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While Porter Wagoner and Dolly Parton’s working relationship ended badly, they strongly supported each other during their collaboration. Wagoner insisted that his record label, RCA, take her on when she joined his show. Several years later, he wrote them an angry letter saying that they weren’t doing nearly enough to support her.
Porter Wagoner didn’t think Dolly Parton’s label was doing enough for her
In 1974, Parton was preparing to leave her partnership with Wagoner. He, by contrast, was pushing their record label to do more to promote her. He wrote them an angry letter sharing his thoughts.
“I think it is high time that RCA gets excited about Dolly Parton and does something about it… Dolly is a young, vigorous talent, let’s make a superstar while we have all the other things going for us,” he wrote, per the book Smart Blonde by Stephen Miller. “Then we can play golf, go to cocktail parties, while the harvest from our work is rolling in from a well-established record seller.”
He criticized the label for not having enough successful female artists.
“It is hard for me to believe that RCA, the largest recording company in the world, does not have a girl singer in the top five nominees this year for the network CMA show.”
He noted that he believed he had personally done more for Parton’s career than the label itself. This was something that he echoed, though more bitterly, after they went their separate ways.
Porter Wagoner pushed the label to take on Dolly Parton
Years before, Wagoner had pushed for RCA to take on Parton as an artist. He reportedly faced trepidation from higher-ups at the label.
“Well, I’ll tell you what,” Wagoner said, per the book Dolly: The Biography by Alanna Nash. “You take out of my royalties what she loses this year because I believe she can sing, and that she’ll make it.”
Parton said she felt nothing but gratitude for the way Wagoner pushed for her.
“Porter’s a man I have great respect for,” Parton said in 1975, adding, “He gave me a chance. He believed in me, when a lot of people didn’t, because of my unique sound. He believed that I had a lot of potential, that it could be almost like a gimmick. That I could catch on.”
While their working relationship ended poorly, she continued to repeat this sentiment.
He firmly believed in her talent
Wagoner believed that he helped Parton become a star. Still, he thought that she had an innate talent to capture emotion through writing.
“She can imagine these experiences in such great detail that she can write songs about them, great songs,” Wagoner said. “This capacity to understand or feel, I think, is something that God gives to very, very few people.”
He continued to compliment Parton’s writing skills, even after they decided to stop working together.
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