was too high.
Dolly Parton:
(singing)
Dolly Parton:
It sounded like people thought it was childish, so they thought I might have a better chance in rock-and-roll.
Dolly Parton:
(singing)
Jad Abumrad:
Now keep in mind this is the same year that the Beatles released Sergeant Pepper, so you can hear that the label is trying to shove her that direction.
Dolly Parton:
(singing)
Jad Abumrad:
It wasn't working out too well.
Dolly Parton:
I'd never had a pop hit. I had a song out called Happy Happy Birthday Baby that was the best thing I'd had, and it wasn't even considered a hit at all.
Jad Abumrad:
Then right before she did this interview in 1967, in fact I think it was the reason for the interview ...
Sarah Smarsh:
Her big break comes and she had a new single called Dumb Blonde.
Dolly Parton:
Dumb Blonde.
Dolly Parton:
(singing)
Sarah Smarsh:
It's the story where it's in the first person, she's telling a man to shove it, rejecting the idea that because of how she looks she is stupid.
Dolly Parton:
(singing)
Jad Abumrad:
For someone who has arguably underestimated her whole career, the lyrics are pretty prophetic.
Dolly Parton:
Dumb Blonde, which was the biggest record I've ever had as myself. It did real well for me.
Jad Abumrad:
It wasn't a huge hit, but a couple things happened as a result of Dumb Blonde. She performs the song on TV.
Dolly Parton:
I was right pretty then, even though I was tacky.
Jad Abumrad:
Shortly after that TV performance, she gets a call from the King of Country himself, Porter Wagoner. From what I understand, you run over to his office with your guitar, thinking, "He must just want me to write a song for his female singer."
Dolly Parton:
He had a girl on his show named Norma Jean Beasley.
Porter Wagoner:
Pretty Miss Norma Jean!
Jad Abumrad:
Who he almost always introduced that exact same way.
Porter Wagoner:
Pretty Miss Norma Jean.
Porter Wagoner:
Pretty Miss Norma Jean!
Dolly Parton:
She also was a big recording artist.
Norma Jean B.:
(singing)
Jad Abumrad:
Norma Jean's whole vibe was very un-Dolly. Beautiful, talented, but much more conservative, much more modest.
Dolly Parton:
They had been working together for years.
Jad Abumrad:
Since the start of his show.
Dolly Parton:
I had been songs to him and Norma Jean ever since I come to Nashville for them to record.
Jad Abumrad:
She says when she got to his office, she got out her guitar, sang him a couple of songs that she thought would be great for Norma Jean. He stops her.
Dolly Parton:
Then he just told me that Norma Jean, she was leaving his show.
Jad Abumrad:
Why was she leaving?
Dolly Parton:
I don't know their personal story. The story at that time, that she was going to marry and move back to Oklahoma City.
Jad Abumrad:
The other version that's sometimes told is that he and Norma Jean had had an affair and things had gotten complicated.
Dolly Parton:
He just told me that Norma was leaving the show and would I be interested.
Jad Abumrad:
As he put it to her, would she be interested in being his new girl singer.
Dolly Parton:
Then he quoted the price.
Jad Abumrad:
60,000 a year, more money than she'd ever seen in her life.
Dolly Parton:
I said yes.
Jad Abumrad:
Before we go further, let me just offer a little bit of context. On the job that Dolly was talking into, at the time ...
Robert Oermann:
There was no such thing as a female headliner. Women were on the shows as decorative objects, as, "Here's a little song from our pretty little girl singer."
Jad Abumrad:
Not only that, according to Robert Oermann, who's written a lot about this ...
Robert Oermann:
The executives on Music Row historically have perceived the country music audience to be dominantly female. Then as now they perceive the audience to be female, and they believe that women don't buy other women.
Jad Abumrad:
They thought women only bought male artists?
Robert Oermann:
Correct. People that they could fantasize about, they thought that's what women consumed.
Jad Abumrad:
Obviously, he says that is arguable at best, but that is what they thought, and so the job of the, quote, "girl singer" was to be a surrogate for that adoring chorus of female fans that were out there that the execs believed were all fantasizing about Porter. That was Dolly's new job.
Dolly Parton:
We started (bleeps). I started with him I guess in ...
Porter Wagoner:
(singing)
Dolly Parton:
... what was it, '67?
Jad Abumrad:
'66 I think.
Dolly Parton:
'66.
Jad Abumrad:
Actually, it was on September 5th, 1967, and about four million people were watching.
Porter Wagoner:
How about it? Right now I want you to meet the little lady on our show. You know Miss Norma Jean has been with us for many, many years, had to leave our show, because we work so much on the road and do so many TV shows, to have a little time at home for her personal life. I looked a long time and thought of many, many folks that we all liked and thought that you would like, and here's a little gal that I know you're going to really learn to love, because she's a fine singer, and one of the finest little gals that I've ever met. Let's give her a great big welcome as she sings a song that she had a big hit on called Dumb Blonde. She ain't no dumb blonde though. Pretty Miss Dolly Parton!
Jad Abumrad:
Dolly makes her first appearance on the Porter Wagoner Show wearing a crew cut bright red dress, red lipstick, hair in a beehive.
Dolly Parton:
(singing)
Jad Abumrad:
I think it's safe to say that first performance didn't go well. After she finishes the song ...
Porter Wagoner:
Mighty fine, Dolly. Come on over a minute. That is mighty, mighty nice.
Dolly Parton:
Thank you.
Porter Wagoner:
Thank you a lot. Welcome to the show.
