Porter Wagoner Sued Dolly Parton For $3 Million. Her Side

Nashville, March 21, 1979. A lawsuit is filed against the reigning Entertainer of the Year in country music, under her married name, Dolly Parton Dean. The man suing her is Porter Wagoner, who put her on his television show in 1967 and sang beside her for seven years. He wants three million dollars, and 15 percent of her record royalties for as long as she receives them. Six years earlier, she had written a song to tell him she was leaving, and sang it to him in his office. She called it I Will Always Love You. This is Dolly Parton and Porter Wagoner as the record has them. A girl from Locust Ridge in Sevier County who left for Nashville the day after high school, and the man at the laundromat who looked at her face. Porter's show, Norma Jean's empty spot, and the audiences who chanted her name at Dolly. Thirteen duet albums, a publishing company he half owned, and a paycheck that by her account never changed. The rumors, and her answers to them. Then Jolene, a secret trip to RCA in New York, the song she wrote by the fireplace, and the morning she sang it to him. Elvis, Colonel Parker, and the half she would not sign away. The suit, the settlement she said cost her the first million dollars she ever made, an album made from two separate photographs, and the night at the Opry in 2007 when she sang it to him one last time. If you want the record behind more of the legends you grew up with, subscribe. If this one changed how you see them, leave a like. And tell me in the comments, where are you watching from? Sources include Billboard (March and November 1979); Dolly Parton, Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business (1994) and her later books; United Press International (1983, 1986); The Tennessean; Newsweek (2007); CMT; and NPR. Film from the Prelinger Archives. Images from Wikimedia Commons contributors. #dollyparton #porterwagoner #iwillalwaysloveyou #countrymusic #countryhistory #theprivaterecord