Elvis Wanted Her Song. A Young, Poor Dolly Said No

Was Dolly the best, or what? And who knew she was such a savvy entrepreneur too?

Long before Dolly Parton had money, or fame, or a theme park outside Nashville, she had exactly one thing of real value on the books: The rights to her own songs.

In 1973 she wrote a little something called “I Will Always Love You,” and she wrote it for a business reason as much as a personal one.

She and her longtime partner Porter Wagoner were splitting up the act, and she needed material that was fully hers to build a solo career on. So she wrote the song alone, and then sang it for Porter once in his office.

He said it was the best thing she ever wrote.

And she kept 100% of the copyright for herself.

Enter Elvis

A year later, Elvis Presley wanted to record the song. And in 1974, that kind of attention did more for a songwriter’s career than almost anything else could. Dolly was on the verge of a huge breakthrough.

Then, the night before the session, the phone rang.

Colonel Tom Parker, Elvis’s manager, had one condition attached to the deal. Elvis does not record a song unless his side owns half the publishing. That was standard practice, and every songwriter before Dolly had signed.

Dolly would have to give Elvis 50% of the rights to the song - forever, in perpetuity. And that song was the one apparently appreciating asset she had to her name.

Even so, everyone around Dolly told her she would be dumb to say no.

She Said . . . No

Dolly thought different.

She was twenty eight years old, running a one-woman operation out of Nashville and she was not going to sell half of it, not even to Elvis Presley.

She cried about it all night, by her own account. But the math never changed. Give away half the ownership, and you have given away half the company. So she kept the whole thing.

For 18 years, that decision looked like a mistake, albeit a nice story about the time she almost worked with the King.

The Return, 18 Years Later

Then, in 1992, a singer named Whitney Houston wanted to record the song for a movie called The Bodyguard. Dolly agreed, Whitney sang the heck out of it, and it spent fourteen weeks at number one.

I Will Always Love You sold more than twenty four million copies; the best selling single by a woman in the history of recorded music.

Because Dolly still owned every piece of it, every one of those twenty four million sales paid exactly one person.

Not Presley’s estate. Not Colonel Parker.

Dolly Parton.

Whitney would end up paying Dolly roughly $20 million in royalties.

Postscript: Dolly later put some of that money into an office building in a historically black neighborhood of Nashville, the same community that had loved Whitney’s version most of all. “This is the house that Whitney built,” she said.

The Takeaway

Almost every entrepreneur eventually meets some version of this exact test.

Someone with more money or leverage than you offers a deal that looks generous on its face, but it costs you the one thing you actually built the business on.

Dolly said no anyway, not because she could see 18 years into the future, she could not, but because she ran her career like a business owner and not like a performer flattered by the attention. Maybe you too are sitting on one asset right now, small as it looks, that everyone around you says you should sell.

Dolly said no.

Steal This Strategy

📖 Book: The Small Business Bible. Protecting what you own is chapter one of running a real business. This is the book I wrote for exactly that.

📖 Book: Songteller: My Life in Lyrics. Dolly’s own book, in her own words, on the songs that built her fortune and everything behind them.

🎤 Podcast: Brené with Dolly Parton on Songtelling, Empathy, and Shining Our Lights. A rare, great conversation with Dolly on ownership, and holding onto what matters.

📅 Launch Your Own One-Person Empire: A live, four-week group program where I help you build the five parts of your real business together. Stop chasing ideas.
Stop wondering what to build. Help me help you!

About Steve

Steve Strauss is the best-selling author of The Small Business Bible (and 17 other books), Inc.’s small business columnist, a lawyer (non-practicing), and an entrepreneur. He sold his last venture, TheSelfEmployed.com to Mark Cuban & Zen Business. Need a ghostwriter or a newsletter for your business? Contact Steve!