Dolly Parton:
Thank you. It's nice to be here.
Jad Abumrad:
She kind of looks like she wants to run off the stage.
Porter Wagoner:
We're going to really enjoy working with you. You wrote so many fine songs and sing so pretty. We look forward to having you around a long, long time.
Dolly Parton:
I hope to be. Thank you very much.
Dolly Parton:
When I first started with Porter's show, people were still calling for Norma Jean. They didn't like me.
Ralph Emery:
Dolly told me I think her first road date with the Porter Wagoner Show she came on stage and she got booed.
Jad Abumrad:
Wow.
Jad Abumrad:
This is Ralph Emery, country music DJ and longtime television host.
Ralph Emery:
Yes, they booed Dolly.
Dolly Parton:
It's true.
Ralph Emery:
When she came off stage she was crying.
Dolly Parton:
It was hard. I looked so different than her. My voice was so different.
Robert Oermann:
When Dolly first arrived in Nashville, that was the whole critique.
Dolly Parton:
(singing)
Robert Oermann:
God, she's a great writer, god, she's beautiful, but she sings so weird. She sounds Minnie Mousey. How can we capture that on record? How can we make that commercial?
Dolly Parton:
(singing)
Robert Oermann:
Because it was so different.
Dolly Parton:
Different.
Jad Abumrad:
Especially from Norma Jean.
Norma Jean B.:
(singing)
Jad Abumrad:
Who had a much lower, richer voice.
Ralph Emery:
They didn't want ... Norma Jean had a huge following.
Robert Oermann:
It was like, "Where's Norma Jean?"
Jad Abumrad:
In fact, that first show, Dolly's first performance with Porter, after she sang the song Dumb Blonde ...
Porter Wagoner:
We'll be right back in just a minute or so.
Jad Abumrad:
... and they cut to commercial, you can tell something happened over that commercial break. Maybe the audience revolted. Not sure, but when they come back from break, and remember these shows were live.
Porter Wagoner:
Thank you very much for watching that message.
Jad Abumrad:
Porter felt the need to speak directly to the studio audience.
Porter Wagoner:
I was talking with Dolly Parton a while ago and we were talking about Miss Norma Jean being gone. You never find anyone to replace someone. It's someone that actually is a star in their own right. She's a wonderful little gal.
Jad Abumrad:
He basically says to the audience, in a sort of paternal way, "I hear you. I see that you're upset, but no. We're doing this."
Robert Oermann:
Porter basically had to put his foot down with the fans and go, "Look, if she's good enough for me, she's good enough for you," and basically made them listen to Dolly.
Jad Abumrad:
I sort of love him for that, despite everything.
Robert Oermann:
Yeah.
Porter Wagoner:
Thank you, Don!
Jad Abumrad:
To deal with this backlash, Porter's first move was to shift the format of his show, rather than the usual thing of him doing a song and then having the female singer doing a song.
Dolly Parton:
In order to establish me, because the people weren't responding to me that much.
Porter Wagoner:
Dolly and I are going to do all duets this week. Got a whole bunch of them for you.
Dolly Parton:
Porter ...
Multiple People:
(singing)
Dolly Parton:
We started doing duets. We did a duet called ...
Multiple People:
(singing)
Dolly Parton:
... Last Thing On My Mind. It was shot right to the top.
Jad Abumrad:
Everyone we talked to told us that from the very moment they started those duets ...
Marty Stuart:
It was magic. It was like ...
Fred Astaire:
(singing)
Marty Stuart:
... Fred and Ginger ...
John and June:
(singing)
Marty Stuart:
... or John and June ...
Katharine H.:
Thought you might want to kiss me goodbye.
Marty Stuart:
... Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, just keep going with those kind of people who just clicked.
Dolly Parton:
We had a great blend in our voices.
Multiple People:
(singing)
Robert Oermann:
I love that sound.
Jad Abumrad:
There are two types of harmonies in country and rock, according to Robert Oermann.
Robert Oermann:
One is ...
Everly Brothers:
(singing)
Robert Oermann:
... what I would call the Everly Brothers type harmony, which is close harmony, where the two voices are very close together.
Everly Brothers:
(singing)
Jad Abumrad:
Part of what's cool about that style of dueting is that you can't tell the voices apart.
Robert Oermann:
The other type is the Porter-Dolly type.
Multiple People:
(singing)
Robert Oermann:
Where they had very, very distinct ranges. Their voices are not close together at all. She sings melody, he sings harmony, but the harmony is mixed as hot as the lead vocal is, so it sounds like two lead vocals.
Multiple People:
(singing)
Jad Abumrad:
It's interesting, how you're describing their singing style, it's perfectly matched for the content of their songs.
Robert Oermann:
Oh yeah. They're dialogs, male-female dialogs.
Sarah Smarsh:
In which there's some kind of tension between lovers.
Multiple People:
(singing)
Sarah Smarsh:
It's a little bit creepy, to be honest.
Porter Wagoner:
(singing)
Dolly Parton:
(singing)
Sarah Smarsh:
He was old enough to be her dad.
Jad Abumrad:
Almost exactly twice her age.
Multiple People:
(singing)
Sarah Smarsh:
He's at once sort of like ...
Porter Wagoner:
Sweet country woman, you want to help me do a duet.
Sarah Smarsh:
... fatherly ...
Porter Wagoner:
(singing)
Sarah Smarsh:
... patronizing, talking about being her lover in a song.
