For years, Dolly Parton knew which emotional song would be played in her memory when she passed away. But no matter how obvious a choice, it wasn’t her own.
Thinking ahead, she’d also prepared a song to be released on he 100th birthday in 2046, whether she was there for the centenary or not.
“I’m sure they’ll be playing ‘I Will Always Love You’ when I die, just like they did with Whitney Houston,” Parton told Entertainment Weeklysvg in 2014 (via Billboardsvg). She released the song in 1974, as a tribute to her music industry mentor Porter Wagoner as she moved on toward a solo career. Houston’s version also became a hit in 1992.
Parton recalled of Houston’s 2012 funeral: “When they picked her coffin up and started in on that song, I started to cry, and I thought, ‘Oh my Lord.’ That’s when it hit me that she was really gone.”
Nevertheless, Parton preferred a different song for her own memorial — and it’s not even one of her own. Instead it’s an old gospel number.
“There’s a song called ‘If We Never Meet Again,’” she explained. “It’s an old country-gospel church song that talks about, ‘If we never meet again this side of Heaven, I will meet you on that beautiful shore: ‘Where the charming roses bloom forever and where separations come no more.’
“That was my daddy’s favorite. We did sing it at his funeral, and I would like it to be sung at mine.”
Parton, who died on August 25 at age 80 after a brief battle with cancer, spent some time thinking about her legacy, because in 2015 she prepared a song which isn’t to be released until her centennial year. It’s titled* “*My Place in History” and it’s locked in a time capsule, complete with a CD player in case the format has been lost to time by then.
The capsule can be seen at Dollywood's DreamMore Resort and Spa in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, where it was placed on display when the establishment opened in 2015. In her 2020 memoir Songteller: My Life in Lyrics (via Mental Flosssvg), she recalled being told she’d be “long dead” by the time the box was to be opened.
“I said, ‘Well, maybe not… I’ve seen people live to be older than that.’ It’s kind of weird or strange that they would ask me to write this mystery song. I don’t know if I want to live to be 100 or not. But you never know. I might, and if I do, I’m going to be at that opening.”
