I LOVE The Story Of Dolly Parton Telling Elvis To Fuck Himself Over The Rights To "I Will Always Love You"
You've seen the Snake Draft by now. Many of you have voted in the poll, most of you even voted incorrectly in the poll
I told this story about Dolly Parton and Elvis on the podcast, but got the details slightly wrong. Still a great story though.
Dolly Parton had been approached by Elvis about recording the song and immediately said yes. She was overjoyed. So excited. Told all of her friends, family, and colleagues that the KING of rock and roll was going to record her song. Then, as the story goes, she found out that Elvis does not record anything unless he owns AT LEAST half the rights to the song in perpetuity. Dolly, being a bad bitch, said...
She didn't care that Elvis was the King, she was the Queen and that song had already been a #1 hit. She wasn't going to give up half the money going forward on a song that she wrote, recorded, produced, and published with her own recording company. Fuck that noise. A few years later, Elvis died on a toilet.
And some 20 odd years after that, Kevin Costner approached her about putting the song in his movie with Whitney Houston, "The Bodyguard". Dolly said that she was driving in her car when she first heard the recording of Whitney singing "I Will Always Love You" and she "almost had a heart attack" it was so good and so powerful. She greenlit the usage and EVERYONE got paid on that, but especially her because she still owned 100% of the rights to the song. Great story, UNBELIEVABLE song. Nobody can ever touch Whitney vocally, but the Dolly version deserves love too.