I'll Oil Wells Love You

Album: Just Because I'm a Woman (1968)
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Songfacts®:

  • Six years before she wrote "I Will Always Love You," Dolly Parton penned this comical ditty about a gold digger who marries an oil baron. In an interview with Mojo magazine June 2008, the country singer-songwriter said this was not a first version of her more famous number: "That was not the first version of 'I Will Always Love You'! I was just playing off the oil wells and Texan men, a spoof. Sometimes I write silly stuff just to get my wit going and mind working. That was a song I probably wrote while I was primed to write something good."
  • Parton wrote this with her uncle Bill Owens, who was a big champion of his niece's career. He bought the budding singer-songwriter her first guitar and helped her land her first job on the Knoxville based Cas Walker Show by the time she was 10 years old. They were also frequent songwriting partners, with their biggest hit "Put It Off Until Tomorrow," a Top 10 Country hit for Bill Phillips in 1966.
  • This appears on Parton's second solo album, Just Because I'm A Woman, which is better known for its title track.
  • Parton's greatest success of this period was as a duet partner for Porter Wagoner. She didn't hit her stride as a solo artist until the '70s when she rolled out chart-topping hits like "Joshua," "Jolene," and "I Will Always Love You."

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