The duo of Dolly Parton and Porter Wagoner was tremendously successful. They produced fourteen Top 10 hits together, but the two artists were constantly at odds. Wagoner sought to confine and control Dolly, but she was determined to break free. In 1974, bolstered by the successes of songs like “Coat of Many Colors,” “My Tennessee Mountain Home,” and the Number 1 country hit “Jolene,” Dolly stopped touring with Wagoner’s show, left the cast of his television show, and set into motion a plan for their professional separation.
“I worked with Porter Wagoner on his show for seven years,” Dolly told the Los Angeles Times in 2008. “I don’t mean this in a bad way, so don’t play it up that way—but he very much was a male chauvinist pig. Certainly a male chauvinist. He was in charge, and it was his show, but he was also very strong-willed. That’s why we fought like crazy, because I wouldn’t put up with a bunch of stuff. Out of respect for him, I knew he was the boss, and I would go along to where I felt this was reasonable for me. But once it passed points where it was like, your way or my way, and this is just to control, to prove to you that I can do it, then I would just pitch a damn fit. I wouldn’t care if it killed me. I would just say what I thought.”
Included on the popular Jolene album was Dolly’s farewell song of gratitude to Wagoner, “I Will Always Love You,” a song that would soon become her signature tune. She explained the story behind the song to Bill DeMain of The Performing Songwriter in 1996: “He wouldn’t listen to nothing at that time because he was so angry and so spiteful and so mean about the whole thing that he wouldn’t allow me a conversation to try to explain why I was doing what I was doing. I thought, ‘Well, the only way I’m going to be able to express it is to write it.’ Everybody can understand a song. There were so many things I wanted to say, there was so much emotion, feeling and heartache on his part and my part. Once I started it, the song seemed to pour out.” —Ed.
“People are always kidding me about my figure. I have too much up here. It’s always been that way, and people have always just used me as a punching bag or a guinea pig or something. People think if you’ve got anything at the top, you couldn’t come by it naturally—that you have to have it hand-made.” —Dolly Parton
She was standing there in the hallway, autographing pictures of herself.
The photographic image which said, “With Love, Dolly Parton” across its left shoulder didn’t exactly look like her, but either she didn’t agree or didn’t mind. It hardly seemed possible the face in the picture could ever blush. She went right on signing until the stack was finished.
Judging from Dolly’s appearance, one might have thought she was on the way to a concert or television taping, rather than just another interview. There were mounds of blonde hair—some real, some not. A white western jacket and matching pants. The face that draws stares, and, of course, the figure that feeds the imagination like a candy shop.
It’s all been said before.
Prior to opening the door to her office, she told the secretary to hold her telephone calls for a while. Embarrassed, she giggled, “Don’t I sound like a big executive?”
After switching seats a couple of times, she settled down in the big reclining chair behind her desk. It didn’t seem to be where she wanted to sit, but was a matter of technical necessity since the only plug in the room for a tape recorder was behind the desk.
There were so many things to talk about. The relationship with Porter Wagoner, the new band, new bus, new booking agent, new directions, new freedom. Then there were old jokes, old gossip, old habits and the good old childhood days in the Smoky Mountains. Maybe a few surprises, too.
Most of it hasn’t been said before.
Since Dolly ended her seven-year partnership with Porter Wagoner, the man with wagon wheels on his coat, a lot of people have been wondering what’s going to become of her. After all, Porter had a mighty big hand in making her what she is today. That’s what she used to say.
Why did they split? Only Porter and Dolly know for sure. The reason given was Dolly wasn’t getting the recognition she deserves while riding Porter’s wagon. There were smiles and hugs and words like, “We’ve worked for this day,” but to skeptics it all sounded too smooth and sudden. Whether it was so peaceful is a story that probably will never be told. Dolly said she didn’t want to talk about it. However, she did say she is happy to have her freedom.
“I’ve always pretty well done things my own way as far as my personality is concerned,” she said. “But now I want to do things more my way than I have in the past. I was proud to be a part of the Porter Wagoner organization, but this gives me a chance to prove myself and carry on in my own way. This gives me a chance to do some things that I wouldn’t have felt were fair for me to suggest in his show just because I felt they would be better for me.”
