By Ryan Brennan, Fort Worth Star Telegram | Dolly Parton has written more than 3,000 songs across a career spanning seven decades. Her own discography includes 49 solo studio albums – a record for a female country artist – with 25 songs reaching No. 1 on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart.
But many of her compositions became massive hits for other performers, and the writers’ credits tell a story most casual listeners have never heard.
In fact, her first Billboard chart appearance didn’t come as a singer. It came as a songwriter.
How Dolly Parton Started Writing Hits for Other Artists
Parton’s songwriting debut on the charts arrived 60 years ago. She co-wrote “Put It Off Until Tomorrow” with her uncle Bill Owens, and the song was recorded by Decca Records artist Bill Phillips.
Released in January 1966, it cracked the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart a few months later and peaked at No. 6.
That song earned Song of the Year at the 1966 BMI Awards – her first of many such honors – and the Kendalls later turned it into another top-ten hit in 1980.
Parton and Owens kept writing together. Their song “Fuel to the Flame” was recorded by Skeeter Davis and released as a single in 1967, becoming Davis’s first major hit in two years and charting in the top ten.
Davis was one of the first women in country music to gain major success as a solo artist and an acknowledged influence on Parton.
Why Dolly Parton Purposefully Wrote Songs for Male Artists
Parton knew at a young age that learning to adapt would give her the best chance at a successful career in music.
“I love to write songs for men,” Parton wrote in her 2020 book, Dolly Parton, Songteller: My Life in Lyrics.
“And it’s a good thing I do because back then, there weren’t that many women in the country-music business to write songs for. Especially ones who weren’t writing their own songs, like Loretta Lynn was,” she continued.
“I didn’t have a lot of space to write songs for women so I purposefully tried to write songs that men could record. Or songs that could go either way,” she wrote.
That approach produced some of her most memorable recordings.
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Go here to read more about the songs and the people she wrote for:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/entertainment/music/dolly-parton-s-hidden-songwriting-legacy-popular-songs-you-had-no-idea-she-wrote/
This article was created by content specialists using various tools, including AI.
Photo: Dolly
