Dolly Parton 'heartbroken' as she refused Elvis Presley this classic song

Dolly Parton has opened up about refusing Elvis Presley one of her most famous songs.

The 77-year-old country star said the incident left her "heartbroken" during an interview on SiriusXM’s The Howard Stern Show.

Years before Whitney Houston recorded Parton's classic I Will Always Love You, Elvis wanted to do his own rendition. 

“I was out of my mind with excitement … thinking about Elvis singing my song,” Dolly recalled.

However, the plan fell through when Elvis' manager Colonel Tom Parker tried to renegotiate their deal the day before Elvis was set to record the tune in the studio.

That's when Parton cut the chord on the whole thing.

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“He said, ‘You know that we don’t record anything with Elvis unless we have the publishing,’” Parton recalled. “I said, ‘That’s not possible because that is my most important copyright. I got my own publishing company... I can’t do that.’”

Parton said Parker tried to get half the song's publishing rights. Still she denied. 

So, the plan fell through and Parton "cried all night about that."

But the Jolene singer's instincts to retain the publishing rights to the song were vindicated nearly two decades later, when Houston recorded a rearranged rendition of I Will Always Love You for the soundtrack to The Bodyguard.

The track became the best-selling single of 1992.

“I was so thankful that I had made that choice because I made a lot of money off of Whitney’s,” Parton explained to Stern.

The icon also touched on what she thought of Houston's version after hearing it for the first time.

She revealed that she was listening to the radio in her car coming home from her office and taken by complete surprise.

Parton said it was like a dog hearing a whistle, adding: "It was ringing some sort of a bell it didn't dawn on me." 

By the time Houston was about to go into the chorus, Parton "almost wrecked, honest to God. I had to pull over to a Walgreens … and listen to the rest of it,” Parton said.

“I couldn’t believe my little country sad song could even be done like that … and it was just overwhelming. That was one of the greatest experiences I ever had in my entire life.”

Parton makes a surprising and subtle cameo in Priscilla Presley's new biopic decades after she rejected Elvis's request to use I Will Always Love You.

As the credits roll on Sofia Coppola’s new film, Parton's iconic country vocals can be heard belting out the song, which was originally written in 1973. 

While promoting her latest album, Rockstar, Parton told the UK’s BBC Radio 2 that she had spoken to Priscilla recently who confirmed her former husband adored the track.

She recalled: “She said, 'You know, Elvis sang that song to me when we were walking down the courthouse steps when we got divorced.'"

Parton's new book Behind the Seams: My Life in Rhinestones is available now. Rockstar hits shelves on Friday, Nov. 17.