‘I Will Always Love You’ at 50
Dolly Parton’s ‘I Will Always Love You’ was released 50 years ago a couple weeks ago and it’s a very good song. We all know Parton famously wrote IWALY and Jolene on the same day, which, like, one time I made 4 batches of ice cream and packed them all into pints and cleaned the machine all in an hour and forty five minutes and that’s kind of the same thing if you squint. She wrote the song to let Porter Wagoner know she was leaving his show and striking out on her own and that makes me mad because imagine working with someone so annoying you have to write one of the best songs ever written to get out of it.
The year after it was released, Elvis was going to record it, but Tom Parker, his manager, insisted on half the publishing rights and Dolly said no, like a G. The whole germ for this post, my entire reason for being at this moment, was seeing that fact about Elvis and knowing Dolly teases IWALY not once, not twice, but, well, OK, only twice, on her duets album. It’s on Wrecking Ball, and she teases it AND sings about the whole episode on I Dreamed About Elvis. Priscilla Presley told Dolly Elvis loved the song so much and sang it to her on the day of their divorce. I do wish we could hear an Elvis recording of IWALY.
Dolly rerecorded the song for Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, but when Whitney covered IWALY, Dolly called it “One of the biggest thrills and one of the most overwhelming feelings I’ve ever had about anything in my life,” but that almost didn’t happen, too, twice, because they were going to do ‘What Becomes of the Broken Hearted’ before that song got featured in Steel Magnolias (starring Dolly, wtf) and then Whitney was set to cover the Linda Ronstadt version which leaves off a verse at the end, but Dolly interceded at the last moment to set them straight.
Finally, my bar in Cambridge has a Dolly Parton-themed bathroom which has 5 stars on google maps and was written up in the New York Times.
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