Dolly Parton earned an 8-figure sum off Whitney's 'I Will Always Love You' — in one decade alone: here's how much
Dolly Parton died last Tuesday in Nashville. She was 80. Her people said it was a brief battle with cancer, and the internet has spent a week doing what the internet does, which is rediscovering that she was somehow even better than we'd all agreed.
So here's my contribution to the pile: the story of the single smartest thing she ever did with a piece of paper.
The number, for those skimming: $10 million. In the 1990s. From one song she'd written two decades earlier. And that's before you count the years since.
First, the night she cried
"I Will Always Love You" started life in 1973 as a goodbye to Porter Wagoner, her longtime duet partner and boss, when she left his show. It went to No. 1 on the country chart in 1974. It went to No. 1 again in 1982 when she re-recorded it for a movie. Nice career for a breakup song.
Then Elvis called. Or rather, Elvis's manager did.
- Presley wanted to record it. Parton was invited to the studio to watch. She was, by every account, beside herself.
- The night before the session, Colonel Tom Parker phoned with the fine print: Elvis didn't record anything unless his side got half the publishing.
- She said no. To Elvis. In 1974. Then she went home and cried all night.
Her explanation, decades later, was pure Dolly: "I had to keep that copyright in my pocket." It was the most valuable thing she owned and she wasn't handing half of it to a man who ran a carnival before he ran the King.
She turned down Elvis Presley with tears streaming down her face and it turned out to be the best financial decision of her life. Cry all you want. Keep the publishing.
Then Whitney happened
In 1992, Whitney Houston recorded it for The Bodyguard, and the country waltz became a soul hurricane. Fourteen weeks at No. 1 on the Hot 100. One of the best-selling singles by a woman, ever. The song stopped belonging to Nashville and started belonging to every karaoke bar on Earth.
And every time it sold, streamed, played on the radio or got sung badly at a wedding, the songwriter got paid. That's the part people forget. Whitney sang it. Dolly owned it.
By the end of the decade, the Houston version alone had reportedly made Parton around $10 million in royalties. Houston's recording has since racked up well north of 800 million Spotify streams, so the checks did not stop when the nineties did.
What she did with the money
This is the part that makes the story a Dolly story and not just a business story.
She told Andy Cohen in 2021 that she took the Whitney money and bought a strip of property in a predominantly Black neighborhood in Nashville, building out an office complex there. Her logic, in her own words: "This is the house that Whitney built."
She also admitted nobody ever asked her to sing it as a duet with Houston, and that it was probably for the best, since she figured Whitney would have blown her off the stage. She was joking. She was also not wrong, and she knew it, and she said it anyway. That was the whole act.
One woman wrote it. Another woman made it immortal. The first one took the check and built something for the second one's people. Try finding a cleaner story in the music business. I'll wait.
The math, one more time
- One song, written in a day (the same day she wrote "Jolene," because of course).
- One "no" to Elvis that cost her a night of sleep.
- One cover, eighteen years later, that turned the copyright into a cash machine.
- $10 million in a single decade, and a building in Nashville with Whitney's name on it in spirit.
She's gone now. The song isn't going anywhere. Neither, as it turns out, was the publishing.
