Elvis and the song I Will Always Love You question

[Ciscoking]

Dolly Parton offered the song to Elvis I have heard...true...?

Did Elvis ever lay down a vocal track to that song ? Was a recording session scheduled..?

[Domino]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Will_Always_Love_You

When the 1974 recording of the song was reaching number one on the country charts, Elvis Presley indicated that he wanted to cover the song. Parton was interested until Presley's manager, Colonel Tom Parker, told her that it was standard procedure for the songwriter to sign over half of the publishing rights to any song Elvis recorded. Parton refused. She recalls:

" I said, 'I’m really sorry,' and I cried all night. I mean, it was like the worst thing. You know, it’s like, Oh, my God … Elvis Presley.' And other people were saying, 'You’re nuts. It’s Elvis Presley.' ...I said, 'I can't do that. Something in my heart says, 'Don’t do that. And I just didn’t do it... He would have killed it. But anyway, so he didn’t. Then when Whitney [Houston’s version] came out, I made enough money to buy Graceland."

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[Kylan]

So then why do the experts on here say no it wasn't I will always love you but it was coat of many colors? So we don't go with what she says but the experts? Fascinating! Hehehe

[drjohncarpenter]

Dolly Parton offered the song to Elvis I have heard...true...?

Did Elvis ever lay down a vocal track to that song ? Was a recording session scheduled..?

Not true.

This has been discussed in detail on FECC, many times from my research, and most recently 11 days ago:

Songs Elvis passed up?
http://www.elvis-collectors.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=96659&p=1568496#p1568496

You actually visited this topic, too.

[DarrylMac]

From an interview posted by the Doc in the other thread. No reason to suspect Dolly is misremembering - she mentions both songs. This seems to be a question of some people here thinking they know more about what Elvis should have liked than he did. She's told the story for years.

"What’s the story about Elvis Presley wanting to record the song?

Elvis loved the song. I never met Elvis and there were many times I could have. I don’t know why I didn’t, I think I just wanted him to always be the way he was in my mind. I had met some people that I wish I hadn’t, you know what I mean? Not that you wish you hadn’t, but he was just so special, he was so spiritual and out there anyway, I didn’t want nothing to blow the image. So I just wouldn’t meet him. Jarvis was producing him at the time, and Felton was a friend of mine. So often, when Elvis would come to town, they would tell me. I would always say, “Maybe next time he’s in town I’ll meet him.” And so they would always let me know when he was in town, and I’d always make an excuse (laughs) not to go down there to the recording studio.

But at any rate, he had heard that song and he loved it. He was here recording and he wanted to do it, so they notified me and I was so excited. So, the next thing they said was, “But you know Elvis has to have half the publishing on the song. Everything he records, unless it’s already a standard, he has to have half the publishing.” I said, “Well, I’m really sorry, but I don’t give my publishing to nobody. Not half of it, not 10 percent of it, not any of it.” I had just started my own publishing company, and I said, “If he loves the song and the song is that good, then he’ll record it anyway. And if he don’t, well just say that I’m flattered with the thought.”

But I would not give up the publishing, and thank God I didn’t, because that song made me more money than all of the others put together. If I’d given up half the publishing then I would’ve made half the money, plus I would’ve lost half the pride in it. The fact that I wrote the song by myself and published it myself just made the whole thing more special. It was not something you had to share.

It sounds like it was the Colonel’s idea.

To be honest, it was. They say that Elvis didn’t know that much about that kind of stuff. He wasn’t that involved in the business side of it, but Colonel Tom was. It was Felton, who was producing him at the time, that called me about it, and I said “No.” And I never was sorry. I would have loved to hear him do it. He also loved “Coat Of Many Colors,” but I wouldn’t give up the publishing on that either."


The "here" in question could have been LA rather than Nashville, perhaps dating it to the Today session - would have fit well with Green Green Grass Of Home, Susan When She Tried, Pieces Of My Life etc, and the general country flavour of the album.

[drjohncarpenter]

The "here" in question could have been LA rather than Nashville, perhaps dating it to the Today session - would have fit well with Green Green Grass Of Home, Susan When She Tried, Pieces Of My Life etc, and the general country flavour of the album.

As noted in the other topic, Bill DeMain, who conducted the interview, is a long-time Nashville resident and music critic. Parton is misremembering, exactly as noted in the linked topic post above.

[brian]

If true this was a ludicrous business practice that Parker had going to shake down songwriters for songs that had already been hits. All Elvis was going to do was record a cover version for one of his albums. No singer-songwriter in the music business would have been dumb enough to sign away 50% of the publishing on a song they already had a hit with just so Elvis Presley could sing a cover of it on stage or in the studio. How in the hell was Elvis suppose to get any material.

