Dolly Parton and Porter Wagoner’s relationship had its fair share of problems. The singing partners fought often and eventually became involved in a lawsuit. Wagoner even said that he didn’t think Parton’s career would have been as strong without him. Still, he never insulted her writing. He believed Parton’s ability to write showed a skill that few people have.

Porter Wagoner said Dolly Parton’s writing was a gift that few had

Parton has been writing songs since childhood. While some, like “Coat of Many Colors,” draw inspiration from her past, others are purely fictional. Wagoner said that her imagination was an enviable skill. She could invoke deep emotion in her listeners because she feels them herself.

“She can imagine these experiences in such great detail that she can write songs about them, great songs,” Wagoner said, per the book Smart Blonde by Stephen Miller. “This capacity to understand or feel, I think, is something that God gives to very, very few people.”

Some of Parton’s songs, like “Me and Little Andy,” anger her audiences because of the powerful feelings they inspire.

She spoke about how much her writing means to her

Though Parton loves to sing, her greater passion is writing. Every day, she writes.

“Writing’s just as natural to me as getting up and cooking breakfast,” she told The New York Times. “I ain’t never far away from a pencil and paper or a tape recorder. I write every day, even when I’m on a plane, in the tub, or on the bus. It burns in me. Songwriting is my way of channeling my feelings and my thoughts.”

When she is in the mood to write, she can write dozens of songs in one sitting.

“I mean, she’ll sit down with the guitar and the licks just come and the words fly right out of her mouth. I’m not kiddin’ you,” a member of her band said in the book Dolly by Alanna Nash. “She just sits down and writes them. There’s no tellin’ how many she’ll write once she starts — ten or twenty, maybe. And when she gets in that writing mood, forget about talkin’ to her, because she’s mesmerized. You ask her a question and she don’t know what you’re sayin’, she’s so into her writing.”

Porter Wagoner never knocked Dolly Parton’s writing, even when he was angry with her

Wagoner said Parton owed him a great deal of credit for her success. He believed he gave her necessary direction.

“[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 believed she needed someone like him to guide her, he still described her as a strong writer on her own.

“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.”