This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed human. I turned off news altogether. I hate to say it, but I don't trust much of anything.
Alright. It's the rage bait. It feels like it's trying to divide people. If we got clear facts, maybe we could calm down a little. NBC News brings you clear reporting.
Let's meet at the facts. Let's move forward from there. NBC News reporting for America. This July 4th, come celebrate at America's Block Party, hosted by America 250. America's Block Party is a can't-miss 4th of July concert happening at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.
Experience music performances by major artists, patriotic tributes, and the kickoff to Giving Forth, helping to make July 4th the largest day of giving in American history. It's more than just fireworks. Join this landmark celebration and get your America's Block Party tickets now for $17.76 at America250.org/slash LA. What's up, y'all? Summer's got a different tempo.
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Next thing you know, you're somewhere you didn't plan to be. It's those in-between moments. That's where the ideas hit. conversations stretch out, little memories sneak up on you.
Sometimes it's just about what's in your hand. that color. That chill. the new tropical butterfly refresher from Starbucks. guava and passion fruit flavors with mango pineapple flavored pearls.
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Hi, it's Karen in Georgia from My Favorite Murder. We cruised around LA in the Hyundai Ionic 5 and dove into the fascinating life of actress and inventor Hedy Lamar. Want the full story? Take a listen. She starts dating Howard Hughes.
And in fact, she helps him design a faster plane.
So she finds the fastest bird and the fastest fish and sketches out a drawing of what the two would look like as a plane. And that becomes the plane that we know today. And he calls her a genius. Check out our new episode, Spotlighting Groundbreaking Innovators like Hedi Lamar and Billie Jean King. Presented by the Hyundai Ionic 5.
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And we love telling stories about music. Especially stories about songs and how they came to be. Stories we all know and love. but don't know the story behind the story. Up next, the story of one of the great RB songs that also happened to be one of the great country songs.
of all time. Dolly Parton grew up dirt poor. to a loving family in the mountains of Tennessee. in a place called Locust Ridge. Whitney Houston grew up well to do in New Jersey's biggest city, Newark.
The child of music royalty. Her mother, Sissy, was a Grammy Award-winning gospel artist. Her first cousin was Dion Warwick, and her distant cousin was opera legend Lantine Price. The two could not have come from more different backgrounds, but one of pop music's greatest love songs, I Will Always Love You, brought them together. How that happened and how the song came to be is a remarkable story, one that includes Elvis Presley and his manager, Colonel Tom Parker.
actor Kevin Kostner and Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. The song, written and recorded by Parton in 1973, was not about the loss of a romantic love. but the end of a long-standing professional relationship. Porter Waggoner, a country star well known for his gaudy attire and coiffed hair, gave Parton her big break in show business, signing her to a long term deal on his nationally syndicated musical variety show. But as time passed, Parton wanted her freedom creatively and financially.
She wanted to leave the man who'd done so much for her career. But how could she do it with grace and with gratitude? I told him I wanted to go out on my own.
So he was just having a fit about it. And we argued a lot. And I thought, he's never going to listen to me. He's not hearing a word I'm saying.
So why don't you just go home, do what you do best, write a song.
So I went home, wrote a song about it, came back the next day, and I said, Porter, just sit down. Let me sing you something. Then you'll know how I feel. And I just want you to know that I will always love you. And And I will always love you.
We love you. How did Wagoner react when he heard it?
Okay, you can go, but only if I can produce that record.
Now it's time for the beautiful little lady to sing a great song for you on our show. And this is, I think, one of the prettiest songs that she has ever recorded or ever written. I hope you'll enjoy it today. I will always love you. Miss Dolly Parton.
Thank you. Thank you. I Will Always Love You made its way to number one on the country charts in 1974, along with another song part and penned on the same day, Jolene. The songs established her as one of country music's best performing artists and one of Mashwell's finest songwriters, too. I think that's got to be one of your prettiest songs that you've ever heard.
I appreciate that. I made you like it. I'll tell you what, you sang it just sort of like you mean it to.
Well, I did sort of mean it. And that's where Presley comes into the story. Parton's song had come to the rock legend's attention through his manager, Colonel Tom Parker. Elvis loved the song. But Elvis was ready to record it.
I told my friends and people that he was recording it and they were in town to do the recording. They had invited me down to the session. But the Presley cover of Parton's love song would never come to be. The night before the recording was to take place, Parker told Parton that he didn't allow Presley to record anything without half of the publishing rights.
So I can't do that. This song's already been a hit with me and this is in my publishing company and obviously this is going to be one of my most important copyrights and I can't give you half the publishing. He said, Well, then we can't record the song. And I was just heartbroken. I said, Well, I'm really sorry.
