Wagoner, Porter

Born Porter Wayne Wagoner, August 12, 1927, in South Fork, MO; died of cancer, October 28, 2007, in Nashville, TN. Musician. Country-music legend Porter Wagoner recorded dozens of songs over a 50year career and hosted one of the longest-running country-music series in the history of television. He was also known for his duets with Dolly Parton, who was an unknown Tennessee singer when she began appearing regularly on The Porter Wagoner Show in 1967.

Wagoner was born in 1927 on a Missouri farm, and grew up a devotee of the Saturday-night broadcasts originating from Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry. His older brother, Glenn, encouraged his burgeoning musical talents, but the month that Wagoner turned 12 his brother died of myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart. The family’s tragedy was further exacerbated by their deepening financial crisis, which began during the economic downturn of the 1930s known as the Great Depression. Wagoner left school after the seventh grade to help out with the farm chores, but also managed to save $8 to buy his first guitar from Montgomery Ward department store by trapping and skinning rabbits, then selling the pelts.

In 1943, Wagoner’s family was forced to sell their farm. Everything went on the auction block, including the family mule, and the funds financed a move to the city of West Plains, Missouri, where the 16 year old found a job with a local butcher. He played guitar when business was slow, and his boss liked his singing so much that he gave him the chance to perform on the local radio station as a way to advertise for the shop. Wagoner spent the next several years playing on various radio shows, and in 1954, got his break when he began appearing on Ozark Jubilee, the first nationally televised country-music show. He had his first hit record with the 1955 single “A Satisfied Mind,” which reached No. 1 on the country-music charts and cemented his career in Nashville. As with subsequent hits, Wagoner penned songs that “often told dark tales of desperate people in stark terms that placed him in the gothic tradition of country music,” noted his Los Angeles Times obituary.

In 1960, Wagoner debuted with his own syndicated half-hour series for television, The Porter Wagoner Show. There were weekly featured guests as well as Wagoner’s performances with his backing band, the Wagonmasters. He continued to record Top Ten hits, and also cut a few gospel records in the 1960s with the Blackwood Brothers Quartet, which gave him the only Grammy Award wins of his career. In 1967, he became one of the first country-music stars to make a concept album—borrowed from the rock music genre of the era—with Soul of a Convict and Other Great Prison Songs.

That same year, Wagoner replaced his regular female performer on his television show with a 21year-old newcomer named Dolly Parton. Their du-ets on the show received an enthusiastic response, and led to several hit singles, including “Burning the Midnight Oil” and “Please Don’t Stop Loving Me.” They also won three Country Music Association (CMA) awards together for best vocal or duo between 1968 and 1971.

Parton left the show in 1974 to pursue a solo career, and “there were lawsuits and countersuits between the two in a six-year legal tangle over business interests that produced not a few tabloid headlines,” reported New York Times obituary writer Douglas Martin. “One reported that Mr. Wagoner’s wife had found him and Ms. Parton in bed and had shot both.” In an interview years later, Wagoner dismissed that rumor, though he remarked coyly, “she didn’t even hit Dolly.”

There were long periods during Wagoner’s career when he did not perform live or record any new songs. In later songs, he wrote lyrics about time spent in a Nashville psychiatric facility, and these appeared on The Rubber Room: The Haunting Poetic Songs of Porter Wagoner, 1966-1977. His show ended in 1981 after a 21year run—at the time, it was the longest-running country-music series on television—but he still appeared regularly with the Grand Ole Opry. A flamboyant performer, Wagoner was known for his trademark blond pompadour hair-style and custom-made rhinestone two-piece suits. He was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2002, and four years later suffered an intestinal aneurysm that nearly killed him. After a surprising recovery, he released his final record, The Wagonmaster, in June of 2007, and a month later performed at Madison Square Garden in New York City as the opening act for the White Stripes, the rock duo.

Wagoner was heartened by a new generation of fans of his music, some of whom had not even been born when his television series went off the air in 1981. “The young people I met backstage, some of them were 20 years old,” he told a reporter a day after the White Stripes show, according to CNN.com. “They wanted to get my autograph and tell me they really liked me. If only they knew how that made me feel—like a new breath of fresh air.” Wagoner died later that year on October 28, 2007, two months after his 80th birthday, from lung cancer. Survivors include his three children from his second marriage to Ruth Williams in 1946, Richard, Denise, and Debra. His plain but plaintive singing style had enriched the lives of several generations of country-music fans, and Wagoner often said that he found success only when he realized what his strengths as a performer were. “I don’t try to show off a so-called beautiful voice, because I don’t feel my voice is beautiful,” he said, according to his Los Angeles Times obituary. “I believe there is a different kind of beauty, the beauty of being honest, of being yourself, of singing like you feel it.” Sources: CNN.com, http://www.cnn.com/2007/SHOWBIZ/Music/10/29/obit.wagoner.ap/index.html (October 29, 2007); Entertainment Weekly, November 9, 2007, pp. 11-12; EW.com, http://popwatch.ew.com/popwatch/2007/10/porter-wagoner.html (October 29, 2007); Los Angeles Times, October 29, 2007, p. B7; New York Times, October 30, 2007, p. C19; Times (London), October 30, 2007, p. 61.

—Carol Brennan