The cruel trick Porter Wagoner played on Dolly Parton: “I am telling you the truth”
Dolly Parton and Porter Wagoner always had a complex relationship. While he brought the young singer into the spotlight by inviting her to appear on his TV show and, later, on tour with him, Wagoner was also a strange influence that was tricky for the rising star to deal with.
For a young Dolly Parton, success and fame seemed like a far-off dream. Growing up in a family she described as “dirt poor”, where her father needed to pay the doctor who delivered her with a bag of cornmeal because they couldn’t afford anything else, the chances of her becoming a famous singer were slim to none. Even back then, creative opportunities required financial resources. Success still needed to be bought, and the Partons didn’t have the money for that.
So while Parton’s voice alone did grant her attention and begin to open doors as she grew up, it was really the moment that Porter Wagoner took her under his wing that things really changed. When the established star invited her onto his TV show, offering her a regular spot on The Porter Wagoner Show to sing, things started to turn around.
The transition wasn’t smooth at all, though. First, fans of the show weren’t happy that Parton was replacing Norma Jean, the singer they were used to. Even the network and Wagoner’s record label initially weren’t convinced, but he always fought in her corner, even through cruel tactics.
“This girl just can’t sing,” Wagoner’s label manager, Cher Atkins, apparently disparaged Parton while advising Wagoner, “I don’t think she’d sell, because she just can’t sing.”
That was the story Parton was told by her TV show host as he passed on this harsh critique from RCA. But he was actually backing her all the way. “Well, I’ll tell you what,” Wagoner told Atkins, “You take out of my royalties what she loses this year because I believe she can sing, and that she’ll make it.”
Despite the trickiness of their relationship, with Parton later calling touring with him “hell”, his devotion to helping her succeed made her deeply admire him. “Porter’s a man I have great respect for,” she said. “He gave me a chance. He believed in me when a lot of people didn’t, because of my unique sound. He believed that I had a lot of potential, that it could be almost like a gimmick. That I could catch on.”
But the thing is, that whole argument with his record label perhaps never happened. Atkins himself said, “When Porter brought me her tape, I listened to it and I said, ‘She’s fine.’” There was no harsh comment or critique on his side as he said, “I’ve always loved Dolly, and I am telling you the truth.”
Instead, it seems that Wagoner merely told Parton a lie to make her like him and believe he had her back. “I suppose Porter just told Dolly I didn’t like her to strengthen himself with her,” Atkins concluded, even though his own standing with Parton was thrown under the bus by the TV star to win her favour.
