ShivamAlways Love Porter
Parton told CMT, “It’s saying, ‘Just because I’m going doesn’t mean I won’t love you. I appreciate you and I hope you do great and I appreciate everything you’ve done, but I’m out of here…’” “I took it in the next morning. I said, ‘Sit down, Porter. I’ve written this song, and I want you to hear it.’ So I did sing it. And he was crying. He said, ‘That’s the prettiest song I ever heard. And you can go, providing I get to produce that record.’ And he did, and the rest is history.”
Mending The Wounds
Dolly didn’t forget the contribution of Porter in the early days when she was trying to build her career as an artist. This was the only reason that she was present to her old mentor’s side on his deathbed. Porter died at the age of 80 the reason being lung cancer.Parton told Knoxville’s News Sentinel, “It was really, really hard. I held his hand, and we prayed… Porter’s soul was already with God. All that was left was a shell.” Dolly was at Porter’s bedside as he passed.
A Chart-Topping Success
It was a really interesting incident when Whitney Huston’s version of the song “I Will Always Love You” became more popular than when it was sung by the original writer of the song Dolly.It was eventually played during the funeral of Huston. Parton told Nightline, “When they played it at her funeral and they lifted her coffin up, man, it was like somebody stabbed me in the heart with a knife. It just overwhelmed me.”
The Start Of A Feud?
It was just another case of fake celebrity gossip when people started to speculate that Dolly was not that happy with the success of the song “I Will Always Love You” sung by Whitney Houston. The feud was spread by the tabloids all over. Contrarily, both singers respected each other a lot. Houston told Rolling Stone that she had the chance to thank Dolly personally: “I talked to Dolly Parton by phone not too long ago,” she said in 1993. “She said to me [imitates Dolly’s accent]: ‘Whitney, I just want to tell you something. I’m just honored that you did my song. I just don’t know what to tell you, girl.’ I said, ‘Well, Dolly, you wrote a beautiful song.’ And she said: ‘Yeah, but it never did that well for me. It did well for you because you put all that stuff into it.’”
Imagination Library
Of the many ventures that Parton has invested in, one is Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library. She runs this program for the noble cause of providing children a book a month till they reach kindergarten. Children from Australia, the UK, Canada, and the U.S. get books every year.
The Inspiration
The story of Dolly getting inspiration for starting such a library is very interesting. In a 2015 interview with Paper, Dolly said, “Where it all really started was with my daddy. He was, without a doubt, the smartest man I have ever known, but he could not read very well. Daddy did an incredible job of providing a good life for our family but there is no telling what he could have achieved if he had learned to read. So the Imagination Library is just one way for me to honor him…” She went on to add, “Not long before he passed, he told me he was more proud of me for the Imagination Library than anything else I had ever done. I’ll never forget that moment. So every time I am called the Book Lady, I think of my Daddy.”