Before Dolly Parton and Porter Wagoner parted ways entirely, she agreed to let him produce her solo albums. She had more freedom on these records than she had in her duets with Wagoner. Still, she didn’t feel fully in control of her work. Parton’s guitarist said Wagoner still did everything he could to get his way in the studio.

Porter Wagoner pressured Dolly Parton into doing things his way

When Parton got to work on her solo career in the 1970s, she brought Wagoner on as a producer. She had more freedom than she’d had on his show, but still couldn’t work in the way she wanted. Her guitarist, Tom Rutledge, spoke about the situation in the book Dolly: The Biography by Alanna Nash.

“She had more freedom on All I Can Do than she’d ever had, or at least that’s what she told me. But she had ideas of how she wanted the material recorded, ‘cause she’d written it. And Porter had his ideas, because he was the producer. And I guess most of the time he would win out, mostly through intimidation, because of the type of personality he is.”

Wagoner reportedly did not take it well when the final product didn’t sound the way he wanted it to.

“When it didn’t come together the way Porter thought it should, he came out there and chewed some butt,” Rutledge said. “But that was real lightweight, from what I understand.”

Rutledge said this dynamic weighed heavily on Parton. She spent years struggling through it.

“Four years ago, Porter was controlling Dolly’s whole career, determining what was recorded and what wasn’t, how it was recorded. It’s incredible,” he said. “That whole thing with Porter is a can of worms. The whole last three or four years were bad for Dolly. It was just a high-pressured gig for the people who worked for him, and a real depressing situation for Dolly.”

He felt wronged when she moved forward without him

Eventually, Parton moved forward without Wagoner. She decided she had to produce her own songs. He was not happy about this.

“It was the way the move was done, the manner in which it was done that was so wrong,” he said. “Because at each meeting that we would have with RCA, or with the record execs who were talking about directing Dolly’s career more toward the pop market, I never failed to mention at any time that if the production of her records was short in any way, I would be happy to work with or step aside and let anyone else get involved who they thought was better qualified. And even with this happening, the entire move was done behind my back and with her and RCA.”

He said he’d chosen to produce her records to the detriment of his own career. Because of this, her decision to move on without him stung.

“[T]he schedule was so heavy, in having to put time in on her records and our duet records, that I decided to quit the road,” he said. “Had I not been producing Dolly Parton’s records and the duet records, I would not have quit the road, ’cause my schedule would have been loose enough that I coulda done the things they wanted to do.”

Dolly Parton believed she would have regretted not leaving Porter Wagoner

While Parton said she appreciated what Wagoner did for her career, she knew she needed to move on without him.

“This day and time, you can be what you want to be, especially musically, and if you don’t venture out to try to be what it is you want to be, then you are a fool,” she said. “You’ve served no purpose in life; you have failed as a person if you don’t try what your heart says to do.”

She was no longer happy in their partnership and craved a change. While she knew she would hurt Wagoner, she had to move on.

“When he was producing me, I got some of my ideas across and the big part of my ideas were written in the songs, you know, the arrangement ideas and all,” she said. “But there was so much I wanted to do, and he heard it so differently that we just couldn’t agree on so many things. It just took away the joy of me recordin’ the song at all.”