“He wasn’t listening to anything I had to say. So I went home and wrote that song and took it back the next morning. I sang it and he was crying”: How Dolly Parton’s heart-wrenching ballad became one of the most famous songs of all time

Dolly Parton.

Many tears were shed over a song Dolly Parton wrote in the mid-’70s – an emotive ballad that ended up being a global hit for another singer.

I Will Always Love You was originally released on Parton’s 1974 album Jolene, and was a No 1 hit on the US Hot Country Songs chart. It was 18 years later that Whitney Houston’s version of the song became one of the biggest hit records of all time.