On May 19, 2007, the Grand Ole Opry threw a party for one of its own. Porter Wagoner was celebrating 50 years as an Opry member, and old friends came out to honor him, including Marty Stuart, Patty Loveless and Dolly Parton.
Porter was nearly 80 and looked frail. He had survived a serious abdominal aneurysm the year before. But he was still Porter, dressed in a white rhinestone suit with shoes to match.
Dolly, Porter and Patty Loveless sang “Just Someone I Used to Know” together. Then, as the night drew to a close, Porter turned to his old partner. He told her there was no way in the world they could close the show without “this song.”
Dolly told the crowd that if it had not been for Porter, she never would have written it. Then she rested her hand on his shoulder, looked him in the eyes, and sang “I Will Always Love You” while he sat on a stool beside her. The Opry House was packed, but everyone could tell she was singing to one man.
At the time, Porter Wagoner called Dolly one of his best friends. Neither of them knew it would be their last Opry appearance together.
October 2007
That fall, Porter was hospitalized and diagnosed with lung cancer. On October 26 he was released to hospice care. Two days later, on Sunday afternoon, October 28, Dolly Parton went to see him.
In a statement the next day, she said she spent his last few hours with Porter and his family, so she was able to say goodbye. She sang for him and prayed with him. Porter Wagoner died that evening at age 80.
“Part of him will always live through me and my music as he was my first big break.”
Dolly also said that when Porter died, it felt like a piece of her died with him. His funeral was held on November 1, 2007, on the stage that meant the most to him: the Grand Ole Opry House.
To understand why that goodbye mattered so much, you have to go back to a morning in Porter’s office in 1973.
The Morning in Porter’s Office
In September 1967, Porter Wagoner hired a young singer from East Tennessee named Dolly Parton to replace Norma Jean on The Porter Wagoner Show. The syndicated program reached millions of viewers every week, and it introduced Dolly to the nation. Together, Porter and Dolly became one of country music’s most popular duos, winning Country Music Association honors in 1970 and 1971.
Porter also pushed her as a writer. According to the Associated Press, he suggested she move away from story songs and focus more on love songs. Dolly later said she wrote both “Jolene” and “Coat of Many Colors” on Porter’s tour bus.
But by 1973, Dolly wanted a career of her own, and the two strong-willed partners were clashing. She later described their relationship as fire and ice. She tried to explain why she needed to leave, and Porter simply would not listen.
So Dolly went home and wrote what she could not say out loud. The next day she walked back into his office and told him to sit down, because she had written something she thought he needed to hear. Then she sang “I Will Always Love You.”
Porter started crying. When she finished, he told her it was the best song she had ever written. And he gave her an answer: she could go, as long as he got to produce that record.
He kept his word. Porter produced her 1974 album Jolene, and “I Will Always Love You” went to No. 1 on the country chart. Dolly announced the end of their partnership in February 1974.
The Hard Years
The goodbye did not stay gentle. On March 21, 1979, Porter Wagoner sued Dolly Parton for $3 million, claiming breach of contract. The case was settled out of court. Dolly later said it took her a while to pay, but Porter got the first million dollars she ever made.
Porter said later that the two were always friendly, but that once lawyers got involved, things became a different story. Dolly, as usual, found a way to smile about it. At a 1995 charity roast for Porter, she explained their split this way:
“We split over creative differences. I was creative, and Porter was different.”
The Song That Brought Them Back
Over time, the hurt faded. Porter was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2002, and Dolly never stopped crediting him for her start. “I Will Always Love You” went on to become one of the most famous songs ever written, topping the country chart again in 1982 and becoming a worldwide smash for Whitney Houston in 1992.
Yet the song always belonged first to the man who heard it in his office one morning in 1973. Dolly sang it to him that day as a way of leaving. She sang it to him again at the Opry in 2007 as a way of saying thank you. And in his final hours, she was there to say goodbye.
Do you remember watching Porter and Dolly on The Porter Wagoner Show? Share your favorite memory of the two of them in the comments.