Dolly Parton and Tim Curry died on the same day and were born exactly three months apart.
I love this, and it’s quite appropriate to this thread.
Like many others here, I wasn’t very familiar with her music. I didn’t realize that she had written “I Will Always Love You” until a few years ago; I had only heard the Whitney Houston cover.
But she was held in pretty high regard as a songwriter and musician by a lot of other musicians. Here’s a tribute from one of my favorite music YouTubers that highlights her musical talents.
About that song… I read somewhere that she wrote I will always love you as a tribute to Porter Wagoner after she left his show to move on to bigger things.
Absolutely true. She had worked professionally with Wagoner, who was her business partner and mentor, for seven years, and she was in the process of becoming a solo artist.
Also, Parton wrote one of her other biggest hits, “Jolene,” at about the same time as “I Will Always Love You.” At one point, she had stated that she had written the two songs on the same day, but she later clarified that while the two songs were, indeed, part of the same flurry of songwriting, they may or may not have been written precisely on the same day.