Dolly Parton bristled against any claim that Porter Wagoner plucked her from obscurity and set her up with a career. The duo worked together for years and Parton gained exposure on Wagoner’s television program. Still, she’d been hard at work on her music career long before she met him. Wagoner gave himself more credit than Parton did. He said much of her early success was his doing.

Porter Wagoner said Dolly Parton needed him early in her career

Wagoner said that when he was working with Parton, he liked to be in control of their creative decisions. 

“We were gonna do things my way,” he said, per the book Dolly: The Biography by Alanna Nash. “Because that’s the kind of person I am. Dolly Parton’s career up until she left me was done my way.”

He said he pushed her to make decisions in her own career that she may not have without him. 

“[A]ll of these other things came after Dolly had had some success and had recorded some things that she didn’t like at all,” he said. “‘Mule Skinner Blues’ she didn’t want to record at all. It was a number one record. It did a lot of things for her career. She had written songs, [but] she would have done them in a much different manner, I’m sure. Whether it would have been better or worse, who knows? But I know that what I did was successful, so I sorta liked that part of it.”

While he acknowledged that Parton had good ideas, he believed his presence was necessary to bring them to fruition.

“It’s awful easy, believe me, and I say this with no resentment from Dolly’s career, but it is awful easy when you have something that’s successful for you to convince yourself, ‘I’m doing this, I’m the only one can do it, there ain’t nobody involved in this but me,’” he said. “It’s easy to convince yourself of that. But ideas are only ideas unless they are developed, and Dolly had a lot of ideas and still does, I’m sure — a mind full of ’em — but they are only ideas unless you’re able to develop ’em.”

Porter Wagoner still said he didn’t make Dolly Parton a star

Wagoner didn’t think Parton could have had as successful a career if he hadn’t helped her hone her ideas.

“What I did in her career, the production of her records, was develop ideas that came out of my own mind, with extra insertions from her mind, of different things and different other people,” he said. “To me that’s what it’s about; that’s the only way you can make it. Because you can be the greatest writer in all the world, and unless someone will be interested in what you have and work with you on it to help get it exposed to the public, all you can do is run around saying, ‘I’m the greatest writer in the world.’ So it takes more than ideas.”

While Wagoner saw himself as a necessary force in Parton’s success, he said she had the makings of a star all on her own.

“I’m sure Dolly had ideas of being a big star when she was just a little girl,” he said. “But I’ve had a lot of people tell me, ‘Boy, you made Dolly what she is.’ Well, that’s not true. She was what she was. I helped develop her into an entertaining star. And I’m very proud of the part in her career that I played…”

She denied that he discovered her

While Parton said she appreciated all Wagoner had done for her, she denied him having anything to do with discovering her.

“I sometimes wonder if Porter doesn’t take more credit than he deserves,” she wrote in the book Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business. “On the other hand, I often wonder if he gets enough credit. Porter did not discover me, as my Uncle Bill had spent many years heading me in the right direction. Bill had brought me to the attention of Fred Foster, Monument Records, and Combine Publishing.”

She’d been working on her career long before she met him.

“I had three chart records of my own and had co-written a ‘country song of the year’ with Uncle Bill,” she wrote, adding, “I had a band and had traveled around the country by then. I had appeared on national television shows, including American Bandstand.”