About The Song
Songwriter Jan Crutchfield (whose most famous hit was Jack Greene’s “Statue of a Fool”) once famously said that “Songwriters are born, not made, and if anyone was ever born a songwriter, it was Dolly Parton.”
Born in the backwoods near Sevierville, Tennessee in 1946, Dolly was composing songs before she could read or write. At that time, Dolly’s mother would listen to each new rendering and transcribe the toddler’s simple compositions onto old scraps of paper. When she was ten, Dolly was playing her tunes on an old Martin guitar. By the time she finished high school she was drawing attention far and wide for her musical abilities.
The day after her graduation from high school in 1964, Parton left the Smoky Mountains and hopped a bus to Nashville, fully expecting to make it big in the music industry. Already shrewd and seasoned, Dolly was able to wrangle auditions and then proceeded to amaze the record executives with her mountain soprano and her self-penned songs. Within a couple of months, Dolly had a record deal and was already getting a songwriter’s draw from a publisher. However, Fred Foster and Monument Records were having a difficult time figuring out just what direction to take with Dolly. Nashville was accustomed to women with strong, throaty voices, but Dolly’s was not.
For a couple of years the company worked to seek out specific songs which would accommodate her unusual voice. Monument released “Dumb Blonde” and “Something Fishy” in 1967. Both made Billboard’s Top 30 (#24 and #17 respectively) but more importantly, they attracted the attention of Porter Wagoner, who was looking for a new female singer for his TV show. Porter contacted Dolly by telephone to offer her the position and she accepted. She officially joined the program in September, 1967.
For the next seven years Porter and Dolly would be a mainstay on both the television show and the tour circuit. With Wagoner’s guidance and the exposure she received on his TV program, Parton began to generate interest. As Porter had suspected, once audiences experienced her genuine, “down-home” personality and heard her performances, they would be drawn in by her talent. Porter and Dolly began notching top ten duets in the late ‘60s, and by July of 1970, Dolly logged her first bona fide solo hit for RCA – ironically not one of her own compositions, but a 40-year-old song penned by the legendary Jimmie Rodgers called “Mule Skinner Blues (Blue Yodel #8).”
However, by early ’71 Dolly began to have hits with her own material, with “Joshua” being her first #1 record. By ’74, she had become a top star and was beginning to feel stifled with her business relationship with Porter. She wanted to move higher up success’s ladder, much further than her association with Wagoner could take her. Dolly figured that she was ready to reach out to a broader listenership, but Porter didn’t want to tamper with a formula that was working.
Dolly once told Billboard Magazine that songwriting kept her sane through the rough times with Porter. As she was trying to find a way to cut herself loose from the Wagoner entourage, she often thought that she was literally going crazy. This would not be an easy parting, and Porter wasn’t going to let her go without a fight. The anguish and pain that was going to result from this split would prove to be worse than most divorces. The wounds inflicted in the legal battle would take decades to heal, and the scars would be evident long after the two performers had publicly reconciled.
Parton began to write remarkably sad songs. The war that was raging between her and her mentor had caused her to review her entire life. For weeks, Dolly dredged up every one of her life’s tragic episodes. She thought about the funerals of loved ones, illnesses and even broken high school romances. With these memories constantly bombarding her, she penned a plaintive love ballad entitled “I Will Always Love You.”
Dolly took the song to her producer at RCA, Bob Ferguson, who agreed it was the best thing she had ever written. In an almost magical way, Parton had spun the fragile lyrics around a very simple lead line. Her voice, falling and then soaring, brought all the necessary emotions to the monumental work. Direct, straightforward and honest, “I Will Always Love You” was filled with hidden messages about the complexities of Dolly’s current situation. As she left Porter, Dolly hoped that he would realize just how much she knew she owed him. In a way, this song was a ‘thank you’ for the break Wagoner had given her. It was also her goodbye.
During its 15-week chart ride “I Will Always Love You” checked in at the summit of Billboard’s “Hot Country Singles” chart for one week on June 8, 1974. Other Parton singles had been bigger hits, but there was something about this song that registered with both the singer and her fans. “I Will Always Love You” seemed to reveal a Dolly without all the show business trappings. Folks inside and outside the industry were always wondering who Dolly really was, and many thought they had captured the elusive real person in this ballad. So strong was the song’s message that Dolly would use it as a closer for her concerts, as well as for her own short-lived network television show.
“I Will Always Love You” would have remained Dolly’s most-requested number even without the 1982 remake and single issue. That idea developed during the filming of “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas,” a movie starring Dolly and Burt Reynolds, then one of the nation’s most popular actors. It was decided that the film needed an additional song for Dolly’s character, Mona, to sing to the local sheriff, played by Reynolds. With the hectic schedule and frantic pace of filming, Parton had no time to write anything new, so she reached into her trunk of oldies and pulled out “I Will Always Love You.” Everyone agreed that the song worked perfectly in the scene.
Even though the movie was savagely blasted by most of the nation’s film critics, the soundtrack album was praised. Dolly’s second version of “I Will Always Love You” again covered familiar ground on Billboard’s country singles chart, sailing to #1 on October 16, 1982. The remake also spent a few weeks on the Billboard adult contemporary and “Hot 100” pop charts, reaching #17 and #53 respectively. When the two records are taken together, it is the most-successful song of Parton’s career.
By becoming the first country song to top Billboard’s chart two different times by the same artist, “I Will Always Love You” had already made history. Yet Dolly remained unfazed. She had an agenda. Parton didn’t want to be known as just the most successful act in country music – she aspired to be recognized as one of the world’s biggest stars. So Dolly didn’t spend much time following the country charts. Instead, she had her eye on movies, television specials and spectacular live shows. With smart planning and superb marketing, she fulfilled all of those ambitions during the next decade.
By the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, new artists had displaced most of Music City’s established stars, and Dolly Parton was one of the few “old timers” who could still get play on country radio. Former superstars and hit makers like Barbara Mandrell, Loretta Lynn and Tammy Wynette couldn’t drum up much interest from record companies or disc jockeys, but Dolly still made noise. This power came because she had become bigger than country music. Dolly’s image was known by hundreds of millions of fans around the world. Yet, it was an old song which soon proved that her songwriting talents exceeded even Dolly’s own massive stardom.
Video
Lyrics
If I should stay
Well I would only be in your way
And so I’ll go, and yet I know
I’ll think of you each step of the way
And I will always love you
I will always love you
Bitter-sweet memories
That’s all I’m taking with me
Good-bye, please don’t cry
‘Cause we both know that I’m not
What you need
But I will always love you
I will always love you
And I hope life, will treat you kind
And I hope that you have all
That you ever dreamed of
Oh I do wish you joy
And I wish you happiness
But above all this
I wish you love
I love you
I will always love you
I, I will always, always love you
I will always love you
I will always love you
I will always love you
OldiesSong