Dolly Parton and Porter Wagoner’s ‘Embarrassment’ of a Final Album Was Only Released After He Sued Her
Dolly Parton and Porter Wagoner collaborated for years, releasing 13 total albums together. Their final album didn’t come out until years after they went their separate ways, though. Initially, the album was not going to come out. It sat unreleased until Wagoner filed a lawsuit against Parton.
Dolly Parton and Porter Wagoner’s final album almost didn’t receive a public release
In 1975, Parton and Wagoner released their twelfth studio album, Say Forever You’ll Be Mine. The record received positive reviews, stoking excitement for a follow-up. Fans had to wait, though. Parton was working with a new management team, and they did not want to release the album.
“[A]fter Porter and Dolly finished the recording, Porter allegedly received word from Dolly’s new management firm that the album was not to be released,” wrote Alanna Nash in the book Dolly: The Biography. “Gossip has it that Katz-Gallin-Cleary told Porter that another duet album would be an embarrassment to Dolly, that her career was now headed in other directions.”
Not everyone had as harsh an opinion of the album as Parton’s management team reportedly did.
“Some of the best things they’ve ever done are sittin’ down there in the can,” Wagoner’s secretary, Joan McGriff, said.
The Dolly Parton and Porter Wagoner album came out after he sued her
In 1979, Wagoner sued Parton for breach of contract, five years after she exited The Porter Wagoner Show.
“Porter Wagoner filed suit against me for approximately three million dollars, claiming he had made me a star and was entitled to a percentage of my career for life,” Parton wrote in her book Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business. “I could have probably won the case in court, but to spare Carl and my family the heartache a long bitter court fight would have caused, I agreed to settle out of court for around one million dollars.”
As part of the settlement, they released the album Porter & Dolly in 1980.
She spoke about how she dealt with the lawsuit
Parton scraped together the funds to pay Wagoner the million dollars.
“Although I appeared to be a star in the eyes of the public, I did not have a million dollars or anything even close to it,” she wrote. “Even a millionaire would be hard-pressed to put his hands on a million dollars in liquid assets under such circumstances.”
She said this was no easy task, but she believed it was a necessary one.
“I paid the debt,” she wrote. “It took everything I had, everything Carl had, everything I could make for years to come, but I paid it. I made up my mind that if he could live with it, I could live without it.
She hinted that she didn’t think it was the right move on Wagoner’s part.
“I have done all right without it,” she wrote, adding, “I suppose Porter has done all right with it. I am neither his conscience nor his accountant.”
Parton and Wagoner reconciled before his death.
