Hello, the Other Dolly

Though I've generally enjoyed country music well-enough over the years, I didn't watch the Ken Burns documentary series "Country Music" when it initially ran on PBS starting last September.  A few weeks ago, I saw that they were halfway through repeating the series, and as there was nothing else at the moment I wanted to watch, I put it on.  It was really terrific, and I've watched it since with one week.  When it returns, I'll have to catch up with the first few episodes I've missed.

This past week, they had a fascinating story about something famous I never had any idea of.  I have no doubt that far-more serious country music fans than me knew the story.  But I had no idea.  The segment dealt with Dolly Parton's love-hate partnership with Porter Wagoner.  That I did know about.  Wagoner was a big country star with a TV show, always flamboyantly-dressed (even by Dolly Parton standards), and during the run brought in Parton who fame grew and started to eclipse his.  He gave her a platform to grow, but was extremely controlling.  As I said, that part I knew.

Parton is interviewed throughout the documentary, and extensively about this part.  She's very gracious, talks openly about it all, and says how much she loved working with Wagoner and how much she owes him, though acknowledges they fought like cats and dogs, too.  Eventually, she wanted to leave -- not only having fulfilled her five-year contract, but by two years, in fact.  But Wagoner wouldn't hear of it and fought her off, among aother things threatening to sue.

Parton says she realized that she told her stories best by song, so she went home one night and wrote a song.  When she came in the next morning, she told Wagoner he had to listen to this song she'd just written.  He said it was the best thing she'd done, and agreed to let her depart the show, but that she had to let him produce the record of the song.

It was an extremely interesting story, but as I was listening, I suddenly realized -- "Oh, my God, I know the song that she wrote!" 

I'll give you a moment to see if you can figure out what the song was, too.

I was right, by the way.  And I was sure of it.  And what a totally different spin it puts on this number.

Here's a video of the song from 1974.  And what makes it all the better is that you see about one-second of the always flamboyantly-dressed Porter Wagoner at the very beginning having just introduced Parton and then comes back on at the end for some conversation, which means this is almost certainly is the first time she sang the song on his show.