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Dolly Parton and Porter Wagoner’s relationship didn’t end well. She said the way he spoke about her was hard on her and her family.
When Dolly Parton and Porter Wagoner stopped working together, he made his frustrations with her clear to the media. He complained about the way he’d sacrificed his own career to help her and said he didn’t think people should trust her. Parton said these remarks were painful for both her and her family. She admitted her father in particular felt devastated by Wagoner’s bitter words.
Dolly Parton said the way Porter Wagoner spoke about her after their split devastated her dad
After Parton left his show and began producing her own music, Wagoner had very few good things to say about her. He spoke about her at length in the press and shared how hurt he felt by the way their relationship ended. Parton said that a great deal of what he said was untrue.
“I won’t put myself on his level,” she said, per the book Dolly on Dolly. “I will say that it was unfair and untrue and that’s all I’ll say.”
Still, his words stung. She said Wagoner’s negativity deeply hurt her father, too.
“It kills you when somebody tells things that just aren’t true,” she said. “It just killed my daddy, it was just so bitter and untrue.”
Despite this, she didn’t want to talk poorly about Wagoner to the press.
“But I really don’t care to discuss it if you wouldn’t mind. I could say a lot of things, but I’m a more considerate person on that level,” she said. “I don’t think I have to slander people to be accepted.
Porter Wagoner said he wasn’t bitter toward Dolly Parton
Though Wagoner certainly sounded resentful, he insisted he was not.
“I’m not bitter because Dolly left my show in any sense … I was just disappointed to find out she’s not made of what I thought she was,” he told The Tennessean. “To me, Dolly Parton is the kind of person I would never trust with anything of mine. I mean, her family, her own blood, she would turn her back on to help herself.”
While he talked about her at length, he said he didn’t like to discuss her that often, as people might get the wrong idea.
“I don’t care about talkin’ about it ‘cause most people would think I’m bitter at Dolly,” he said. “I’m not bitter at her at all.”
She had a close relationship with her father
Parton and her father had a very close relationship. She started her Imagination Library, a program that provides free books for children, in his honor.
“Before he passed away, my Daddy told me the Imagination Library was probably the most important thing I had ever done,” she wrote on the organization’s website. “I can’t tell you how much that meant to me because I created the Imagination Library as a tribute to my Daddy. He was the smartest man I have ever known but I know in my heart his inability to read probably kept him from fulfilling all of his dreams.”
The program now provides books to over 3 million children.
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