![\"Dolly](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Dolly-Parton-Musician-Far-Out-Magazine-1140x855.jpg\")
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Credit: Far Out \/ Matthew Barnes \/ Blue Eye Records \/ Sugar Hill Records \/ Library Of Congress<\/p>\n
Sun 10 May 2026 16:00, UK <\/p>\n
Dolly Parton<\/a> wasn\u2019t the kind of artist that dwelled on the negative aspects of the music business.\u00a0<\/p>\n It can be a cutthroat industry, and there have been many times where Parton has been stuck with tunes that she didn\u2019t want to make, but she figured that she wa better off focusing on the positives than worrying about the worst records that she ever made or the more embarrassing pieces of her discography. She knew that it was better to focus on what made her happy, but that also meant cutting herself loose from people that didn\u2019t have the same interests that she had when she started.<\/p>\n She said right at the top of her career that she was no dumb blonde<\/a>, and the rest of her career was her willingness to fight for everything, even if it meant getting a little bit nasty. There were bound to be a few pieces of her career that didn\u2019t work out like her back-and-forth with Linda Ronstadt in the 1990s, but usually there was a moment where she could find time to hash things out with even her biggest adversaries when she wanted to.<\/p>\n But the Nashville machine usually doesn\u2019t take to mavericks like Parton who want to do their own thing. She was always convinced that she was going to make the best music that anyone had ever heard, but sometimes that clashed with what the bogstandard formula was on Music Row. It wasn\u2019t about making her brand of music, and since she had begun her career working with Porter Wagoner, there was always a sense of loyalty that she needed to have towards the one who first gave her a shot.<\/p>\n That might have worked for a couple of years, but Parton wasn\u2019t going to sit around and watch someone else dictate her career for her. She wanted to go off on her own and make music that didn\u2019t need his voice behind everything, and even if it would have meant ruffling some feathers, that\u2019s what Parton was going to do if she could be happy with writing her own songs and having a career of her own.<\/p>\n It was nothing personal towards Wagoner, but after one too many fights with him over her creative direction, she figured that she was better off betting on herself, saying<\/a>, \u201cWe had a lot of duets together, but we were like oil and water, so to speak. I never really figured out, if we were so much alike we couldn\u2019t get along, or that [it was because] we were so different. He had his dreams and I had mine, and I just felt that I had to go, and \u2018climbing on that ladder of success,\u2019 as they say, didn\u2019t go over well with him.\u201d<\/p>\n And for a woman getting her start in Nashville, this was a big risk to take. No one would have had the same kind of bravery that Parton had, but she knew that she was coming up with the greatest tunes of her career, and she wasn\u2019t about to let someone else stand beside her and try to take partial credit for what she did. She wanted the chance to fly, and getting over this hurdle was enough to prepare her for what would come later.<\/p>\n Further reading: From The Vault<\/p>\n She may have immortalised her relationship with Wagoner on \u2018I Will Always Love You\u2019, but if she could turn him down and still move on in life, she could do the same thing when Elvis Presley\u2019s management<\/a> tried to come after her copyright. As much as she loved Presley, she wasn\u2019t going to let go of the writing credits to her song for anything, no matter how fat the royalty checks might have been.<\/p>\n There were a lot of people that would have caved under the pressure that Parton was under, but in the music business, all it takes to build up that bravery is to get over that first hurdle, and letting go of Wagoner was one of the biggest blessings she could have asked for when she got \u2018Jolene\u2019 <\/a>on her own. She wanted the opportunity to work on new material, and after knocking it out of the park on her own, there was no limit to what she could do in Nashville.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Credit: Far Out \/ Matthew Barnes \/ Blue Eye Records \/ Sugar Hill Records \/ Library Of Congress…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":513580,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6491,22641,96,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-576772","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-dolly-parton","tag-entertainment","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576772","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=576772"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576772\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/513580"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=576772"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=576772"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=576772"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}