Melina Gray, Parade; Dolly Parton Refused a Rock Legend in 1974: ‘I Had to Keep That Copyright in My Pocket’
"Elvis Presley was going to record “I Will Always Love You,” and Dolly Parton had already said yes. Then the phone rang the night before, and it was Colonel Tom Parker, Presley’s manager, with a condition nobody had mentioned. Elvis did not record anything unless Parker’s side took half the publishing.
Parton, who died Tuesday at 80, had written the song in 1973 as a goodbye to her longtime duet partner Porter Wagoner, on the same day she wrote “Jolene.” It was one of roughly 3,000 songs she wrote, and a No. 1 country hit under her own name. Handing over half of it meant handing over what she planned to leave her family. She turned Presley down in 1974 and, by her own account, cried all night. “I had to keep that copyright in my pocket,” she later said."
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