But it hurt me because I was so disappointed that I was going to have to tell my friends Elvis didn't record it. But I didn't blame Elvis, and I didn't blame Colonel Tom either. It was a decision I had to make at the time, and I'm glad it did. Barton, it turned out, wasn't just a great singer and songwriter. She was a shrewd businesswoman.
She understood the value of her intellectual property and wasn't about to give it away, even to the king of rock and roller. How did one of R ⁇ B's greatest divas come to perform part in this country ballad?
Well, it turns out that Kevin Costner, one of America's most famous actors at the time, loved the song and happened to be producing a 1992 movie called The Bodyguard. In which he co-starred with Houston. We were on a mission searching for songs for the bodyguard. What would be the song? The song that.
is going to make this movie tie together. One day I was in the trailer and we heard Dolly Parton's song before and I said I wouldn't buy it, you know, because it was a country version and I, you know, we were listening. Kevin brought it back to me in the trailer one day and he said I'm telling you this is the song. Listen to it with your ears, what you would do with this song. I said, okay, I cleared the trailer out.
I played this song. This man wanted me to hear this song, I had to hear this song. I cleared the trailer and I listened to the song and it hit me. When she got to and I He'll always love you. That that did it.
I was like... Oh, he's so right. He called Parton and asked her if he could use the song in the movie's soundtrack. She quickly said yes, but never heard back about how it would be used in the movie or if it would be used. And so I was driving from my office down on 16th Avenue on Music Row.
I was driving to my house in Brentwood. I had the radio on as usual. And I just heard this voice when she did the a cappella, you know, like, if I should stay. If I. Should stay.
And you know, it's like a dog that hears its name or something. I thought, what is that? It didn't register on me, but it was so familiar. And I thought, what is that? And then all of a sudden, she starts into the I Will Always Love You part, honest to goodness.
I almost read it. And uh Mm. We'll always love you. I had to pull over 'cause I was so caught up in that by then it was the most overwhelming feeling that that little song of mine could be done so beautifully, so big, so overwhelming. And it's still one of the the proudest moments of my whole life.
America and the world were overwhelmed too. the song catapulted to the top of the Billboard charts. and stayed there for an astonishing fourteen weeks. a record at the time. and it would go on to sell over twenty million copies worldwide.
Parton's decision to keep her publishing rights and say no to Parker and Presley. was one of the best business decisions of her life. I made enough money to buy Graceland. Parton told a reporter about the royalty she earned from Whitney Houston's cover. Houston's version of I Will Always Love You became and still is the best-selling single ever recorded by a female artist.
Parton still holds the record for the best-selling single ever written by a female artist. It's a quintessentially American story. A talented white woman from the smoky mountains of Tennessee wrote a song that a brilliant black female singer from urban New Jersey brought to the world in ways no one could plan. But imagine. The two women were doing what musical artists in America have done from the beginning of time, sharing and reworking any and all forms of music.
to make it their own. Thanks to the miracle of free enterprise and intellectual property rights, musical artists in America are not merely protected against the theft of their work. but incentivized to share their work and their songs, many artists would go on to cover the song, including Linda Ronstadt and Leanne Rhimes. One Middle East dictator loved the song so much, he commissioned Syrian pop star Mayana Beasles to cover it in Arabic. and used it as his official campaign song in 2002.
That man was Saddam Hussein. who won the Iraq election.
Well, Saddam Hussein style, with 100% of the votes. Which version of this song is the best? That's not for this storyteller to answer. But one thing is certain. The Houston cover of I Will Always Love You changed the life of the writer and the singer forever.
making both of them a small fortune. and making the world better. and more beautiful place. The story of a song, the story of I Will Always Love You. Here on Our American Stories.
This July 4th, come celebrate at America's Block Party, hosted by America 250. America's Block Party is a camp miss 4th of July concert happening at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Experience music performances by major artists, patriotic tributes, and the kickoff to Giving Forth, helping to make July 4th the largest day of giving in American history. It's more than just fireworks. Join this landmark celebration and get your America's Block Party tickets now for $17.76 at America250.org/slash LA.
Hi, it's Karen in Georgia from My Favorite Murder. We cruised around LA in the Hyundai Ionic 5 and dove into the fascinating life of actress and inventor Hedi Lamar. Want the full story? Take a listen. She starts dating Howard Hughes, and in fact, she helps him design a faster plane.
So she finds the fastest bird and the fastest fish and sketches out a drawing of what the two would look like as a plane. And that becomes the plane that we know today. And he calls her a genius. Check out our new episode, Spotlighting Groundbreaking Innovators like Hedi Lamar and Billie Jean King. Presented by the Hyundai Ionic 5.
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Because it's the best thing ever. You can play games with astronauts, wild animals, and superheroes. With more than 4,000 interactive games, songs, and shows, Lingo Kids is the number one entertainment platform for young kids.
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