Multiple People:
(singing)
Jad Abumrad:
Nonetheless, in terms of the task at hand, of introducing Dolly to a new audience ...
Ralph Emery:
It worked. It worked.
Jad Abumrad:
It didn't just work, it killed.
Dolly Parton:
We made history.
Dolly Parton:
Woo!
Dolly Parton:
Together.
Porter Wagoner:
Now I want you to meet the beautiful little lady on our show, and she gets more popular seems like each week.
Jad Abumrad:
Here's how it went down. As soon as the duets got going ...
Marty Stuart:
That audience did reach out. They wrote letters.
Porter Wagoner:
Thanks for all of the fine cards and letters and things that you have wrote to her.
Jad Abumrad:
Lots of letters saying, "I think we like her now."
Porter Wagoner:
I know she appreciates it.
Jad Abumrad:
As soon as that started happening ...
Dolly Parton:
Porter insisted that I be on RCA, and then he did a whole deal to get me on to RCA.
Jad Abumrad:
He moved Dolly over to his label. They immediately go into the studio, record some duets.
Multiple People:
(singing)
Jad Abumrad:
They record her second solo album ...
Dolly Parton:
(singing)
Jad Abumrad:
... which he produces. They begin to tour the country.
Porter Wagoner:
Miss Dolly Parton!
Jad Abumrad:
Playing about 200 shows a year, doing live TV tapings, and after each one ...
Marty Stuart:
It was mandatory that they take their costumes off, get a cup of coffee, and gather up in the control room and watch what they had just done, almost as if it were like a game tape from a football game. He told me how much Dolly didn't want to hear herself or see herself in the beginning.
Dolly Parton:
I have never liked to hear myself talk.
Jad Abumrad:
Really?
Dolly Parton:
I've never liked to hear myself sing.
Jad Abumrad:
You've never liked to hear yourself sing?
Dolly Parton:
No.
Marty Stuart:
He actually pushed the issue that, "No, this is what we do. That's how you learn."
Dolly Parton:
He was great on camera, had a great smile. He knew how to talk to that audience. I learned a lot.
Jad Abumrad:
She says from those game tape sessions she learned how to hold herself on stage, how to make eye contact with the camera.
Dolly Parton:
How to communicate with an audience, even how to smile, when we were doing album covers or we're doing pictures.
Jad Abumrad:
Now as Dolly was learning the ropes, I think it's worth saying that country music around this time was undergoing a dramatic change. It started as this mostly Southern phenomenon, but during those years that Dolly and Porter were working together, there was a huge migration of people out of the rural South into the Northeast, Midwest, West, into urban areas, and they took country music with them.
Male:
Country music is getting bigger and bigger these days.
Male:
In 1961, 80 radio stations across the nation were called country music stations. Today that number is over 1,000.
Jad Abumrad:
The point is, as Dolly was being introduced to the world, that world was expanding. In fact, in 1967-68, the country music industry was like, "We're getting so big that we need our own awards show." In October of '68 ...
Announcer:
From the home of the world-renowned Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, Tennessee!
Jad Abumrad:
... at the second ever Country Music Awards ...
Announcer:
Vocal Group of the Year, Porter Wagoner and Dolly Parton.
Jad Abumrad:
... Porter and Dolly win Vocal Group of the Year. Two years later ...
Announcer:
Porter Wagoner and Dolly Parton.
Jad Abumrad:
... they win it again, the next year too, and by 1972 ...
Announcer:
Here is the Top Singing Duo in the country music field, ladies and gentlemen, Porter Wagoner and Dolly Parton!
Jad Abumrad:
... it's just clear that in this new kingdom of country music, they are the royal couple. By the way, at every award they win, they walk up there together, his arm draped around her. He accepts the award.
Porter Wagoner:
Thank you, everyone, very much. This year there were so many great duet teams.
Jad Abumrad:
Dolly doesn't speak.
Porter Wagoner:
Thank you.
Dolly Parton:
Thank you so much.
Porter Wagoner:
God bless you.
Jad Abumrad:
Producer Shima Oliaee asked Dolly about this.
Shima Oliaee:
Were very quiet at first. How did that-
Dolly Parton:
I had to be quiet around Porter, because Porter was the star. I wasn't allowed to say a lot, or I didn't think that it was my place to try to take ... Within his show, it wasn't really something I would just stand out and do. You didn't do that as a woman, and you didn't do that as a professional person, and it was his show, not mine, until I went out on my own, until like I say, until I claimed and owned myself.
Jad Abumrad:
Now speaking of claiming and owning oneself, there are a million moments that you could point to where Dolly did that, but one in particular that came up a bunch of times in our interviews happened in 1970. Dolly and Porter had been together for three years. They'd released five albums of duets together. Porter had released eight solo albums and produced all four of her solo albums, most of which were those slow, mournful ballads that we talked about.
Buck Trent:
One time we were on the bus ...
Jad Abumrad:
This is Buck Trent. He played banjo in Porter's band.
Buck Trent:
... on tour, and Porter said, "Dolly, you need to write some uptempo songs for the show."
Jad Abumrad:
As in, "Enough sad ass songs."
Buck Trent:
Just off the top of my head, some reason, I'll see what I can play, yeah, I said, "How about the Mule Skinner Blues?" He said, "Hey, we may try that." We get into the studio. Norma, I mean Dolly, was just killing the song.
Dolly Parton:
(singing)
Buck Trent:
Porter had the whip, a real whip in the studio, and he was popping the whip.
Dolly Parton:
(singing)
Buck Trent:
It is cooking. It is cooking.
