The legendary song “I Will Always Love You”, closes 50 – From Dolly Parton to Whitney Huston and Elvis

Think of her experiencing her own “euro” one evening in 1973 when in an inspirational flash she wrote two classics one after the other. First came Jolene – a success that determined Dolly Parton’s career, and the next I Will Always Love You. This tender song, celebrates the 50 years since its release and remains one of its least known tracks, despite sweeping for half a century. It was Whitney Houston’s cover, recorded for the soundtrack of The Bodyguard in 1992, which highlighted the song in classic. “It will always have a special place in my heart, as I hope it has in yours”, Parton wrote on Instagram on Tuesday (13.03.2024) on the occasion of the anniversary. The next morning after her inspiration, she entered the office of country singer, Porter Wagoner and asked him to sit down. “I sang the song myself in his office – only me and my guitar”, he told Stern. Tears flowed from his face behind the desk. “This is the best song you’ve ever written”, she said. Breaking Elvis’ heart A year later, Parton’s two songs from that rich synthetic meeting had become both country’s number one singles in the US and had begun to win the mainstream pop audience. Then Elvis Presley called – he had listened to I Will Always Love You and wanted to record an adaptation. “You can’t imagine how excited I am about it,” he said. “This is the most important thing that has ever happened to me as a singer”. View this post on Instagram But the night before the recording, his notoriously tough manager, Colonel Tom Parker, called Parton and told her that Presley would not record the song unless he gave her half of the synthetic rights. Showing the same hard business perception that made her move away from Wagoner to find solo success, Parton forced herself to say no. “I said, ‘I can’t do this’, he told Stern. “Of course I cried all night about it.” The Musketeer who took the song off In 1975, shortly after Parton originally released I Will Always Love You, Lawrence Kasdan wrote the script for The Bodyguard, a romance starring a former intelligence agent falling in love with the pop star who has been hired to protect. It took 17 years to align stars and Kevin Costner and Whitney Houston, a real music diva and a popular star, to transfer history to the big screen in 1992 – with I Will Always Love You on soundtrack. (Parton herself had tried, performing the song on screen along with Bert Reynolds in the 1982 film The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. The rerecorded film version was again on top of Billboard’s country chart, which was first done at the time, but failed to enter the main top 40). It was Costner, according to Stereogum’s column The Number Ones, who suggested that Houston sing a country song. It prevailed skepticism, but after a tape of possible songs, including Linda Ronstadt’s 1975 cover in Parton’s humble ballad. Producer David Foster processed her into a melancholic, eventually escalating tour de force that let Houston’s voice burst. Whitney Houston told Rolling Stone magazine that she believed that Parton was “a great singer”, adding that she was“ worried” about how she would feel about the cover. She added that it meant too much when Parton said she was “confused” by her version.. Her a capella opening, included again at Costner’s suggestion to fit better in the film, is built up to the last verse and note of Houston breaking the lungs. “It turns what Dolly described as “a simple song about everything and nothing” into a monumental ballad of power that gathers all the energy of an airplane that takes off.” .