Porter and Dolly still have adjoining offices on 18th Avenue South. They still are friends—even business partners in a sense—but only when it feels right. “The work we do now together is just the work we choose to do,” she explained. Sort of like Loretta Lynn and Conway Twitty or Barbara Mandrell and David Houston. In country music, a duet album is a synonym for bonus money, so Porter and Dolly continue to cut them.
During the last year, perhaps her greatest concern has been problems with her voice. She has had to curtail interviews with disc jockeys and reporters, and even hold off on autographs at times because she can’t afford to talk to the fans.
“I’ve had nodes on my vocal chords for the past year,” she said, “and I’ve had to give them a rest. I’ve done that four times in the year and been out of work for several weeks at a time. They say that if I don’t cut back, I’ll have a serious problem. It hit me at a bad time, trying to get started and re-organize. Starting the first of the year, I’m going to have to work quite a bit less.”
Dolly Parton’s new band is largely a family affair. Her brother, Randy Parton, fronts the group and plays bass. Two cousins, Dwight Puckett and Sidney Spiva, play drums and steel guitar. The only non-family member is Bill Rehrig, whom Miss Parton said she has “adopted” into the band. Her road manager is an uncle, Lewis [sic] Owens, who has helped her career since the earliest days.
“I didn’t use my kin folks because they were kinfolks,” she said in a soft, but defensive voice. Nobody had attacked. “I used them because I thought they were the best I could find.” In the cases of brother Randy and cousin Dwight, she even went to their concerts and stood in the audience to see if their unaffected stage styles were what she wanted. Being very family oriented, she said she was glad she could find suitable kinfolks, but maintained that if difficulties arise, kinship will be ignored.
Dolly Parton likes to use the time traveling between shows for writing new songs. She said she composed 17 new tunes while rolling down the highway last month in her new bus. During the four months after the split with Wagoner, while preoccupied with building her own show, not one song found its way onto paper. She said she wanted to keep her mind clear until the business matters were settled.
Songwriting means a lot to this 28-year-old entertainer. She once said she started writing songs before she could even write songs—before she ever went to school, when she couldn’t write or read or spell. Music has always been near the center of her life, and generally it’s been her music, not created by anyone else or patterned after another style. “My writing is more personal to me than anything,” she said, “and to think that somebody would really take the time to listen . . . ’cause I’m saying a lot more in my songs than a lot of people may know. Even the simplest of my songs, I’ve got really deep feelings inside of them.”
It is perhaps easily understandable that some of Dolly Parton’s most ardent fans have tended to exercise their eyes at the expense of their ears. It is as if the fact that she is a genuine country singer with a unique style and repertoire is only a secondary feature. But to play down the importance of music to Dolly Parton would be to not understand Dolly Parton. She may not have worked especially hard to quash the myth that beautiful blondes and brains do not run together, but a few minutes’ conversation with her would be enough to convince any skeptic that she has a good head on her shoulders, a vivid imagination, and a great dedication to succeed as a musician.
The quality of her writing, and the fact that she loves to have an audience listen carefully to each word may bring her to the attention of a new group of listeners. The “underground” country fans, the younger set, love a singer capable of putting life into lyrics. While Dolly was with Porter, she might as well have been the cornerstone of the Nashville establishment.
Few self-respecting Waylon Jennings fans would dare get caught with one of her albums in their rack. Not that they didn’t sneak a listen. Porter and Dolly simply worked for a different audience. But with Dolly’s show of independence and the contemporary sound of her records (which are largely produced by Wagoner) there just might be a match in the making.
“You’ve got plenty of reason to think that,” she agreed. “In fact, that’s all I hear lately. People keep asking me if I’m aware of how popular I’m becoming in those areas. I’m tickled to death because I wasn’t expecting it. But like I said before, I’ll always be me. I won’t be no different than I have always been. I will work the college circuit. I may throw them a few songs to please them on those particular shows because I don’t want them to think I don’t care whether I work them or not. But to me, it’ll just mean more people are aware of what I can do—my writing.”
