Whitney Houston’s defining song, “I Will Always Love You,” isn’t actually hers (despite how much she made it her own), as Dolly Parton wrote it. Houston’s recording, of course, has done quite well, meaning that Parton has received some hefty royalty checks from it. While guesting on Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen recently, she revealed the best purchase she made with those royalties.
Parton said:
“I bought my big office complex down in Nashville. I thought, ‘Well, this is a wonderful place to be.’ I bought a property down in what was the Black area of town, and it was mostly just Black families and people that lived around there. It was off the beaten path from 16th Avenue and I thought, ‘Well, I am gonna buy this place, the whole strip mall.’ And I thought, ‘This is the perfect place for me to be,’ considering it was Whitney. I just thought this was great — I’m just gonna be down here with her people, who are my people as well. So I just love the fact that I spent that money on a complex and I think, ‘This is the house that Whitney built.’”
The building Parton seems to be talking about is Inca Hoots Productions, her studio and management office located near 16th Avenue, on 12th Avenue South. A 2020 feature by Fodor’s Travel described the complex, “Dolly’s star has risen so high that now, instead of recording in other people’s studios, she has her own. Inca Hoots Productions, an unassuming Mission-style compound on 12th Street, is Dolly’s production studio and management office. It’s closed to the public, but you can tell if she’s there because her massive tour bus will be in the gated courtyard out front. The name itself is a bit of her famous sense of humor: split up the letters differently and you’ll get the real meaning of the company name.”
Watch Parton speak about the purchase above, and find more clips from her appearance on Watch What Happens Live below.