Dolly Parton:
(singing)
Buck Trent:
It's got one of the best rhythm tracks of all time.
Dolly Parton:
(singing)
Buck Trent:
It was a big hit.
Jad Abumrad:
First of all, Buck Trent is right. The song is Dolly's first Top Five hit. It got to number three. Second, the song is just fire. It's just fire. It's so good.
Dolly Parton:
(singing)
Jad Abumrad:
Third, many Dolly-ologists, like Jocelyn Neal, Professor of Music at the University of North Carolina will tell you, that this song marks a turning point.
Jocelyn Neal:
The singles that she releases before Mule Skinner Blues are from the voice of little girls. They are fragile and they are all these perspectives of vulnerability, "Daddy, come and get me. My man has put me in a mental institution," is not a position of social power.
Jad Abumrad:
After Mule Skinner, she says, her songs are totally different.
Jocelyn Neal:
Rhythmic, percussive, and then the rest, as you get to tell in your podcast, is history.
Jad Abumrad:
We'll tell the rest of that history after the break. This is Dolly Parton's America. I'm Jad Abumrad. Let's pick back up with the story.
Dolly Parton:
Let's sing Milwaukee.
Porter Wagoner:
Anything you want to. This is your show, remember.
Dolly Parton:
We're going to do Milwaukee.
Jad Abumrad:
We talked about Mule Skinner, big moment. Around this time ...
Porter Wagoner:
Okay.
Dolly Parton:
Okay.
Jad Abumrad:
... a couple things start to happen.
Multiple People:
(singing)
Jad Abumrad:
Personality-wise ...
Porter Wagoner:
I've got one coming up here.
Dolly Parton:
Excuse me, I thought it was really all my show.
Jad Abumrad:
On the TV, you begin to see a different Dolly emerge, a Dolly we know.
Porter Wagoner:
(singing)
Dolly Parton:
You better shape up, son.
Jad Abumrad:
Not the, quote unquote, "shy one."
Marty Stuart:
The whole part about being shy, she's the kind of person that hits me that would've the minute she was born, she shook hands with the doctor, signed an autograph, and started dancing for him.
Dolly Parton:
I was basically holding back in the early days.
Jad Abumrad:
After Mule Skinner she kind of stops doing that. The second thing that happens around this moment is that behind the scenes Dolly is writing songs at a blistering pace. If you look at her discography '69, '70, '71, '72, it's just one song after another after another. There's Joshua, her first number one, Coat of Many Colors, My Blue Tears, Touch Your Woman, Daddy Was An Old Time Preacher Man. One of Porter's best songwriters, Mel Tillis, was quoted as saying he couldn't keep up. He would submit one song, and she would submit three.
Buck Trent:
We were going down the road on the bus and she's writing Jolene and I'll Always Love You in no time at all.
Debra Wagoner:
I remember her scribbling. She wrote one of her songs, I can't remember which one right now, on one of my dad's dry cleaner ticket ...
Jad Abumrad:
This is Debra Wagoner, Porter Wagoner's daughter.
Debra Wagoner:
She grabbed that off of that rhinestone suit where he had the plastic with the ticket on it for the dry cleaning. Matchbox, candy bar wrapper, napkins at restaurants, I saw her do that.
Buck Trent:
All these songs. All these songs.
Dolly Parton:
I was so excited, and everybody was paying attention to me as a writer, and that inspired me. I wanted to really do more, because I saw that people were paying attention. During that time, my husband Carl and I had bought our first house. There was a den and a big fireplace. I remember I wrote Jolene and I Will Always Love You the same night when we found a tape. I don't know if it was the same night, but it was on the same cassette that we found. I thought, "That must've been a really good night."
Jad Abumrad:
Wow. Wow.
Dolly Parton:
I just would sit for hours in that little room and write songs and play.
Jad Abumrad:
As she was telling me this, I was reminded of something that journalist Robert Oermann had told us on the phone.
Robert Oermann:
If she had been born in a different era, she's Mozart. She was touched by something.
Dolly Parton:
Love Is Like A Butterfly I wrote during that same period of time as well.
Jad Abumrad:
Let's go to 1973. October 31st of that year ...
Porter Wagoner:
I know you write all kind of songs and all types of songs. I think this is possibly the most different tune and the different sound of any of the songs that you've ever written.
Jad Abumrad:
Dolly debuts her new song on the Porter Wagoner Show.
Dolly Parton:
It is kind of different. It makes you think of an old folk song that's got a little heavier, up-to-date beat.
Porter Wagoner:
I think you'll really like this. Listen close to it. It's called Jolene.
Dolly Parton:
(singing)
Jad Abumrad:
Starting in 1973, with Jolene ...
Dolly Parton:
(singing)
Jad Abumrad:
... Dolly would churn out four consecutive number ones in roughly a year.
Dolly Parton:
(singing)
Jad Abumrad:
During that time, Porter's solo stuff was hovering around the 40s.
Dolly Parton:
(singing)
Robert Oermann:
You have to appreciate also the threat to his ego that she represented by this point, because at this period in time his era on the charts, his time was getting to be up.
Dolly Parton:
I started getting real big.
Robert Oermann:
Her star was shooting and his was sinking.
Dolly Parton:
Porter was having a lot of problems with that.
Jad Abumrad:
Dolly told me that when it came time for them to record Jolene in the studio, Porter wouldn't let her play the guitar.
