Porter Wagoner Lied and Told Dolly Parton a Country Icon Hated Her Voice to ‘Strengthen Himself With Her’
Early in Dolly Parton’s career, Porter Wagoner told her he took a major risk for her. He pushed to get RCA to sign her, despite the fact that Chet Atkins, the head of the Nashville studio, did not like her voice. Atkins later pushed back against this story. He believed Wagoner told Parton this lie in order to grow closer to her.
Dolly Parton recounted a story of Porter Wagoner defending her voice
After Parton joined Wagoner’s television show, he tried to get her on the same record label as him. The problem, according to him, was that Atkins didn’t think Parton had what it took.
“This girl just can’t sing,” Atkins reportedly told Wagoner, per the book Dolly: The Biography by Alanna Nash. “I don’t think she’d sell, because she just cannot sing.”
Wagoner pushed for Parton, though.
“Well, I’ll tell you what,” Wagoner told Atkins. “You take out of my royalties what she loses this year because I believe she can sing, and that she’ll make it.”
Parton said she felt very grateful that Wagoner believed in her.
“Porter’s a man I have great respect for,” Parton said in 1975, adding, “He gave me a chance. He believed in me, when a lot of people didn’t, because of my unique sound. He believed that I had a lot of potential, that it could be almost like a gimmick. That I could catch on.”
Chet Atkins said he never told Porter Wagoner he hated Dolly Parton’s singing
According to Atkins, this was not how his meeting with Wagoner went.
“When Porter brought me her tape, I listened to it and I said, ‘She’s fine,’” Atkins told Nash. “I suppose Porter just told Dolly I didn’t like her to strengthen himself with her. But I’ve always loved Dolly, and I am telling you the truth.”
He worked with Parton over the years, and he could hardly believe she was able to spend time with him. He was surprised she wasn’t insulted.
“I heard her on the radio one day doing an interview, and she said, ‘Chet didn’t used to like my singin’, but now he does.’ I thought, ‘What in the world is she talking about?’” he said. “So the next time I saw her, I asked her, and she told me what Porter had said about how I signed her. I wondered how in the hell she’d been able to face me thinkin’ that all these years.”
She might have believed it because she didn’t love her own singing voice
Parton may have brushed off the supposed insult from Atkins because she didn’t think she had the best singing voice.
“My manager just hates me to say that, because he says it’s not true. I don’t have a great voice,” she told Playboy in 1978. “I have a different voice and I can do things with it that a lot of people can’t. But it’s so delicate in other ways, there’s no way I can do some of the things other singers can.”
She loved to sing, but she didn’t take it personally when people disliked her voice. She didn’t think it was for everyone.
“I used to have a lot of vibrato in my voice. It could almost be real irritating to a lot of people’s ears. It was a natural thing for me, but some people say, ‘You sound like you been eating billy goat.’ Bah, bah,” she shared. “I guess I overdone it, so I tried to learn at takin’ some of the vibrato out. I would like to improve my voice to be able to hit better notes. My notes are not always true. But my heart is always true. And the emotions I put in is always true.”
