DOLLY PARTON: Queen of the Backwoods

Last May, we saw you sing “I Will Always Love You” to Porter Wagoner at the Grand Ole Opry.  Was that an emotional experience for you?

It was very touching. Porter looked frail that night, and I had the feeling that it would be the last chance I’d ever get to do anything professional with him. I just sensed it was going to be the last time we were going to get to do that.  It was all I could do to get through “I Will Always Love You.” I had to think above that, and beyond that, because it was a real emotional time for me. When Porter died, it was like a piece of me going, somehow. It was like losing a family member. That was a lot of history there.

Porter had a great ear for songs, and he became a fine songwriter.  What did you learn from him, as a songwriter or as a performer?

Porter did have a great ear for songs. I don’t know that he ever could hear my songs that much, because he was emotionally involved in them. And I don’t think I learned anything about songwriting from Porter, because Porter never wrote songs until after I was with him for a long time. He was not a songwriter, and I think he learned a lot about songwriting from me.

That’s what I’ve always thought.

He saw how I worked at it and how I loved it. You know, we did a lot of writing together.  I really thought Porter had a great ear for music, but he was sort of the same way I am about my songwriting. I’m just kinda blinded by it. It’s like not knowing if one of your kids is pretty-you think they are, whether they are or not. But he always liked my songs, and he encouraged me. I think more than anything, I learned from Porter how to be an entertainer, and how to talk to an audience…how to present myself.

You seem as though you were fully formed as a songwriter by the time you started recording for RCA in the late-60s.

I actually had started writing songs when I was little. I was more influenced by my family than I was by outside artists. I started taking my songwriting very, very, very seriously when I was in high school. I seriously knew I was going to be a serious songwriter. I wanted to be a singer, of course, but there was something about the songwriting, then and now, that is the most important thing. It’s how I express myself, how I express how I see things. When I see people struggling with emotions and feelings, and don’t know how to put it down, I’m able to do that. It’s really like a therapy, and it’s like a buddy and a friend. It’s a way out of a lot of things.

In the late-60s and early-70s, were you influenced by contemporary songwriters like Jimmy Webb and Paul Simon?  Your 1974 song “Love is Like a Butterfly” is, in some ways, like one of Webb’s songs.

Those songwriters were sort of outside my experience then. I would hear certain things-certainly, The Beatles…I was influenced by that, as all teenagers were. But I was more influenced by the sound of those things than I was as a songwriter. Same as it is today.  I’ve never been influenced by other artists, by other people’s styles…nor have I ever been influenced by other people’s writing. I just write what feels good, and what is coming out of me…what I’m feeling in my gut, based on my personality and my view of things. I probably would have been a bigger writer, and maybe even a better writer, had I paid more attention to what other people were doing. But I didn’t. I don’t have a formula.

But Porter must’ve given you some good advice.

In the early days, Porter would not exactly scold me, but he’s say, “You’re writing too many damn verses. You’re makin’ these songs too damn long.” And I’d say, “Yeah, but I’m tellin’ a story. I have a story to tell.” And he’d say, “Well, you’re not going to get it on the radio.” If I start writing a song, I’m writing it for a reason. People would say that I had to have two verses, and a chorus, and a bridge. I tried to learn that formula.