Dolly Parton:
He wanted to impress the musicians with that lick. I remember Porter trying to teach it to the guitar players on that session, and it was not coming out right at all. I remember I was just getting more upset and more upset. I remember just getting the guitar from Porter and said, "Let me just show them the lick."
Jad Abumrad:
You write in your autobiography that the bigger you got, the more threatened he got.
Dolly Parton:
Yeah, that's natural, because it was his show. When it got to where I was wanting to have other producers, I wanted to expand. I wanted to have crossover records. I wanted to have management where I could do other ... I told him, I said, "If you'll let me, I can stay in the show if you'll let me have my own things. We can still work within the show. Let me get a manager and a producer to do some other things outside of what we're doing. I'm not trying to take anything from you or me. I'm just wanting to expand. If I can do some things, if you'll let me do some stuff within the show, we can still salvage this, and it'll just make your show bigger. It'll make us bigger and better." He couldn't handle it though. I understand that.
Jad Abumrad:
Why would you understand that?
Dolly Parton:
I can't speak for him. I'm speaking for me. You're not talking to Porter. You're talking to me.
Jad Abumrad:
Of course, but it's the understanding that I guess I'm asking a question about. This is a guy, you see it in the videos too, he's got his arm around you, there's a power thing happening, for sure.
Dolly Parton:
It's more complicated than that. Just think about it. He had had this show for years. He didn't need me to have his hit show. He wasn't expecting me to be all that I was either. When he hired me as a singer, he was just hiring what he thought was a right pretty little girl, but I was a serious writer. He didn't know that. I was a serious entertainer. He didn't know that. He didn't know how many dreams I had. It was just one of those relationships where you hated him one day, you loved him the next, and it just got so intermingled and so wadded up that you didn't even know what your real feelings were. I don't know, it was just crazy. It was like a marriage of a sort. You couldn't even begin to describe it all.
Jad Abumrad:
Throughout the years people have speculated that there might've been more going on between them behind the scenes.
Buck Trent:
Probably. Probably. You never knew much, but probably.
Jad Abumrad:
Even members of the band wondered.
Ralph Emery:
Is Porter running around with Dolly or is he having an affair Dolly Parton?
Jad Abumrad:
This is Porter on the Ralph Emery Show.
Ralph Emery:
Would you care to speak to that?
Porter Wagoner:
There's so many answers to that, Ralph. Really, there's probably about as many answers as there are people asking questions about that.
Dolly Parton:
Any relationship is like a house with an upstairs, it's got two stories.
Jad Abumrad:
This is how Dolly addressed those rumors in her autobiography.
Dolly Parton:
I know that everybody that knows anything about me and Porter would like to know the true story of what happened to us. Nobody would like to know that more than me and Porter.
Jad Abumrad:
In any case, this next part, this is the point in the story where you can tell it several different ways. For writer Sarah Smarsh ...
Sarah Smarsh:
It sounds very much like an abusive relationship.
Jad Abumrad:
... this is a classic abuse story. She says if you scroll through their YouTube performances from 1973-'74, this is when Dolly and Porter have been working together for about seven years, you see these moments.
Sarah Smarsh:
There's this moment where she's got her guitar. He's going to play on their next duet, so he's suggesting, like ...
Porter Wagoner:
You going to put your guitar away?
Sarah Smarsh:
... "Why don't you drop your guitar, because now as the man, I'm going to be the one strumming the strings." She's like ...
Dolly Parton:
I'll just hang on to it.
Sarah Smarsh:
... "I'll just hold on to it."
Dolly Parton:
I need a security blanket.
Sarah Smarsh:
Like, "Nope, I'm good, you son of a bitch."
Jad Abumrad:
Sarah points to another moment, same episode.
Porter Wagoner:
Singing one of her great songs.
Jad Abumrad:
Porter's doing an intro. Dolly's off screen.
Porter Wagoner:
She probably knows Bill Cheatham.
Jad Abumrad:
She butts in with a joke.
Dolly Parton:
I don't know no Bill Cheathams.
Porter Wagoner:
Shut up.
Jad Abumrad:
He tells her to shut up, and his face definitely falls for a moment, micro expression: rage.
Porter Wagoner:
We're back again.
Dolly Parton:
Right back again.
Porter Wagoner:
Me and my sidekick here, she just kicked me in the side.
Dolly Parton:
Not yet, but I think I will after that.
Porter Wagoner:
If you ever hit me and I find it out, Dolly Parton, you'll be in trouble.
Sarah Smarsh:
He just makes these casual jokes about physically harming her.
Porter Wagoner:
I ought to box your jaws.
Dolly Parton:
You'd hit your mama before you'd hit me.
Sarah Smarsh:
That's reminded me of the statistics that tell us that when a woman is about to leave an abusive relationship, that that is when violence escalates.
Jad Abumrad:
Is that you guys doing a shtick or is that actual hostility?
Dolly Parton:
Way too many things to ever untangle all of that.
Multiple People:
(singing)
Jad Abumrad:
Now to be clear, I don't think there's anything here that would suggest actual physical abuse happened, but clearly, they went at each other in every other way.
Dolly Parton:
We just went like that. I was so stubborn, and he's so definite in who he is.
Marty Stuart:
The thing about Porter, and this is where you hit humanity, is that the times, and so many country singers had the pretty little girl singer on their shoulder around Nashville, and they were the lord and master, and whatever they say went.
Porter Wagoner:
If you work for me, you're going to do what I say, or you're not going to work for me.
Herb Sudzin:
That's right.
Porter Wagoner:
Right?