“I’m real inside,” she said. “What I wear on the outside, well, that’s got nothing to do with the way I am. I’m a totally different person from the way I look. I really am. If I was as real on the outside as I am on the inside, I would look like a blank wall.
“The reason I like my hair and pretty clothes is it’s something I never had as a kid,” she said. “I had to look and live like the hippies are looking and living now. As children, we had to wear britches with the hind end out of them and patches all over. The faded denim and stringy hair and scrubbed faces. It was fine, but we had no choice. So then, I automatically thought when I get grown up, I’m going to have pretty clothes and pretty jewelry and pretty make-up and pretty hair-dos. I wanted to know what it feels like.
“So now, the young people have gone back to what I have already been through, and that’s what the connection is. That still laces us together. I’ve been there. I know what it feels like to live down to earth—to be earth people. I still am inside.”
Although Dolly’s musical success has had a dramatic financial effect on her life, most clearly illustrated in her appearance, any change has been self-imposed. The mere thought of anyone suggesting that she conform to someone else’s tastes was enough to set her off on the afternoon of this interview, a few days before the Country Music Association award show.
She leaned back in her chair, propped her feet on the desk and spoke her piece.
“I ain’t gonna never change unless I want to,” she asserted stubbornly. She may have been trying to sound tough, but the hint of a smile in her face told you she wouldn’t scare a kid on Halloween night. “I don’t try to follow no styles,” she continued. “I told you this before and I’ll tell anybody else. I ain’t in style, but I like to think I’ve got my own style.
“A while ago, I was talking to some people with the CMA (Country Music Association). I won’t mention who, but on the show—I’m going to be on the awards show—they mentioned that I should wear less hair. They said, ‘Has anybody approached you with the fact that you should wear less hair?’ I said, ‘No, and if they do, I’ll say I’ll not wear less hair because if I can’t be comfortable, I’m not going to be on the show. I’m not selling nothing but my talent, and I’m wearing what I please.’ That’s the way I feel.
“I mean it,” she said, gathering a second wind. “I thought, ‘What do they want me there for. Are they trying to make me into something different than what the CMA stands for?’
“People know that I wear a lot of hair. They already know I wear make-up. My country music fans have already accepted that fact. It’s the people who don’t know no different that are trying to change me all the time. But they aren’t gonna change me.” She was smiling openly now, but this was not a time to smile back. Miss Dolly wasn’t finished.
“It’s just like people are talking and said, ‘Well, have you heard any . . .’” She paused, then gathered courage. “I maybe shouldn’t mention this, but I don’t reckon it’ll hurt nothing to be honest,” she reasoned. “I won’t say who it was. They said, ‘Have you heard any controversy about the people who’ve been nominated for the awards?’ They said, ‘All kinds of people are mad because Olivia Newton-John and Mac Davis are nominated.’ They said, ‘Have you heard anything?’
“I said, ‘No, I don’t even know who’s nominated. I know that I am because they told me at the office. And I know that Olivia Newton-John is because I heard it on the Ralph Emery Show.’ I said, ‘It doesn’t make any difference to me because all the country people are trying to go pop and all the pop people are trying to go country. So whoever wins, I figure it’s equal.’
“I told them I would like to win the award some day, but whether I do or not won’t make me work any less hard. Because if I was working for an award, I would have quit long ago. I think it would be wonderful to win. I’m proud to be country. And I figure the CMA should know what they’re doing. If they don’t, I can’t change them.”
She stopped herself again, probably wondering how all this was going to sound in print. The Country Music Association, an organization within the industry with the stated aim of promoting country music, might not take too kindly to her airing her complaints so publicly.
“I maybe shouldn’t be telling all this,” she began slowly. “Please don’t make it sound hard like I was really fussing. All I am saying is every year I’ve been on the CMA awards show, even when I was just presenting, they have always asked me to wear less hair and make-up. Then I would be like everybody else and I don’t want to be like everybody else. I’m not doing anything to be different. I just don’t follow people’s trends. I’ve got to do what I want to do and wear my make-up and hair like I want to.”
