She’s a country girl through and through. Back in 1977, Dolly Parton released what would become a major crossover hit, “Here You Come Again,” which ultimately became the title track to her album of the same name. The song was written by Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, and it topped the country singles chart in addition to becoming her first Top 10 Pop hit, peaking #3 on the Pop singles charts in January of 1978. The story goes that Weil accidentally erased the original first line while messing with the recorded while her co-writer was out, and she didn’t know what to do, so she “made one up,” and Mann knew right away that it wasn’t his original line, but he liked hers better: “I didn’t know what to do, so I made one up. I made up the melody and the lyric. When he came back I sang it to him. He said ‘that’s not my opening line, but I like yours better.’ We kept it.” The song was actually first pitched to Brenda Lee, and she kept it for over a year and never ended up recording it. B.J. Thomas was the first to record the song when he included it on his self-titled album in 1977, and it reached the ears of Parton’s producer Gary Klein, who thought it would be perfect for Dolly. But Dolly was reluctant to cut it, because she knew one the one hand, it would broaden her fanbase and help her jump into pop, but she was very afraid it would alienate her country base and she wasn’t willing to do that in order to become a pop star. So Klein came up with the idea to bring in steel guitarist Al Perkins in order to give the song a more country feel, according to Songfacts from Tom Roland’s The Billboard Book of Number One Country Hits. Klein says Dolly was very “relieved” when the added the noticeable steel guitar: “She wanted people to be able to hear the steel guitar, so if someone said it isn’t country, she could say it and prove it. She was so relieved. It was like her life sentence was reprieved.” Dolly ultimately won a Grammy win for Best Country Vocal Performance for a Female with “Here You Come Again,” and in an interview with SiriusXM, her former manager Sandy Gallin confirmed that Dolly did not initially want to record it, because she was loyal to the country market and was never going to turn her back on her country fans to go pop: “She said, ‘A monkey can sing this song and have a hit with it.’ She was very nervous that it would turn off the country market, which she was very loyal to. There was no way she wanted to ever let anything insinuate that she may be turning her back on the country audience to go to pop.” It doesn’t surprise me at all that Dolly handled her transition to pop this way, and she was hugely successful in the pop world starting in the mid-70s with “Here You Come Again,” and while there were some fans who I’m sure weren’t happy about it, Dolly has always stayed true to herself and her country roots, and I think that has a ton to do with why she’s become the icon we know and love today. Plenty of musicians from every single genre around should be taking notes… turn it up: “Here You Come Again” The post “A Monkey Can Sing This Song” — Why Dolly Parton Didn’t Want To Record This 1977 Hit Song first appeared on Whiskey Riff.