Dolly Parton always knew she wanted to forge her own path in the music industry, and that’s why she parted ways with one of her first managers.
The legendary country singer has opened up on how she always “bashed heads” with Porter Wagoner who gave Parton her first big break.
Wagoner was a country music singer who hosted his own nationally syndicated musical variety show on which he introduced Parton to the world. He then signed her to a multi-year deal on the show, mentored the iconic singer and also managed her career.
Parton was speaking with cooking mogul Martha Stewart on her eponymous podcast, when the host asked her how she was able to wrestle her career away from Wagoner and control her own fate.
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“Why do you think you were able to do that when so many other women struggled to control their own career?” Stewart asked on the episode which premiered on Wednesday.
“I actually had come to Nashville to be my own star…I got a start in the big time with Porter because he had the number one syndicated show at the time,” Parton began, adding that she had already had some chart success before agreeing to perform on Porter’s show for five years, even though she “wound up staying seven.”
“We had a lot of duets together, but we were like oil and water, so to speak,” she said. “I never really figured out, if we were so much alike we couldn’t get along, or that [it was because] we were so different.”
Parton said the pair were friends, by they “just kind of bashed heads.”
“He had his dreams and I had mine, and I just felt that I had to go, and ‘climbing on that ladder of success,’ as they say, didn’t go over well with him,” she said.
The pair managed to reconcile and performed together again, with Wagoner appearing on Parton’s own variety show.
“I was with Porter the day he died. So we had made full circle and that was all good, but I just had to stand my ground,” Parton explained.
“I just wasn’t going to take somebody else’s idea of who I was and live under their roof,” she said. “I had my own Identity and I had to fight to keep it and I’m still doing that.”
Stewart then questioned Parton about two of her biggest hits, “Jolene” and “I Will Always Love You,” which the singer told her was her “leaving song for Porter.”
Parton recalled how when she played him “I Will Always Love You” that Wagoner “started crying.”
He told her, “that’s the best song you ever wrote and you can leave if I can produce it.”
Parton agreed to his terms and she released the song in 1974 where it stormed to the top of the Billboard Hot Country charts. It also hit the top of those charts in 1982 when it featured on the soundtrack for the The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, the movie in which Parton starred alongside Burt Reynolds.
“I Will Always Love You” was given a third lease on life when Whitney Houston recorded a cover for The Bodyguard soundtrack.
Houston’s version became a cultural phenomenon, topped music charts in 34 countries around the world and is the bestselling single by a female artist in history.