Dolly Parton’s reasons for wearing such generous amounts of hair go beyond mere stubbornness. She may look quite tall with the four-inch heels on her feet and golden swirls on her head, but in truth, she’s far from being a skyscraper. “I’m little. I’m only five feet tall,” she confessed. “I’ve always had a complex about being short, so I like my hair high.
“I wear wigs for the convenience of it, but my own hair is blonde and long, and when I fix my own hair, I fix it the same way. I wear wigs just because I don’t like to sit for long under a hairdrier and I don’t like to spend all day primping. A lot of people think, from the way I look, I spend hours and hours getting ready, but I can completely be dressed in 30 minutes.”
Talking at such length about her looks perhaps was wearing Dolly’s defenses thin. Her feet still were nonchalantly propped on the desk, but she no longer seemed quite so authoritative. Maybe it was frustration and the need to vent her emotions that pushed her on. Whatever the reason, she was talking freely, pausing only to blush with embarrassment or giggle girlishly at her confessions.
Her eyes sparkled and she broke into laughter as she thought of telling off those persons who dwell on the outer Dolly Parton. Still giggling, she added, “For years, when people would talk about my dimples, I would say it’s nothing but the sink holes in my make-up.”
“I can laugh at myself because I’m not a pretty person,” she explained. “I mean I don’t have all that natural beauty. But I’m like every other woman. I like to look as good as I can with what I’ve got to work with. I love to play in my make-up and I love hair-dos and clothes.
“But you know, people are always kidding me about my figure. I have too much up here. It’s always been that way, and people have always just used me as a punching bag or a guinea pig or something. People think if you’ve got anything at the top you couldn’t come by it naturally—that you have to have it hand-made. You know?
“It runs in our family, and it’s not that big a deal. It used to embarrass me and hurt my feelings when people would say, ‘Yeah, I know, she went to so-and-so and had plastic surgery.’ I’m serious. But I didn’t go nowhere and have plastic surgery. It really bothered me for a long time. See, for years, since I was 13 years old, I’ve been overgrown. Really.”
“Just once . . . well, twice . . . I wore a real low-neck dress,” she confessed. “It embarrassed me to death. I sat and pulled at it, you know. I only wore it because other people talked me into doing it. I was so uncomfortable. I would rather wear a turtle neck than something low-neck any day.”
“Oh, yeah, I know about the gossip,” she said without resolution. “People have had me and Porter married and me and Charley Pride married, and then me running with everybody in the business. For one thing, it’s not true, because I’m a better person than that. And for another thing, if I was gonna run with anybody, I wouldn’t dare run with anybody in the music business because it’s like a family. I mean, that would be like running with your kinfolks or somebody.
“Everybody would know it. If you had any self-respect, you wouldn’t do it. Like I said, I don’t do it anyway.” She grew tired of the subject and concluded, “It don’t make no difference anyway. I don’t want to come out sounding self-righteous, but people are going to say and think what they please anyway. It don’t bother me so much anymore.”
A few minutes later she was in the yard before her office, posing for pictures. She was clearly self-conscious, nervously posing her leg, trying different positions for her hands. Giggling all the while.
An unseen admirer in a building across the street let go a long, low wolf whistle. Dolly pretended he wasn’t there.
DOLLY DIAMOND
On Ambition
“Yes, I’m ambitious. But I hope I’m not hard. I don’t want anything at anyone else’s expense. If I ever get to the point where I really go off on an ego trip, I hope there’s someone there to put me down.”
—To Bob Greene, Chicago Sun-Times, February 2, 1976
DOLLY DIAMOND
On Growing Old
“I have no fear of gettin’ old. Gettin’ old don’t mean you can’t be creative. I picture myself as an old woman still bein’ very useful and writin’ things for people to enjoy. I imagine my whole life full of songs and poems and stories about real things and genuine people. Dolly Parton’s a Mountain Gal, true and simple.”
—To Kevin Kelly, Boston Globe, July 3, 1977