Herb Sudzin:
Right.
Jad Abumrad:
This is Porter being interviewed by Herb Sudzin on his show Sudzin Country.
Porter Wagoner:
I'm not hiring an advisor to come in.
Herb Sudzin:
That's right.
Porter Wagoner:
I'm hiring someone to work for me. I sign the check. I pay them. Because I love Dolly, she's a beautiful lady in every respect, but it don't matter if my mama is working on my show, mama's going to do what Porter says.
Marty Stuart:
There was no questions asked. Anybody that knows anything about her knows that that ain't how it works with her.
Dolly Parton:
He would say, "This is my damn show." I'd say, "I know, but this is my damn life, and we're not talking about the show, I'm talking about my life. I'm talking about my future. I can't stay here as the girl singer forever. I want a individual career. I am my own self. I didn't come to Nashville to be just part of a duet and to be a girl singer in somebody's group. I want my own band. I want my own show. I want my own dreams." It was like, "I made you." I said, "Yeah, you've made me mad again. You've made me a lot of things. I'm not taking anything from you," I would say, "I appreciate everything you've done, but I never promised you forever." We just were not happy. Either of us were not happy.
Jad Abumrad:
Was there a breaking point that you can recall?
Dolly Parton:
Yeah. I just finally just thought I'm going to break myself if I don't go, because all we were doing was fighting, and it just wasn't working. I couldn't think. I couldn't sleep. I couldn't eat. He wasn't happy either. I thought, "This is just insane. We've got to do something." That's when I went in and said ... I thought, "He's not going to listen." We'd fought. I'd go home crying. That's when I wrote I Will Always Love You and went back to sing it.
Jad Abumrad:
The story goes, as every Dolly fan knows, she walked right into his office, told him to sit down, and she just sang it to him.
Dolly Parton:
(singing)
Dolly Parton:
He set, and he was sitting in the chair, and he started crying. Then he said, "That's the best song you ever wrote." I said, "You inspired it." He said, "I guess you can go, if I can produce the record." I said, "Okay, you can."
Debra Wagoner:
My father, she had to stand up to him, like a lot of us women do, to get our way. She left an influence on me to speak your mind, and if you're hurting, let others know, and if you're loving, let them know that too.
Jad Abumrad:
Debra Wagoner says she was inspired by what Dolly did, even though it was her father on the other end of it. It's interesting to consider that this was a moment in America when the divorce rate was doubling, when you had all of these no-fault divorce laws popping up all around the country. This was a moment when women could finally leave.
Sarah Smarsh:
She describes it as like ... Honestly, I was previously married, and when I initiated a divorce, the way that she talks about that moment, again this is not to suggest they had a romantic relationship, but that there was some sort of this almost spiritual tether between them that she was deciding for her own survival she was going to leave. She describes it in terms that I was like, "Oh, I remember that feeling."
Jad Abumrad:
This is from her autobiography.
Dolly Parton:
As I left his office and began to drive toward my home out in Brentwood, it began to rain, so did I. I cried. Not so much out of a sense of loss, but from the pain that almost always comes with change. It has a sad kind of freedom. Then I began to sing a song to myself. It's been a long dark night, and I've been waiting for the morning. It's been a long hard fight, but I see a brand new day dawning. I been looking for the sunshine. I ain't seen it in so long. Everything's going to work out just fine. Everything's going to be all right that's been all wrong. I can see the light of a clear blue morning. I swear to you on my life, as I said that, the sky cleared up, it stopped raining, the sun came out, and before I got home I had completely written the song called Light of a Clear Blue Morning.
Dolly Parton:
It was like God saying, "Okay, you're free to go now, so just make the most of it." That was my first song in my freedom.
Jad Abumrad:
It's amazing to me that even in that moment it becomes a song almost immediately.
Dolly Parton:
That's how I do things. That's how I deal with my hurt.
Jad Abumrad:
As for Porter, he went and spent six weeks sitting by a lake by himself.
Marty Stuart:
I think when Dolly left, and at so many levels I have no doubt in my mind that Dolly was the love of Porter's life, she's irreplaceable. Don Warden was irreplaceable.
Jad Abumrad:
Don Warden, by the way, was Porter's right-hand man.
Debra Wagoner:
He was my dad's best friend. He was the man in the music business my dad trusted the very most.
Jad Abumrad:
He would also leave and go with Dolly.
Marty Stuart:
Key musician in the band named Buck Trent who was the band leader, he left and went with Roy Clark's show. Porter was just capsized after all those years of being the king. I think his ego was bruised. I think his heart was broke.
Sarah Smarsh:
He basically then went on a public spree of character defamation.
Porter Wagoner:
To me, Dolly Parton is the kind of person that I would never trust with anything of mine. Her family, her own blood, she would turn her back on, to help herself.
Sarah Smarsh:
Telling anyone who would listen that Dolly Parton was a horrible person who he wouldn't trust further than he could throw.
Porter Wagoner:
I don't care about talking about it, because most people will think I'm bitter at Dolly. I'm not bitter at her at all. Dolly wants to do everything that is possible for her to do. She lives in a fairy land.
Dolly Parton:
Anyhow, I left and Porter sued me for a million dollars.
Jad Abumrad:
He sued you for a million dollars.
Dolly Parton:
He sued me because of what I had done to his show. I don't remember exactly what all the legalities were. He was my manager. He was suing me for future royalties, because I had signed I don't even know what all. I was young and silly.
