“It’s really hard to say or to know for sure what all you owe somebody for your success,” Parton wrote of her uncle. “But I can tell you for sure that I owe Uncle Billy an awful lot.”
They wrote songs together, including Parton’s very first single “Puppy Love,” which came out in 1959 when Parton was just 13. Owens eventually started taking her to Nashville to pitch songs to record labels and publishing companies.
Owens and Parton were signed as songwriters by Fred Foster, a legendary country producer, to his publishing company Combine Music, and Foster signed Parton as an artist to his Monument Records label in 1965.