In March 2024, Dolly Parton took to Instagram to mark the 50th anniversary of her tear-jerking masterpiece “I Will Always Love You”. “It will always hold a special place in my heart as I hope it does in yours,” she wrote – only for a fan to immediately reply, “I never realised it was your song.”
Parton, who has died aged 80, would surely have conceded that point. Incredibly, she wrote “I Will Always Love You” the same day she penned her other defining smash, “Jolene”. But while that second song will forever be associated with Parton – when Beyoncé covered it on her Cowboy Carter album, it was impossible not to compare it to Parton’s original and find it wanting – “I Will Always Love You” has gone out into the world and taken on an existence of its own, even though the lyrics are among the most personal Parton ever put to paper.
It is, of course, best known as the theme from Whitney Houston’s 1992 blockbuster The Bodyguard, where it expresses the passion Houston’s pop-star character feels for her hunky security guard (Kevin Costner). A global number one – it topped the UK singles charts for 10 weeks – that version is said to have earned Parton $10 million in royalties, and she recalled how she was so astounded by what Houston had done with the tune – making an already epic track feel as vast as a sunset – that she had to stop driving.
“I was like a dog hearing a whistle… It was ringing some sort of bell… By the time I realised that she was ready to go into the chorus, I couldn’t believe my little country sad song could even be done like that. That was one of the greatest experiences I’ve ever had in my entire life.”
Hearing Houston cover it might have been a great experience, but the origin story of “I Will Always Love You” was the very opposite. It emerged from one of the most challenging chapters of Parton’s career – her painful break from her mentor, iconic country singer Porter Wagoner.
It was Wagoner who had given Parton her first shot at fame when she arrived in Nashville from rural Tennessee as a starry-eyed unknown straight out of school in 1964. At the time, Wagoner was one of the uncrowned kings of country and even had his own variety TV show. After hearing Parton’s duet with Bill Phillips on the song “Put It Off Until Tomorrow”, he invited her to join The Porter Wagoner Show as his “girl singer”.
Dolly Parton and Porter Wagoner in 1968 in Nashville, Tennessee (Photo: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)They had a natural chemistry on stage, and their voices – his dark and husky, hers sweet and sharp – were the perfect mix. It was with Wagoner that Parton had her first hit, the 1968 duet “The Last Thing On My Mind”.
But Parton was too ambitious and talented to play the ingenue for very long, and by 1973 had decided to break with Wagoner and go her own way. “I really felt like I needed to move on. 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.”
She knew Wagoner wouldn’t take the news well. She was conflicted, too, because she deeply respected her mentor and everything he had done for her. She was moving on not because of any animus towards him but because she felt the call of destiny. “How am I going to make him understand how much I appreciate everything, but that I have to go?” she said. “I thought, ‘Well, what do you do best? You write songs.’ So I sat down and I wrote this song.”
She walked into Wagoner’s office the following morning, guitar in hand, and told him to take a seat. Baffled, he did as he was instructed, and she sang “I Will Always Love You”. He knew immediately what she was saying (“If I should stay, I would only be in your way. So I’ll go, but I know I’ll think of you each step of the way”). They would always be close – but she had to go.
Wagoner began to cry but said he would give Parton his blessing for her solo career. There was one caveat: he wanted to produce “I Will Always Love You”. She agreed, and that original version was a hit on the country charts in 1974. They stayed close: she was at his bedside when he died in 2007.
Dolly Parton in 9 to 5 (Photo: 20th Century Fox)Her mentor’s response to “I Will Always Love You” – tears mixed with respect – encapsulated the track’s power. It is a break-up ballad where neither party really wants to part ways but where circumstances – the random cruelty of the universe – dictate otherwise. What Parton is saying is that it would be nice if things could continue as they are, but they cannot – a feeling many listeners will have experienced in their own lives, albeit in circumstances wildly different to those of the song’s composer.
The tune’s popularity with country fans soon brought it to the attention of Elvis Presley, who became instantly besotted, believing he could weave his magic with it. “This is the greatest thing that’s ever happened to me as a songwriter,” Parton told him when he phoned her up from his palatial abode of Graceland. There was a hitch, though. Presley’s notoriously hardball manager, Colonel Tom Parker, wanted Parton to sign away half the royalties to the composition: going forward, “I Will Always Love You” would belong to Elvis as much as to her.
Parker must have felt he held all the cards: he represented the bigger star in rock, and Parton was a 28-year-old woman unknown outside country music.
But Parton was not going to be walked all over and so stepped away from the deal. She would rather turn down Elvis than allow someone else to take credit for her music. It was a display of fortitude that would serve as an inspiration for subsequent generations of female artists such as Taylor Swift – who paid tribute to the late singer, describing her legacy as “ever-lasting”.
Dolly Parton at Dollywood circa 1993 in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee (Photo: Ron Davis/Getty Images)“I said, ‘I can’t do that’,” Parton would later recall of her face-off with Parker in a radio interview with Howard Stern. “Of course I cried all night about that.”
Cried but carried on, and, thanks to subsequent hits such as “9 To 5”, Parton soon became a superstar in her own right. “I Will Always Love You” meanwhile was covered by a multitude of artists, including Kenny Rogers and Linda Ronstadt. However, it took the Houston version to firmly imprint itself on the public consciousness – a moment of triumph that earned Parton a fortune and vindicated her decision to look Elvis’s manager in the eye and say “no”.
“When Whitney’s version came out,” she would say, “I made enough money to buy Graceland.”
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