Jad Abumrad:
Porter in court would claim that Dolly was the reason he canceled his roadshow. He would claim, and this is true, that they had signed a contract saying that if she left his show, he was entitled to a percentage of her earnings, that if she left his show, he was entitled to manage her for five years, and that during that time she couldn't enter into any contract concerning her musical career without his written approval. He claimed that she was now trying to minimize his stake in their production company that they owned together. In fact, he would claim in court that Dolly broke into the offices of that production company, stole 130 demos of music, these are demos that mostly she had written, but she stole them, and now she was off making albums with some of those songs and he was entitled to some of that money.
Dolly Parton:
He sued me.
Jad Abumrad:
Dolly decided to settle.
Dolly Parton:
I didn't have a million dollars. Took me years to pay him back.
Jad Abumrad:
Wow.
Dolly Parton:
He just did that out of anger though I think.
Jad Abumrad:
She doesn't like to dwell on this particular chapter, and neither apparently does anyone else in Nashville.
Marty Stuart:
I think everybody in this town understands the art of a good hillbilly divorce. You don't pick sides. You love everybody and just listen. That was always been. I know it must've been awful for both of them.
Dolly Parton:
As years went by, we made up. Later he said, "That was the worst thing I ever done. I'm so sorry I did that." He told me that.
Jad Abumrad:
Wow.
Dolly Parton:
He said, "I just was hurt and angry."
Jad Abumrad:
What I find most amazing about this story is how it ends. We've all seen so many bad divorces, right? The good thing about a divorce is that unhappy evil can walk away from an unhappy thing, but so often that's not what happens. People get stuck in the ugly part, but not here. Dolly pays him the million dollars over time. Then in 1981 Porter gets dropped from his label, RCA, and then Dolly hears that he's made some bad investments and the IRS has come after him, saying that he owes them half a million dollars.
Dolly Parton:
He did file on hard times, and he needed the money. At that time, I had money. Porter had started writing after I was writing a lot. Porter had never written before. He started writing. He wrote some really good songs too. After he was having some hard times, I thought a good way for me to do that is just to buy the publishing company, so I bought it. Then I just gave it back to him because I wanted his kids to have it. I didn't want it.
Jad Abumrad:
Wow.
Dolly Parton:
That was my gift, one of my gifts, for thanking him too, because see, I never knew, how do you ever know how to thank somebody or what you owe somebody, because who knows, had it not been for Porter, I may not be sitting right here in this chair right now, because I'd like to believe I would've made it, but because I felt bad that I had to go, but I knew I had to go and I was stifled, and by that time if I'd have stayed forever I might've missed my chance. God was telling me to go. That spirit of mine was saying, "Go. You've got to go. You've got to go." At that time it's not like putting flowers on me. It was the least that I could do. I felt like it was all right. That was to me the thing to do. I was glad to do it. It made me feel better about everything else.
Jad Abumrad:
I have a theory that one of the reasons that you can have the crazy broad appeal that you have into so many different communities that normally hate each other is because of those acts of forgiveness. Does that vibe with you?
Dolly Parton:
Yeah. Forgiveness? Forgiveness is all there is.
Jad Abumrad:
Porter Wagoner died on October 28th, 2007 in a hospice facility in Nashville.
Marty Stuart:
I do know for a fact, and this tells it all right here, that one of the last people he saw on this earth was a girl named Dolly, and she was there holding his hand by his bed and giving him water.
Jad Abumrad:
When you saw him a few hours before he died, what did you speak about?
Dolly Parton:
I asked everybody to go out, and I just talked to him myself. I knew he could hear me, but he was not able to talk to me. I could tell, and he could touch my hand and squeeze it a little bit. I just told him that I loved him and I appreciated him. I said I was sorry for all the things we had been through and I was so happy that we had become friends again and that I would always remember and treasure him. We had a special bond. I was happy that I was there.
Jad Abumrad:
Dolly Parton's America was produced and written and edited by me and Shima Oliaee, brought to you buy OSM Audio. That's OSM Audio and WNYC Studios. We had production help from W. Harry Fortuna. Original music from Nathan Fake, Courtney Hartman, Steph Jenkins, and Stephanie Coleman. Thanks to the folks at Sony Music, the Country Music Association, the team at the Country Music Hall of Fame, Herb Sudzin, Harry Wiland from the documentary Nashville Sound, and the Everett Corbin Collection at the Center for Popular Music. Special thanks to Peter at Harper Collins, Lynn Sacko, Danny Nozell, David Dotson, Sam Haskell, Teresa Hughes, Pat Walters, Lulu Miller, Suzie Lechtenberg and Soren Wheeler, and as always, thank you to my dad. More from him coming soon. We have partnered with Apple Music to bring you companion playlists to each of the episodes, and we're updating it every week. You can find that at dollypartonsamerica.org.
Jad Abumrad:
Before we go, one more word on that song.
David Foster:
It has been called the love song of the century. You see this song being performed on ...
Female:
(singing)
David Foster:
... Idol and the Voice and all those. It's one of the go-to songs.
Female:
(singing)
David Foster:
If somebody performs the song even half decently, the crowd goes crazy, because when it gets to that big part ...
Female:
(singing)
David Foster:
... and if the singer can just even barely make that big part ...
Female:
(singing)
David Foster:
... they're going to get a round of applause. We call the boom and I moment.
Female:
(singing)
David Foster:
Boom, "And I." It's the boom and I moment.
Jad Abumrad:
This is David Foster. He is one of the main reasons that I Will Always Love You became the love song of the century.
