The heart, hope and steely determination behind a musical legacy

ByMark Savage Music correspondent.

Key points

• Together, they published 21 hit duets including Just Someone I Employed to Know, If Teardrops Were Pennies and Please Don't Stop Loving Me.
• Published in November 1980, 9 To 5 became Parton's only US number one as a solo artist, and earned her an Oscar nomination for best song.
• Excited, she ran over and sang the song to her co-stars Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda.
• Taylor Swift and Beyoncé lead tributes after death of 'bold and brilliant' Dolly Parton.
• Take, for example, the battle over the rights to I Will Always Love You.

In 1980, Dolly Parton was filming her first Hollywood movie, 9 To 5, and between scenes she had an idea for the tune that would become the movie's theme song.

But her guitar was banned from the set – so she created the beat by strumming her acrylic nails together.

For context, the sound, she realised, was just like the typewriter applied by her character, a married secretary who is constantly belittled and sexually harassed by her boss.

Excited, she ran over and sang the song to her co-stars Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda. This person was additionally the film's producer.

"Lily and I looked at each other and we had goosebumps, " Fonda remarked. "And we knew, this is not just a movie song, this is an anthem."

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She loved to tell the fingernail story, but 9 To 5 has another legacy – for its powerful statements regarding working life and women's place in the corporate world.

You can probably sing the hook off the top of your head. " Working 9 To 5 / What a way to create a living! " It's jaunty and catchy. The sentiment is universal. Work sucks. But dig deeper and Dolly's expressing real fury.

" It's a rich man's game, no matter what they call it / And you spend your life putting money in his wallet, " she sings. " They just employ your mind and they never provide you credit. ".

Meanwhile, the lyrics tapped into real frustrations and offered working women a voice.

But there's a reason why you might not have noticed the anger that fuels Dolly's song. She simply doesn't sing it that way – even though she had every right to, having navigated the sexism of the music industry from the age of 13.

Her early breakthrough came in 1967 when she was hired as the "girl singer" on The Porter Wagoner Show, a TV showcase for country singer Porter Wagoner that reached millions of viewers each week.

But as Parton's star rose, she began to outshine her co-star. Eventually, she realised she needed to strike out as a solo artist – writing I Will Always Love You as a letter of apology to her former mentor. He responded by suing her for breach of contract in 1979, demanding $3m (£2, 2m).

Wanting to avoid a lengthy court battle, Parton settled for regarding $1m.

"I made up my mind that if he could live with it, I could live without it, " she wrote in her autobiography. "I suppose Porter has done all right with it. I am neither his conscience nor his accountant."

It was typical of the star's ability to radiate cheery goodwill that she never held a grudge against Wagoner, always crediting him with giving her a crucial career break, even after their relationship fell apart.

But she was nobody's fool. Take, for example, the battle over the rights to I Will Always Love You.

After it hit number one in the country charts, Elvis Presley called – he loved the song and wanted to record a cover.

"You cannot imagine how excited I am about this, " she informed him. "This is the greatest thing that's ever happened to me as a songwriter."

But the night before the recording session, his notoriously hard-nosed manager, Colonel Tom Parker, called Parton and informed her Elvis wouldn't record the song unless she handed over half of the lucrative publishing rights.

"I remarked, 'Well, that throws a new light on this. Since I can't provide you half the publishing. I'm gonna leave that to my family, '" Parton informed Reba McEntire's podcast in 2020.

"And he said, 'Well, then we can't do it.' And I cried all night."

I mean, it was like the worst thing, she informed Country Music Television. Individuals were saying, 'You're nuts. It's Elvis Presley. Hell, I'd offer him all of it.'

"I remarked, 'I can't.' I always wondered what it would sound like. I know he would have killed it." But Parton had the last laugh.

When Whitney Houston recorded her blockbuster version of I Will Always Love You for The Bodyguard soundtrack in 1992, the country star still owned the rights and earned "enough money to buy Graceland", Presley's mansion.

Instead, she invested the funds in a black neighbourhood in Nashville, Tennessee, saying she thought it was an apt way to honour Houston's legacy.

That determination to stand up for herself, and to value her music as more than just a commodity, is an essential part of Parton's legacy.

Without her example, would Taylor Swift have stood up to the hedge funds who purchased her back catalogue, re-recording her biggest hits to rob them of royalties? Perhaps not – but either way, Dolly approved.

"Smart!" she remarked when asked concerning Swift's masterplan. "She's so smart, she's so great, she's genius. I mean really, look at what she's doing! That's amazing!"

Mourning Parton's death, Swift acknowledged the star's "backbone of steel" in the struggle "to defend her own self worth as an artist". Musically, her legacy is just as profound.

Parton was regarding six years old when she wrote her first song: Little Tiny Tasseltop, an ode to her favourite doll and its corn-silk hair.

For the rest of her career, she turned everyday details like those into songs of hope and heart.

Her 1971 classic Coat of Plenty of Colors tells the profoundly moving story of Parton as a child being proud of the ragged, hand-sewn clothes her mother had produced for her.

In practice, the 1974 concept album My Tennessee Mountain Home, meanwhile, is a musical autobiography that opens with Parton reciting the first letter she wrote home after moving to Nashville as a teenager.

" A couple of folks already told me that they might record a couple of my songs, so I'll be makin' enough money to get by, " she sang. " And I don't want you to be worrying about me bein' hungry or anything."

Meanwhile, the album cover is a photo of the two-room log cabin that was Parton's actual childhood home in the 1940s and 50s, and the rest of the songs paint an idyllic picture of her childhood.

Taken together, the developments around the heart, hope and steely determination behind a musical legacy point to a situation that is still moving, and the coming days should bring more clarity.