Dolly Parton’s Label Wanted to ‘Drown Out’ Her Voice on Records to Save Her From Public Embarrassment
Dolly Parton’s record label signed her but, according to her, they didn’t think her voice was anything to write home about. Parton, who thinks she has an unusual singing voice, claimed her label didn’t think she could sell records with her voice. They thought they should cover it up with music to save her — and themselves — from embarrassment.
Dolly Parton’s label didn’t think her singing voice was strong
Parton’s voice is high, clear, and unique. She thinks it’s divisive as well.
“I have a real strange voice,” she told The Great Speckled Bird in 1971, per the book Dolly on Dolly. “A lot of people it just irritates them to death, ‘cause it’s piercing. I can understand it, cause there’s been a lot of people I don’t like to hear singing. My voice is real unusual.”
She said her record label recognized that some may dislike her voice, and so tried to bury the sound of it under music.
“They thought people wouldn’t buy me unless I was covered up with music,” she said. “They wanted to drown out my voice to keep from hurting my feelings, getting embarrassed when I heard the record. I’m sure they believed in me but they thought that was the best thing to do. So I recorded a type of music that I had never been familiar with.”
This was early in her career, though. Parton has proved over her decades in the music industry that people like the way her voice sounds.
Dolly Parton admitted she didn’t think she had the best singing voice
While Parton loves to sing, she thinks she’s better at writing songs than performing them. She admitted she doesn’t think her voice is very good.
“My manager just hates me to say that, because he says it’s not true. I don’t have a great voice,” told Playboy in 1978. “I have a different voice and I can do things with it that a lot of people can’t. But it’s so delicate in other ways, there’s no way I can do some of the things other singers can.”
She said one of the biggest problems with her voice was the vibrato.
“I used to have a lot of vibrato in my voice. It could almost be real irritating to a lot of people’s ears. It was a natural thing for me, but some people say, ‘You sound like you been eating billy goat.’ Bah, bah,” she said. “I guess I overdone it, so I tried to learn at takin’ some of the vibrato out. I would like to improve my voice to be able to hit better notes. My notes are not always true. But my heart is always true. And the emotions I put in is always true.”
Porter Wagoner once lied to her about how people viewed her singing
When Parton joined The Porter Wagoner Show, he wanted to get her on his label. Wagoner told her he had to go to battle for her, as record executive Chet Atkins told him he didn’t like her voice.
“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.”
Parton expressed her gratitude that Wagoner believed in her. Years later, though, Atkins denied ever saying he disliked Parton’s voice.
“I heard her on the radio one day doing an interview, and she said, ‘Chet didn’t used to like my singin’, but now he does.’ I thought, ‘What in the world is she talking about?’” he said. “So the next time I saw her, I asked her, and she told me what Porter had said about how I signed her. I wondered how in the hell she’d been able to face me thinkin’ that all these years.”