David Foster:
I was the lucky guy that got to produce I Will Always Love You for Whitney Houston in The Bodyguard.
Jad Abumrad:
He spoke with producer Shima Oliaee. She's going to take us out with this brief story of an encounter between David, Dolly, Whitney, and glory.
Shima Oliaee:
Here's how it went down. It's 1991. They're making the movie.
Female:
I've been watching you all night from across the room.
Kevin Costner:
Why don't you go back there and keep watching.
Shima Oliaee:
That's Kevin Costner. He and Whitney Houston star in the movie, as I'm sure you know. Kevin Costner actually produced the movie, so he asked David to jump on board to create the soundtrack. David had to write all these songs for different scenes for Whitney to sing, but the finale song had not been decided, so they do a search. One other song comes up, they record it, it doesn't quite work. They find another song. It's not ... Nothing's working. It's actually Kevin Costner. The hero that he is calls up David Foster and goes, "David, I have an idea."
David Foster:
Yeah.
Shima Oliaee:
Side note, are you still in contact with Kevin Costner, by any chance?
David Foster:
It's funny that you should say that, because I called him yesterday.
Shima Oliaee:
No way.
David Foster:
Kevin was so musical.
Kevin Costner:
(singing)
David Foster:
He has a band. He plays, he sings.
Kevin Costner:
(singing)
David Foster:
He loves country music. He loves country rock.
Shima Oliaee:
Anyway, he calls David and he says, "You know that scene we're going to do at the end of the movie, the big scene with Whitney? I think I have the perfect."
David Foster:
He did. He said, "I've got it! I want to do the song I Will Always Love You, and you'll do the big version at the end and it'll be great." I think that I pretended that I knew the song, but I've never heard that song before. I sent somebody down to the record store in Malibu. The only version they could find was Linda Ronstadt's version.
Shima Oliaee:
1975.
Linda Ronstadt:
(singing)
David Foster:
I knew immediately that I could kill this song. When you see it in the movie where she's getting on the plane and then she stops and she comes back out and hugs him and you know they're in love but they're never going to be together.
Shima Oliaee:
Such a good scene.
Shima Oliaee:
Anyway, Whitney, Kevin, and David, they go to shoot the scene.
David Foster:
We were recording the song live, because the director wanted that live feeling.
Shima Oliaee:
Is it that scene where Whitney's on stage in that hotel?
David Foster:
Yes.
Shima Oliaee:
At what point did you tell Dolly that you were going to do her song?
David Foster:
I clearly remember going back to my room.
Shima Oliaee:
Back to his hotel room, he calls Dolly, he's all excited.
David Foster:
She was like, "Oh, that's great news. I love Whitney." She said, "I can't wait to hear her sing that part, the third verse." I'm going, "Third verse? There's no third verse in this song."
Shima Oliaee:
The third verse, it's the one where she talks ...
Dolly Parton:
I hope life treats you kind.
Shima Oliaee:
... directly to Porter.
Dolly Parton:
I hope that you have all that you ever dreamed of.
David Foster:
Dolly was like, "No, you have to do the third verse. The third verse has everything in it. It's the wrap-up of the whole song. It's the most meaningful lyric."
Shima Oliaee:
Oh no.
David Foster:
Yeah. Linda Ronstadt had not done the third verse. I got to go back and listened to that Linda Ronstadt version and make sure that I'm right. Can you play it?
Shima Oliaee:
Yeah, I think I can play it.
David Foster:
Move in one minute.
Shima Oliaee:
I'm skipping this ad.
David Foster:
You don't pay for your YouTube?
Shima Oliaee:
I'm going to play it for both of us. Oh, I don't hear the third one.
David Foster:
They're playing it instrumentally.
Shima Oliaee:
Oh yeah, you are so right, David!
David Foster:
Now what happens, a chorus comes in?
Shima Oliaee:
Yep, do you hear?
David Foster:
Now a chorus. No third verse.
Shima Oliaee:
He's like, "Dammit, Linda!" Gets off the phone with Dolly, runs back to where they're shooting the scene, and says, "Guys, we got to do the third verse, the Porter verse." You just gave Whitney the lyrics, "We got to do this third verse."
David Foster:
We had to go back in and record it again.
Whitney Houston:
(singing)
David Foster:
That's my favorite part of the song, (singing).
Shima Oliaee:
Did you have any idea of the worldwide impact, that it's still the number one recorded song by a female artist of all time?
David Foster:
No. In fact, I didn't even know that stat, but I was standing there when she was singing it and her mom walked over to me, she said, "You're witnessing greatness right now."
Whitney Houston:
(singing)
David Foster:
Then she walked away.
Whitney Houston:
(singing)
Shima Oliaee:
You know how you talked about how Dolly paid a million dollars to Porter?
Jad Abumrad:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Shima Oliaee:
In one year of the release of this song, she reportedly made three times that.
David Foster:
She's thanked me more than once, making jokes about, "It bought me my house here and got me my this there."
Whitney Houston:
(singing)
David Foster:
Dolly, if you're listening to this, this is David Foster. Please make the time to have lunch with me sometime.
Whitney Houston:
(singing)
Jad Abumrad:
On the next episode of Dolly Parton's America ...
Female:
No!
Male:
[banter]
Female:
No! Are you going to take those?
Male:
You all want to go?
Male:
Oh my god, yes!
Female:
Oh my god, Brian!
Jad Abumrad:
We pilgrimage to Dollywood and end up in a Tennessee Mountain time warp.
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