Whitney Houston Left Us With A Song

Whitney grew up on the hard streets of a hard city. She walked the sidewalks of Newark, New Jersey.

Dolly was a dirt poor little country girl from the backside of the Great Smoky Mountains. She walked the back roads around Locust Ridge, Tennessee.

Whitney Houston

Whitney sang in the choir of the New Hope Baptist Church.

Dolly sang on the front porch of a rustic little shack that sheltered twelve children. Oh, she sung in church as well and was on the radio by the time she was ten, but mostly she sang to the dogs that hung around in the shade behind her home.

Whitney would have a cousin named Dionne Warwick and a godmother named Aretha Franklin.

Dolly picked the guitar and wrote songs with her uncle. He said she would be famous some day. Dolly only blushed. But, down in her heart, she knew he was right.

Whitney was black.

Dolly was white.

They were miles apart.

They were worlds apart.

But what they had were voices like none other, and they would forever be linked together by a song.

On the morning after she graduated from high school, Dolly Parton packed up a few clothes, her guitar, and a handful of songs she had written and caught the bus for Nashville, Tennessee, the country music capital of the world.

She drifted from studio to studio, big and small, sang a few ballads, pitched a few songs, and had two of them recorded by other country singers. It has a tough road, a hard road. She looked around her and realized that every waiter, waitress, bus boy, bell captain, and taxi driver in Nashville were pickers, songwriters, and singers, all biding their time and gambling that fate would pluck them off the streets and out of their misery.

Fate didn’t spend a lot of time in Nashville.

Dolly Parton

In 1967, however, Dolly Parton was offered a chance to appear as a regular on the Porter Waggoner television show, even traveling with the Wagonmasters from one end of the country to the other, going from one one-night stand to another for more than 250 nights a year.

Dolly wasn’t a star.

Not yet.

But the spotlight was shining warm on her face, usually late at night, usually in high school gymnasiums. But it didn’t matter. It was bright. And little venues made the applause ricochet off the rafters and sound even louder than it was.

Porter was the traditionalist in Nashville. He had the records, the hits, the television show, and the Nudie suits that glittered like neon with beads and sequins and wagon wheels on the back. She was, everyone agreed, a mighty fortunate young lady to be on the streets and out of work when Porter needed a new girl singer.

His star didn’t fade. Dolly’s star simply began to shine brighter.

And the hottest singing duo in Nashville suddenly and unexpectedly split the blanket even though there had never been a blanket between them. The arguments were heated. The rumors were rife. It was a classic break up triggered by greed and ego and envy, so everyone said. Porter wanted to run the show. Dolly’s show was bigger now. The stage was simply not large enough for the two of them, not at the same time anyway. The feud became hot, then bitter, and the irreconcilable differences were, well, irreconcilable.

Dolly Parton said, “You get over these love-hate relationships with people that you work with. Porter and I were very competitive and passionate about what we did. Then we both got all jealous, too, and I’m not ashamed of feeling that way. But finally it began to break my heart because I thought, well, I’m going whether he wants me to go or not. It’s my life. He can’t stop me.”

The door opened.

It slammed shut.

Dolly walked out.

And she was gone.

One night, sitting all alone in a dimly lit hotel room, she thought, “There’s nothing I can say that will make it easier.”

But maybe there was. After all, she would never forget the good times. Porter had taught her so much about the business. He had taught her so much about performing. He had given her a chance. And she would never forget it and certainly never forget him.

Dolly Parton sat down and wrote a bittersweet song for him. It came straight from an honest heart. She called it: “I Will Always Love You.”

It was all about someone who knew the relationship had ended, but who still valued the time that she had spent with the person she as leaving. It was a national anthem for love won and love lost.

The song became an instant hit, an instant classic.

The rift between singers had been patched forever.

Elvis Presley wanted to cover the song, but Colonel Tom Parker demanded fifty percent of the profits.

Dolly refused.

Instead, the song would go to Whitney Houston.

Whitney needed a lead single from her movie, The Bodyguard. She had planned to record “What Becomes of the Broken Hearted” but learned that the song had been used in Fried Green Tomatoes.

Instead, she turned to a song written by a country girl from Locust Ridge, Tennessee. She turned to “I Will Always Love You’” as a soul ballad, full of emotion, full of passion, a song that touched deep into the heartbroken nights of mankind.

It became an instant hit, an instant classic.

Two singers.

Two voices.

Years apart.

One song.

And now one voice is silenced. The last days, the last moments, the last battles of her life no longer matter. Whitney Houston will be remembered in a private funeral in the New Hope Baptist Church where she sang first for an audience, where she recalled, “I think I knew then that my singing ability was an infection thing that God had given me.”

Whitney has left. But she left us with a song.

We will always love her and wait for Dolly to write another.