We Can All learn a Thing or Two From Dolly Parton About Ownership

On the 25th of August 2026, Dolly Parton died at 80 years old after a brief illness with cancer. In honour of her legacy, music, and talent, we will explore what lessons we can learn from her as young creatives and music professionals about ownership and music rights.

It Starts with a Story

Dolly was born on the 19th of January, 1946, in Sevier County, Tennessee, USA. As confirmed by the singer herself, her family was not well-to-do. She was born into a poor farming family, as the fourth of 12 children born to Robert Lee Parton, a sharecropper and construction worker, and Avie Lee Parton, a homemaker. 

Dolly was a prolific songwriter and a savvy businesswoman, and her discography is an undeniable testament to both. From 1968’s Just Because I’m a Woman, to scoring her first number-one hit on the Billboard country chart with the 1970’s Joshua, then came Coat of Many Colors in 1971, followed closely by the chart-topper Jolene in 1973. But that was not all Dolly got around to in 1973, not by a long shot. 

The Song

In 1973, Dolly Parton wrote I Will Always Love You, reportedly on the same day she wrote Jolene. She wrote it as a farewell to her longtime musical partner Porter Wagoner, after deciding to leave his show to pursue her own career. She recorded and released its very first version in March 1974. 

Shortly after, she received a phone call from Colonel Tom Parker, Elvis Presley's manager. The legendary singer would like to record the song. The catch: he would own half of the song's publishing.

Of course, if you have been reading our posts for a while now, you are already familiar with two facts. One: there are two copyrights in musical works: one attached to the master recording and the other attached to its composition. Two: publishing royalties accrue from the composition of a song, which is the melody and the lyrics, every time that song is performed, broadcast, streamed, or covered by another artist. Therefore, in exchange for lending his voice to the recording, Presley wanted a 50% cut of those publishing royalties. And Dolly said, No. 

A Tough Decision

She refused to hand over half of the publishing rights, a decision she said was not easy to make at the time but was necessary to protect her song and her business. In her words, “I had to keep that copyright in my pocket”.

As it turns out, she was right. 18 years after it was first released and 10 years after it was re-recorded, Whitney Houston recorded I Will Always Love You for the soundtrack of the movie The Bodyguard in 1992. This time not as a gentle country ballad, but as an almost operatic performance that builds up to one of the most recognised climaxes in recorded music.  

It spent fourteen weeks at the top of the Billboard Hot 100, won Record of the Year and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance at the 36th Grammy Awards, and set a Guinness World Record for the Best-selling physical single by a solo female artist ever. 

But that is still not where the moral of our story is.

What Happened Next

Because of a single decision to keep her publishing rights in their entirety, every time that song is played; on the radio, on television, on the soundtrack, in stores, in films, in elevators, at weddings, at funerals, Dolly Parton earned a royalty.

The math is simple. Dolly owned the copyright in the composition, which did not change when Houston recorded it. Since Houston’s version was a derivative work, she may own the copyright in her own master recording, but Dolly still owns the underlying melody and the lyrics. Every derivative use of the song required Dolly’s permission and generated royalties for her. 

And she has never been quiet about what that income looked like either. The estimated $10 million she earned from Houston's recording in the 1990s went into an office complex she purchased in a predominantly Black neighbourhood in Nashville. She called it, belovedly, the house that Whitney built.

The How

Long before she even had a mainstream hit, Dolly established her own publishing company in 1967. She made an active decision to own her publishing from the beginning and protect her catalog. She retained ownership in her songs through the publishing companies OwePar Entertainment, which she founded with her uncles in the 1960s, and Velvet Apple Music.

At the time of her death, 60 years after putting that infrastructure in place, her net worth was estimated at approximately $450 million. The publishing catalog alone accounts for more than a quarter of that, containing more than 3,000 songs, and valued at approximately $120 million by Forbes in 2025. A few of them have been sampled, synced to films, and streamed billions of times over the years. Songs like Jolene, which was covered by Beyoncé for her 2024 album Cowboy Carter.

Dolly was many things: talented, kind, a philanthropist, and a businesswoman. But she was, above all else, her own biggest advocate, one who never wavered in her belief in her God-given creativity, and who built the infrastructure to ensure that belief paid off. 

We Can All Learn a Thing or Two

Granted, not every artist can establish a publishing company, and they do not have to. Dolly’s story applies wherever music is made and owned. Her refusal of Colonel Parker’s proposal reflects a level of awareness that every music professional should carry: an understanding of what her work was worth. She saw her composition for what it truly was, a tool for long-term wealth, and she safeguarded her right to fully benefit from it. 

You do not need to establish a publishing company to begin. Register your works, sign split sheets, and retain your rights when you can, for as long as you can.