Dolly Parton Said It’s ‘Frightening’ to Look Back on Her Album Covers With Porter Wagoner
Dolly Parton got her big break in show business when she started working with Porter Wagoner. He had a television show, granting her exposure and a platform for her music. While their working relationship ended sourly, she credits him with giving her career a boost when she needed it. Still, when she looked back on the albums they made together, she joked that she found them a bit scary.
Dolly Parton joked that her album covers with Porter Wagoner were ‘frightening’
Before Parton became a fixture on The Porter Wagoner Show, she watched it with her family. She liked his music, but she also saw something of herself in the way he looked.
“We could all relate to his sense of humor and his ‘good ol’ boy’ ways,” Parton wrote in her book Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business. “I could relate to his shiny bright costumes, his flashy smile, and his blond helmet. Someday I still hope to get my hair as high as his was then.”
When she began working with Wagoner, they complemented each other both vocally and visually. She joked that looking back on the way they presented themselves could be a bit off-putting.
“Porter and I made many duet albums together,” Parton wrote. “It’s frightening to look back at some of those old album covers with the two of us dressed in almost the same clothes, wearing almost the same hair styles, and smiling identical cheesy smiles. It’s funny how your tastes change.”
Dolly Parton shared the difficulties of working with Porter Wagoner
While Parton appreciated her time with Wagoner and felt grateful to him, she also acknowledged that their relationship had problems. She wanted to grow as a musician without him.
“We just didn’t always agree (seldom agreed) on how to handle my career and how I fit into the overall scheme of things,” she wrote. “In all fairness to Porter, it was his show. He was the boss, and I was nothing (big deal, the boss of nothing, joke, joke). Seriously though, I guess I should have been more willing to go by Porter’s rules, but they just went against every cell in my body after a point.”
As a result, they fought often, which Parton said taught her some important life lessons.
“It was a great lesson in patience, tolerance, acceptance, love, and especially forgiveness as we dealt with greed, spite, possessiveness, jealousy, fear — even hate at times,” she wrote. “The former being angels, and the latter being demons, I think of Porter as one of the most important angels in my life, even with all of his demons. I have enough of my own demons to wrestle with, as we all do. We certainly were not shy about turning our demons loose on each other at any given moment. It was not uncommon for us to argue and holler loud enough to be heard a block away, or at the back of the bus.”
She wrote ‘I Will Always Love You’ for him
By 1972, Parton was ready to move on from The Porter Wagoner Show. He didn’t want her to leave, so she wrote the song “I Will Always Love You” to express her feelings to him.
“‘I Will Always Love You’ is such a deeply personal song from a very [transitional time] in my personal life and career,” she told Marie Claire. “I wrote this song when I was ready to leave The Porter Wagoner Show and go out and start my solo career. Writing it was the only way I could think to express how I was feeling at that time and make him understand how much I loved and appreciated him and everything he had done for me. Some of the greatest songs come out of the most painful feelings.”
Wagoner was so moved by the song that he agreed she should move on from his program.
