Merle HaggardĀ andĀ Dolly PartonĀ were good friends for decades, all the way until Merleās passing in 2016.
But Merle always felt much more for Dolly than your typical friendship, and was pretty taken by her for most of the time they new each other… as was probably every man Dolly ever met, so I definitely don’t fault him for that.
Merle was married five times, but his marriage to his last wife, Theresa Ann Lane, lasted from 1993 until he passed away in 2016. Dolly, on the other hand, has beenĀ married to the same man, her husband Carl Dean, since 1966.
While Dollyās been known to play it coy in the media in terms of admitting or denying she ever had any sort of extramarital affair, she did go on the record to say that she never had an affair with Merle, specifically after people began speculating about the possibility because of a certain song in particular.
In her 2020 book Dolly Parton, Songteller: My Life in Lyrics,Ā she wrote this about him:
āMerle Haggard was a special, special person. I heard he had a crush on me.Ā All I knew was that we had a great relationship.
When I was on the road with Porterās show, we traveled some together.Ā Merle would ride on my bus sometimes, and weād play card games together.
We just had a really good time. But I never thought about him romantically.ā
Unfortunately for Merle, Dolly hit him with the ultimate friend-zone move, saying he reminded her of her brother, Denver:
āWe never had an affair or anything like that. We were just buddies, as far as I was concerned.
He reminded me of my brother Denver, so I really related to him. We had a good time, and we loved each otherās music.ā
Itās rumored that he initially fell in love with her while recording her 1975 song, āKentucky Gambler,ā which he covered that same year for hisĀ Keep Movinā OnĀ album.
They also toured together in the mid-ā70s, and Merle has admitted publicly before to writing his song, āAlways Wanting You,ā about his deep love for Dolly.
To him, it was much more than a friendship kind of love, but clearly Dolly never felt the same way about him.
āAlways Wanting Youā was a solo write by Merle, and was released as the second single from his aforementioned album,Ā Keep Movinā On.
Itās a very honest, and pretty damn sad, admission about his love for Dolly and how he ultimately knew it could never be:
Makes it hard to face tomorrow ācause I,
Know Iāll be wanting you again,
Always loving you but never touching you,
Sometimes hurts me almost more than I can stand.ā
@whiskeyriff Behind the song with Casey from WhiskeyRiff š¶ #whiskeyriff #merlehaggard #behindthesong #countrymusic #fyp ā¬ Always Wanting You – Merle Haggard
I’ve never listened to it the same way since…
“Always Wanting You”
And imagine if Merle woulda seen this…