[TJ]

The "here" in question could have been LA rather than Nashville, perhaps dating it to the Today session - would have fit well with Green Green Grass Of Home, Susan When She Tried, Pieces Of My Life etc, and the general country flavour of the album.

Dolly shouldn't necessarily be taken literally on "he was here" either. If she got the call saying that Elvis wanted to record the song, she could easily have assumed that the session was going to take place in Nashville, even if it wasn't. She might even have known at the time that it wasn't Nashville, but since forgotten. That kind of detail could easily be misremembered/misinterpreted, but you would think that a songwriter would be much less likely to misremember which of their songs someone of Elvis' stature wanted to record. If I'd written a song and Elvis nearly recorded it, I'd have played it over in my head how the recording might have sounded. I'm guessing that she did too. She is on record a bunch of times saying that it was "I Will Always Love You" and has also mentioned "Coat of Many Colours" in passing too. So, why not both? Sure, it's a better story if it's "I Will Always Love You", given Whitney's monster hit, but that doesn't mean that the story is false. It does in fact make perfect sense that she would tell the story more after the Whitney hit because that hit made the decision to keep the publishing so much more significant.

There's nothing which conclusively undermines Dolly's often told story.

[drjohncarpenter]

Dolly shouldn't necessarily be taken literally on "he was here" either. If she got the call saying that Elvis wanted to record the song, she could easily have assumed that the session was going to take place in Nashville, even if it wasn't. She might even have known at the time that it wasn't Nashville, but since forgotten. That kind of detail could easily be misremembered/misinterpreted, but you would think that a songwriter would be much less likely to misremember which of their songs someone of Elvis' stature wanted to record. If I'd written a song and Elvis nearly recorded it, I'd have played it over in my head how the recording might have sounded. I'm guessing that she did too. She is on record a bunch of times saying that it was "I Will Always Love You" and has also mentioned "Coat of Many Colours" in passing too. So, why not both? Sure, it's a better story if it's "I Will Always Love You", given Whitney's monster hit, but that doesn't mean that the story is false. It does in fact make perfect sense that she would tell the story more after the Whitney hit because that hit made the decision to keep the publishing so much more significant.

There's nothing which conclusively undermines Dolly's often told story.

I'd say this post argues quite convincingly for her being mistaken:

Songs Elvis passed up?
http://www.elvis-collectors.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=96659&p=1568496#p1568496

[TJ]

Dolly shouldn't necessarily be taken literally on "he was here" either. If she got the call saying that Elvis wanted to record the song, she could easily have assumed that the session was going to take place in Nashville, even if it wasn't. She might even have known at the time that it wasn't Nashville, but since forgotten. That kind of detail could easily be misremembered/misinterpreted, but you would think that a songwriter would be much less likely to misremember which of their songs someone of Elvis' stature wanted to record. If I'd written a song and Elvis nearly recorded it, I'd have played it over in my head how the recording might have sounded. I'm guessing that she did too. She is on record a bunch of times saying that it was "I Will Always Love You" and has also mentioned "Coat of Many Colours" in passing too. So, why not both? Sure, it's a better story if it's "I Will Always Love You", given Whitney's monster hit, but that doesn't mean that the story is false. It does in fact make perfect sense that she would tell the story more after the Whitney hit because that hit made the decision to keep the publishing so much more significant.

There's nothing which conclusively undermines Dolly's often told story.

I'd say this post argues quite convincingly for her being mistaken:

Songs Elvis passed up?
http://www.elvis-collectors.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=96659&p=1568496#p1568496

Sorry, I'm not convinced. You can make a case for Elvis wanting to record "Coat of Many Colors", but that doesn't remove the possibility that he also wanted to record "I Will Always Love You", either at the same time or at a different session. Dolly claims it was both, so why not? Lacker's failure to mention it is only damning if we assume that he was aware of every track that Elvis expressed an interest in recording, and that's certainly a stretch. It's certainly possible that "Coat of Many Colors" particularly stuck in Lacker's mind because he was there to see Elvis' reaction when Dolly performed it on television. It's true that no one in Elvis' circle ever mentioned "I Will Always Love You", but is that really particularly significant? How many knew or cared? Felton was long gone by the time Whitney had the hit and Elvis never got as far as recording it, so no musicians would recall it.

As for "Coat of Many Colors" being a better fit for Elvis, that's probably true, but we all know that Elvis recorded songs in the 1970s that weren't necessarily a good fit. In any case, Dolly claims he wanted to record both, so no one is arguing with the idea that Elvis would have been drawn to the earlier track.

[drjohncarpenter]

I'd say this post argues quite convincingly for her being mistaken:

Songs Elvis passed up?
http://www.elvis-collectors.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=96659&p=1568496#p1568496

Sorry, I'm not convinced.

That's unfortunate. You're not going to learn much more unless Elvis pulls a Lazarus.