ROOTS Music History Podcast · ROOTS | Music History Podcast

How Dolly Parton Became A Brilliant Businesswoman: The Story Behind "I Will Always Love You"

·37 min·2 clips

Dolly said in Playboy in 1978, 'the kids peed on me every night.'

Dolly Parton starts here in poverty. She is born Dolly Rebecca Parton, the fourth child to Robert Lee Parton Sr. and A.V. Lee Caroline, in a family so poor that her midwife is paid in cornmeal. Her father matters a lot. Robert Lee Parton Sr. is a Tennessee mountain farmer from an impoverished, hard-working family of 13 children who never learns to read or write, but Dolly says he has the best business sense of anyone she has ever met. That idea hangs over everything. The story moves to the Grand Ole Opry, where a 13-year-old Dolly meets Porter Wagner, and that chance encounter changes everything. She still finishes school. At sixteen, she moves to Nashville with her uncle Bill Owens, who is acting as her manager, and the two go straight to work trying to get her signed. In 1962 she lands Tree Publishing and Mercury Records, only to be dropped a year later when none of her songs are charting. She does not stop. In 1963 she signs with Somerset Records, releases a compilation album that features Faye Tucker, and gets enough traction to keep going. She wants more than traction. By 1965 she signs with Monument Records as an independent artist, which the episode treats as the goal she has been chasing since moving to Music City in 1962. Then comes a small side street moment. Outside the Wishiwashi laundromat in Nashville, a 21-year-old driving a pickup truck whistles at her, and the story uses that scene to show how chance and ambition can share the same frame. The business story widens. The host also mentions Dolly's later business moves, including a Chardonnay and plans for a rosé and Prosecco, as more proof that she keeps building instead of resting. Faith stays central. The closing note circles back to her belief in God and God's plan, which the narrator treats as one of the clearest keys to understanding her. The episode keeps its focus on momentum. It lays out a childhood of scarcity, a teenage breakthrough, early industry rejection, and the slow proof that Dolly was thinking like an operator long before anyone called her one. It also keeps returning to the contrast between the polished public version of fame and the plain work behind it. The story is chronological, but it never feels sterile. It moves from family history to Nashville milestones to the small, almost comic details that make the biography feel lived in. By the end, Dolly comes across as someone who does not just survive the music business. She learns how to use it.

As heard by us

A Dolly origin story where poverty, contracts, and instinct all become part of the same climb.

Dolly Parton comes through as a rise story with real teeth: a child shaped by Tennessee poverty, a teenage Grand Ole Opry encounter that alters her path, and a young artist who keeps pushing until the industry has to make room.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

You want Dolly before the legend fully clicks.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from ROOTS Music History Podcast