Porter Wagoner Slammed Dolly Parton for Living in ‘Fairy Land’
Dolly Parton and Porter Wagoner parted ways after years of collaboration, something he didn’t take particularly well. Though Wagoner insisted he wasn’t bitter, he spoke at length about her in the press, often unflatteringly. He once said Parton’s lofty career ambitions were very unrealistic.
Porter Wagoner said Dolly Parton didn’t live in the real world
Parton left Wagoner’s show and stopped using him as a producer because she wanted to pursue a solo career. She craved a higher degree of control over her music, and Wagoner wasn’t willing to cede this to her. Several years after this, he sued her and spoke disparagingly about her in public.
“Doly wants to do everything that is possible for her to do,” he told The Tennessean (via the book Dolly on Dolly), “but she lives in a fairy land.”
He said he disagreed with the ways she sought to bolster her career. She posed for Playboy, for example.
“I don’t believe a country girl singer would do things in the manner she’s done them,” he said. “Like the Playboy thing. Do you think Kitty Wells would do that?”
Years after this remark, Parton responded. While she agreed Wells wouldn’t have posed for Playboy, this didn’t mean she regretted the decision.
“I thought, Well, I guess not,” she said. “I don’t think Playboy would want Kitty Wells on the cover. But it was that kind of mentality: Kitty Wells wouldn’t do that, Loretta Lynn wouldn’t do that. Well, I’m not Loretta Lynn. I’m not Kitty Wells.”
Porter Wagoner insisted he didn’t feel bitter towards Dolly Parton
Though Wagoner’s words certainly seem to carry a whiff of resentment, he insisted he did not feel this way. He also insisted that Parton hadn’t left him; according to him, he fired her.
“I let her go,” he said. “Dolly didn’t quit me. I gave her notice in Tulsa, Oklahoma, that she needed to get her own band together because I wasn’t going to travel and have a girl that I had to fight with on the road with us. I’m not bitter because Dolly left my show in any sense. I was just disappointed to find out she’s not made of what I thought she was.”
Parton said she found his remarks “bitter and untrue,” though she tried not to talk about it at length.
They reconciled before his death
The bad blood between Parton and Wagoner lasted for years. Just before his death, though, Parton visited him to convey that she had forgiven him.
“I was with Porter when he was dying,” she wrote in her book Dolly Parton, Songteller: My Life in Lyrics. “I forgave him, and I thanked him for all of the opportunities he gave me. I wanted him to know exactly how I felt. I told him everything was fine and asked him that if there was anything he needed to forgive me for, please do. I wanted him to be free of anything that he might have been worrying about.”
She believed he understood her despite not being able to speak.
“But I squeezed his hand, and he made a move to say he understood,” she wrote. “He died just a few hours after we visited.”
