She Come By It Natural: Dolly Parton and the Women Who Lived Her Songs

by Sarah Smarsh

When Elvis Presley asked to record “I Will Always Love You,” Parton was ecstatic, she recalled in a 2006 interview with CMT. She was a star by then, but Presley was already an icon. Then, at the last minute before the recording session, Presley’s manager, “Colonel” Tom Parker, tried to pull a business maneuver on her. “He said, ‘Now you know we have a rule that Elvis don’t record anything that we don’t take half the publishing,’ ” Parton told CMT. “And I was really quiet. I said, ‘Well, now it’s already been a hit. 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.’ ” Parker told her it was deal or no deal. “I guess they thought since they already had it prepared and already had it ready, that I would do it,” Parton mused. “I said, ‘I’m really sorry,’ and I cried all night.… Other people were saying, ‘You’re nuts. It’s Elvis Presley. I mean, hell, I’d give him all of it.’ ” But Parton went with her gut. It would prove one of the most lucrative decisions of her life. “I Will Always Love You” went to number one again when Parton re-recorded it in 1982, making it the only country song in history to top the charts in two separate decades. The song did it a third time, in 1992, when Whitney Houston made it a pop blockbuster on The Bodyguard soundtrack. Thus, Parton’s parting gift to the man who would have held her down ended up one of the most successful songs in music history.