TCBCast 421: Was Dolly Wrong About Elvis and "I Will Always Love You"? (feat. John Michael Heath)

In this special two-part episode of TCBCast featuring John Heath, Justin and John reflect on the life and music of Dolly Parton, yet their main focus is on the discrepancies between the legendary story of Elvis seeking to record "I Will Always Love You"... and history.  Source interviews, articles and books, as well as verifiable facts about how Colonel Parker's music publishing involvement was handled - and subsequently ignored - during the relevant time periods before and after the critical July 1973 Stax sessions, provide corroborating evidence (including from Dolly herself as well as credible accounts within Elvis' circle) that the dramatic story the world has become familiar with and has been repeated endlessly on social media was not as it seems...  ..Yet the true story, and the real song Elvis wanted to record, is also much more revealing about how Elvis and Dolly were deeply connected by their real life experiences of extreme poverty, a strong religious background, their generous spirits, and flashy senses of personal style. This episode is being split into two parts, part 1 focuses on this story, part 2 will be Songs of the Week; as you'll understand by the end, there's simply no tidy way to transition tonally from the closing of this part of episode to the accompanying Songs of the Week, and in fact Justin and John took a short couple minutes break to reset tonally so that they could tackle "Why Me Lord" and "Green Green Grass of Home" with as much enthusiasm as possible. Keep an eye out - those will be in your feed soon! The clip of the Elvis-y vocal interpretation of "I Will Always Love You" featured midway through the show is by Torben Otten.  Some of our most critical sources for this episode include: Alanna Nash's Revelations from the Memphis Mafia, Peter Guralnick's Careless Love and The Colonel & The King, Dolly Parton's Songteller: My Life in Lyrics, Dolly on Dolly edited by Randy Schmidt, Norbert Putnam's Music Lessons: A Musical Memoir, INTERVIEW magazine (1989), Playgirl (August 1978) and Playboy (October 1978) magazine interviews with Dolly Parton, Alan Fortas's Elvis from Memphis to Hollywood, Elvis Information Network's Ask Marty Lacker column, the ASCAP and BMI repertoire websites, and Keith Flynn's website.