Dolly Parton and Porter Wagoner spent seven years working together on The Porter Wagoner Show. Her career took off during this time and, after she left, her level of fame far eclipsed his. While Parton appreciated the help Wagoner gave her career, some people began to see him as a burden on her career.
Parton began pursuing a career in music when she was a child. She’d frequently performed for an audience before joining The Porter Wagoner Show as a singer. Parton believed this transformed her as an artist.
“I could sing when I met Porter,” she said, per the book Ain’t Nobody’s Fool by Martha Ackmann. “After knowing him, I knew how to perform.”
Wagoner took Parton under his wing, but he also began to exercise a significant amount of control over her. In interviews, he wanted to do all the talking, and he wanted creative control over their music. Fred Foster, a record producer who worked with Parton, believed Wagoner began to stifle her career.
“While I’m sure his show did her good in some areas, I think it also confined her terribly,” he said. “I think it did her real damage.”
She left his show in 1974 to pursue a solo career.
While Parton and Wagoner had good chemistry on the show, they clashed often behind the scenes. Those around them recalled loud screaming matches between them. Parton admitted that while he helped her career, they weren’t good for each other.
“Porter has been one of the greatest and most popular country artists of all time,” she told Playboy in 1978, per the book Dolly on Dolly. “I can never take the credit away from Porter for givin’ me a big break. I learned a lot from him. He inspired me and I inspired him. We were good for each other in many ways and just a disaster for each other in a lot of ways. I’ll always love him in my own way.”
Before she left the show, she said she and Wagoner were fighting nearly constantly.
“We just got to where we argued and quarreled about personal things,” she explained. “Things we had no business quarreling and arguing about. It was beginning to tarnish a really good relationship. We didn’t get along very well, but no more his fault than mine. We were just a lot alike. Both ambitious. I wanted to do things my way and he wanted to do things his way.”
While they continued to work together for a time after the show, they eventually parted ways for good.
Though Foster believed Wagoner hurt Parton’s career, Wagoner felt Parton was an anchor on him.
“There were no complaints during the beginning of the show,” he said, per the book Dolly by Alanna Nash. “I didn’t set the trap to catch her, y’know. It was set in a very humble manner of ‘Would you help me get my career started, because I’m a country girl from East Tennessee who’s trying to get a career started in the country music business as a writer and a singer.’ So if anyone was trapped, it might have been me. Because to me that’s pretty good bait there. That’ll catch a purdy big pigeon in your trap.”
He also felt that he spent more time focusing on her music than his.
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