Dolly Parton, the country music icon who died Tuesday at age 80, once revealed that her most famous heartbreak ballad was actually born from a professional split.
The singer-songwriter composed both “I Will Always Love You” and “Jolene” during a single afternoon in 1973, a remarkable burst of creativity that would reshape her legacy. While millions have embraced “I Will Always Love You” as a song of romantic heartbreak, Parton made clear that its true inspiration came from her dramatic parting with longtime collaborator Porter Wagoner.
Wagoner, then a established star, had invited Parton to join “The Porter Wagoner Show” in 1967, three years after she arrived in Nashville from her hometown of Locust Ridge, Tenn. The syndicated variety program paired them in duets and comedy bits, and Wagoner helped secure her a deal with RCA Victor. Together they released 13 studio albums.
Parton performed on the show for five years, but by 1973 she felt the pull to move on. “I really felt like I needed to move on,” she told Howard Stern in 2023. “I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life being a girl singer. I knew my destiny. I knew that I had to continue doing what I felt… drawn to do.”
Wagoner resisted her departure. “There was a lot of grief and heartache there, and he just wasn’t listening to my reasoning for my going,” Parton told Country Music Television in 2011.
She turned to what she knew best. “I thought, ‘Well, why don’t you do what you do best? Why don’t you just write this song?'” The lyrics came quickly: “If I should stay, I would only be in the way…”
Parton delivered the song directly to its subject. “I sang the song alone in his office — just me and my guitar,” she said to Stern.
Her mentor was moved. “That’s the best song you’ve ever wrote… You can go if I can produce the song,” Wagoner replied.
Despite the tearful farewell, the pair remained friends until Wagoner’s death in 2007. Parton was at his bedside in Nashville when he passed.
The song nearly took another iconic turn. Elvis Presley wanted to record it, but his manager Colonel Tom Parker demanded half the publishing rights. “I cried all night,” she told Country Music Television later. “I mean, it was like the worst thing. People were saying, ‘You’re nuts. It’s Elvis Presley. Hell, I’d give him all of it.’ I said, ‘I can’t.’ I always wondered what it would sound like. I know he would have killed it.”
She added a bittersweet coda: “Then, when Whitney [Houston’s version] came out, I made enough money to buy Graceland.”
That cover almost never happened. Houston was originally set to sing “What Becomes of the Brokenhearted” for the 1992 film “The Bodyguard,” music supervisor Maureen Crowe told The Post in 2022. “But when you slow that song down, it’s like a dirge. And it had been covered for ‘Fried Green Tomatoes’ [by Paul Young in 1991], and it was climbing the charts as we were shooting ‘The Bodyguard.’ So we couldn’t use that song because it would just seem like we ripped it off from ‘Fried Green Tomatoes.'”
Crowe pitched “I Will Always Love You” to producer and star Kevin Costner instead. He loved it. According to Forbes, Parton earned $10 million in royalties from Houston’s version.
When the song turned 50 years old in 2024, Parton reflected on its unlikely journey. “It will always hold a special place in my heart as I hope it does yours,” Parton wrote on Instagram. “I never realized it was your song.”
