The hardest part was not turning down Elvis Presley. It was that she had already told everybody yes.
Dolly Parton wrote "I Will Always Love You" in 1973 and took it to No. 1 on the country chart the next year. When word came that Presley wanted to record it, she agreed at once and was invited to the session. She told everyone she knew that Elvis was cutting her song.
The night before, Presley's manager, Colonel Tom Parker, called with a term nobody had raised. Presley did not record anything unless Parker's side took at least half the publishing. Parton turned him down. It was the most important copyright she owned, she told him, and she had written it. According to accounts she later gave the BBC and CMT, she cried all night.
Here is the part worth sitting with. Nothing told her she was right. She had no proof the song would ever be worth more than the offer on the table, and she had a room full of people she had already told, with no good way to explain herself to any of them. Being correct and being wrong feel exactly the same in the moment.
Most people take the deal. It is not a foolish choice and it usually looks like the sensible one. What separates the rare person is not nerve in the moment but having decided, well beforehand, which few things are not for sale.
Eighteen years later, Whitney Houston recorded the song for "The Bodyguard." Her version held No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 for 14 weeks and sold more than 10 million copies in the United States, according to the Recording Industry Association of America. Every one of them paid the writer.
Rick Good spent ten years in the newspaper business, including with The News & Observer (Raleigh, NC) and The Greenville News (Greenville, SC). He co-wrote, with Melinda Coleman, Rutledge to Riley: Governors of South Carolina, 1776–Present (Published by The Greenville News), and is the author of Mind Games Trivia #1 (Amazon). He has recently spent 15 years creating original trivia content through Sounds Good Mobile Entertainment and continues that with his new company, SGME Software. He edits The Smart Reader’s money, real estate, and business coverage.
