Merle Haggard Once Offered a Rare Glimpse of the Dolly Parton Few People Ever Saw
Merle Haggard never tried to hide the fact that he loved Dolly Parton. In a rare 1998 interview with Ralph Emery, the country legend spoke openly about his feelings for Parton and, more importantly, about the remarkable woman he believed existed beneath the wigs, glamour, and public image.
Parton, who very sadly passed away at 80 years old in Nashville, Tennessee, on Tuesday, had been dealing with undisclosed health issues for roughly the previous year. She had previously spoken about suffering from severe kidney stones but had understandably kept further details of her health private. It has since been revealed that she endured a brief battle with cancer.
Since her passing, countless stories have emerged about Parton’s extraordinary life and career. Among the lesser-known stories is her decades-long friendship with Haggard, who admitted that he fell in love with her during the 1970s and ultimately wrote two songs inspired by those feelings: “Always Wanting You” and “I’ve Got A Yearning.”
Merle Haggard Was Open About Loving Dolly
Haggard and Parton became particularly close during the 1970s, when they frequently exchanged musical ideas and helped each other creatively. Their friendship continued for decades, right up until Haggard’s death in 2016.
Haggard never pretended his feelings for Parton were merely professional. He was remarkably candid about being in love with her.
In his book Sing Me Back Home, he recalled:
“I was like a schoolboy. I could have carved ‘Merle loves Dolly’ on every tree in the country if she asked me to.”
There was, however, never any realistic prospect of the two becoming a couple.
Haggard had been married five times, and his marriage to his final wife, Theresa Ann Lane, began in 1993 and lasted until his death in 2016. Parton, meanwhile, had been married to Carl Dean since 1966, and the two remained together for nearly 60 years.
Whatever Haggard felt for Parton, he understood that their relationship was never going to become a romantic one.
“Oh Yeah, Didn’t Everybody?”
During a 1998 appearance on Ralph Emery’s On The Record, Emery brought up the fact that Haggard had fallen in love with Parton.
Haggard’s response was wonderfully simple:
“Oh yeah, didn’t everybody?”
That exchange captured something about the way Haggard viewed Parton. He clearly found her captivating, but his admiration went far beyond her public image.
He later explained how his feelings became the inspiration for two songs.
The Night He Wrote Two Songs About Dolly
Haggard recalled that the songs were written around 1974 while he was performing a two-week engagement at Harrah’s.
At the time, he and Parton were using one another as musical sounding boards, bouncing ideas back and forth. One night, after finishing work, Haggard sat down and wrote two songs, both of which were about Parton.
He finished “Always Wanting You” at around 3:30 in the morning. Because of the time difference, it was roughly 5:30 a.m. in Nashville when he decided he had to call Parton and play it for her.
Haggard knew there was no future for a love affair between them. As he explained to Emery, neither of them could control the feelings they had, but they could turn those feelings into music.
“Yeah, it was about 3 o’clock in the morning, I was at Harrah’s working a two week stand. And it must’ve been 1974, and I wrote two songs that night and both of them are about her.”
He continued:
“We were using each other for sound boards at the time. I didn’t have any intentions of ever make anything happen out of this love affair, you know, it was absolutely impossible. I knew that she couldn’t help it, I couldn’t help it, and we had to go different directions and that was that. But we could write songs.”
Then came the phone call.
He Insisted on Waking Dolly
When Haggard called Parton’s home, one of her assistants answered. She told him Dolly was asleep and suggested that he call back in the morning.
Haggard had other ideas.
He insisted that Parton be woken because he had spent the night working on a song and knew she would want to hear it. Eventually, the assistant agreed.
Haggard remembered Parton’s reaction when she finally came to the phone:
“She was infectious.”
His story gives a wonderfully ordinary glimpse into a relationship between two people who, despite their enormous fame, could still talk about music and share their work with each other.
Haggard recalled the exchange:
“And then some lady answered and I said, ‘Is Dolly asleep?’ She said, ‘She sure is.’ I said, ‘Would you go wake her up?’ She said, ‘Oh, I wouldn’t wanna do that.’ I said, ‘I got a song I was working on all night, I know she wants to hear it. It’s about her.'”
The assistant suggested waiting until morning, but Haggard continued to insist.
“She said, ‘She’s way down in underneath the cover.’ I said, ‘Well, you go way down underneath the cover and wake her up.’ So she got her on the phone, she came to the phone, she was infectious.”
“People Never Really Got to See the Beauty That She Contained”
The most moving part of Haggard’s interview came when he began discussing a side of Parton that he believed the public rarely had the opportunity to see.
Parton’s appearance had always attracted enormous attention. Her wigs, figure, clothing, and unmistakable stage persona became part of the image the world associated with her.
But Haggard believed there was something much deeper beneath that image.
He told Emery that people who only knew Parton from her public appearances often missed the person he had come to know privately.
“You know, the thing about Dolly, I’m gonna say something here that maybe has not been said about her. There was so much facade when she walked out that people that didn’t get to see her at breakfast never really got to see the beauty that she contained.”
He specifically mentioned how much attention was directed toward her appearance.
“The wig, and there was always so much focus on the on the boobs and all that.”
For Haggard, however, those things were secondary to the extraordinary person underneath.
He remembered Parton as someone with an almost unbelievable musical gift, particularly when she was simply sitting down with another person and playing her guitar.
“And she was a person underneath all of that that the public knew about that was rare. She had this unbelievable talent for a one-on-one guitar pulling. I mean, she could sit there and sing you songs that she wrote since she was five and knock you out.”
That may be one of the most revealing descriptions Haggard ever gave of Parton.
He wasn’t talking about the superstar who walked onto a stage in front of thousands of people. He was talking about the woman he encountered away from the spotlight, sitting down with a guitar and sharing songs she had written throughout her life.
A Friendship Built on Something Deeper
Hearing Haggard tell this story in the actual interview makes his admiration for Parton particularly striking. His affection wasn’t centered solely on her beauty or fame. He seemed genuinely fascinated by the person he saw when all of those things fell away.
That distinction matters when considering their relationship.
Parton was one of the most recognizable entertainers in the world, while Haggard was a country icon in his own right. Both lived much of their lives under intense public attention, surrounded by people who wanted something from them.
Their friendship gave them a place where they could simply be musicians and friends.
Haggard understood that nothing romantic was ever going to come from his feelings for Parton. They went in different directions, and both had their own lives. Yet the affection between them remained.
In the end, that love found an outlet through music.
Two songs came from that period: “Always Wanting You” and “I’ve Got A Yearning.”
The story behind them adds another layer to Haggard’s music, but it also reveals something deeply personal about the way he saw Dolly Parton.
For someone who spent decades being seen by millions of people, Haggard believed the real privilege was getting to know the woman behind the public image.
And from the way he spoke about her, it is clear that he considered that side of Dolly something truly special.
“Always Wanting You”
“I’ve Got A Yearning”