Dolly Parton's Nashville Home — Where "Jolene" and "I Will Always Love You" Were Written

On what Dolly Parton has called one of the most remarkable days of her creative life — reportedly a single day in 1973 — she wrote both 'Jolene' and 'I Will Always Love You,' two songs that would become among the most covered and celebrated in country music history. 'Jolene' was inspired partly by a red-haired bank teller she felt was paying too much attention to her husband Carl Dean, and partly by a childhood memory of a girl named Jolene who had signed her autograph book. 'I Will Always Love You' was written as a farewell letter to her mentor and business partner Porter Wagoner as she prepared to leave his television show and pursue a broader solo career. Both were recorded at RCA Studio B in Nashville and went to number one on the country charts in 1974. Parton has said she wrote both songs at her home in the Nashville area, though the exact address of the house where she was living at the time has not been publicly identified.

Dolly Parton grew up in poverty in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee, arriving in Nashville the day after her high school graduation in 1964. By 1973 she was an established country star but was beginning to feel constrained by the Porter Wagoner Show format and her role within it. The two songs she wrote that day captured opposite emotional poles — the fear of losing love to another woman, and the bittersweet dignity of letting someone go — and together they represent a creative peak that few songwriters have matched in a lifetime, let alone a single sitting. Whitney Houston's 1992 cover of 'I Will Always Love You' became one of the best-selling singles ever recorded.

The private residence where Parton wrote these songs is not publicly identified and is not accessible to visitors; the approximate coordinates here reflect the general Brentwood area south of Nashville where she has lived. Parton's life in Nashville is well documented through RCA Studio B on Music Row — where both songs were recorded — and through the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum downtown, which holds significant Parton archives. Her Smoky Mountain hometown of Sevierville and the nearby Dollywood theme park offer the most publicly accessible connection to her story.