Dolly Parton’s 1st Record Contract Ended in Embarrassment  

Dolly Parton began pursuing a career in music as a child, and her dreams seemed to come true when she signed a record contract as a teenager. She pushed hard to achieve this, and thought her career was finally taking off. Unfortunately, she wasn’t happy with the work she produced during this time. What had once seemed like a great opportunity for Parton ended in embarrassment.

Dolly Parton’s first record contract came to a disappointing end

Parton’s uncle, Bill Owens, was an early believer in her talent. He helped her seek a record deal, and they eventually got in contact with Buddy Killen, a Nashville record producer at Tree Publishing. While Killen initially thought Parton and Owens were “a pair of backwoods doorknockers,” Parton’s demo tapes won him over.

“Right from the beginning, she had a special kind of drive and determination,” he said, per the book Ain’t Nobody’s Fool by Martha Ackmann, “and understood a whole lot more about the business than even she realized.”

Killen signed Parton to a songwriting contract and later landed her a recording session. Her songs didn’t perform well, though, and the songs Parton wrote weren’t accepted by Tree Publishing. 

“She was a little premature,” Killen said. “She hadn’t developed enough as a writer to really happen in those days, but her time hadn’t come.”

Frustrated with the lack of progress, Parton asked Killen to release her from her contract. He encouraged her to finish high school.

She credited her uncle with helping her career 

Parton didn’t find a great deal of success early on. Still, she couldn’t deny that her uncle did a great deal for her career. 

“Whatever Uncle Bill was or wasn’t, there was no doubt he believed in me, or at least that something could be made of or from me,” she wrote in her book Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business. “He was always on the case.”

Parton said Owens did everything he could to promote her as a musical artist. 

“He would knock on doors wearing his best smile and sell me as if I were a vacuum cleaner,” she wrote, adding, “He would approach people with sparkly boots getting out of Cadillacs and talk me up in every possible way.”

Owens once worked relentlessly to get her a spot onstage at the Grand Ole Opry even though she was too young.

Porter Wagoner helped Dolly Parton get a good record contract later in her career

Parton’s career got a break years later when she joined The Porter Wagoner Show as a singer. Wagoner wanted her signed to his label, but record executive Chet Atkins reportedly pushed back at him.

“This girl just can’t sing,” Atkins reportedly told Wagoner, per the book Dolly: The Biography by Alanna Nash. “I don’t think she’d sell, because she just cannot sing.”

Wagoner said he put his own earnings on the line for Parton.

“Well, I’ll tell you what,” Wagoner said. “You take out of my royalties what she loses this year because I believe she can sing, and that she’ll make it.”

Atkins later said that he never criticized Parton’s singing voice.