Parton revealed that she used royalties from Whitney Houston's cover of 'I Will Always Love You' to invest in a Black neighborhood.
Dolly Parton may not have gotten the chance to team up with Whitney Houston for what could have been a world-stopping duet of "I Will Always Love You," but she did something just as good. During an appearance on Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen, the country music legend revealed that she's used some of the royalties she earned from Houston's iconic cover of her song with the late singer in mind.
Parton originally wrote and released the song in 1973 as a farewell to her then-partner, Porter Wagoner. Houston went on to cover the tune for the soundtrack of her 1992 film The Bodyguard, which she starred in opposite Kevin Costner. The track became a massive hit and, according to Forbes, earned Parton a minimum of $10 million in royalties.
On WWHL, Parton revealed that she decided to invest that money in a predominantly Black neighborhood in Nashville called Sevier Park because it felt like "the perfect place for her to be."
"I bought my big office complex down in Nashville. 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 and it was off the beaten path from 16th Avenue," Parton explained to Cohen.
"It was a whole strip mall, and I thought this is the perfect place for me to be, considering it was Whitney. So I just thought, 'This is great, I'm just going to be down here with her people, who are my people as well. I love the fact that I spent that money on a complex and I think, 'This is the house that Whitney built.'"
Parton also addressed the fact that she never sang a duet with Houston, saying that although she was never asked to, she wished she had.
"I would've loved that," Parton said. "But I don't think I could've come up to snuff with her though. She'd have outsung me on that one for sure."
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