Like her or not, Dolly is a pretty darned smart woman that has taken on the biggest labels in the record industry and came out on top and very wealthy because of it. She has personally written over 5000 songs and recorded nearly 1000 of them.
And as far as I know she has never sold the rights to a single one of them. Retaining copy rights for original works was all but unheard of in the recording industry until Dolly Parton came along. Now nobody sells their rights for their original works.
The Beatles weren’t smart enough to pull that off. Nor was Willy or Waylon.
