Dolly Parton, the Grammy Award-winning singer, songwriter, producer and actor, had written and performed Whitney Houston’s cover of ‘I will always love you’ in 1973 to bid adieu to her business partner Porter Wagoner. She revealed that she invested the royalties into a Black community in Nashville.
The cover titled ‘Ballad’ broke the charts and remained at the top of the US Billboard Hot 100 for 14 weeks, helping Dolly Parton earn $10 million in the 90s. She revealed on “Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen” on Thursday that she built a “big office complex” in the “Black area of town” as a tribute to Whitney Houston, who passed away in 2012 at 48.
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“I bought my big office complex down in Nashville,” the 75-year-old country icon said. “I thought this is a wonderful place to be.”
She added,”I bought a property down in what was the Black area of town, and it was mostly just Black families and people that lived around there. It was just off the beaten path from 16th Avenue and I thought, ‘Well I am going to buy this place, the whole strip mall.’ And thought, ‘This is the perfect place for me to be,’ considering it was Whitney.”
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Dolly Parton continued, “I just thought, ‘This was great. I’m just going to be down here with her people who are my people as well. And so I just love the fact that I spent that money on a complex and I think, ‘This is the house that Whitney built.'”
She confessed to wanting to perform the song ‘I will always love you’ live with Whitney Houston during the interview. “I would’ve loved that, but I don’t think I could come up to snuff with her, though. She would’ve outsung me on that one for sure.”