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Country Star Porter Wagoner, 80, Dies
Oct 29, 1:18 AM (ET)
NASHVILLE, Tenn. - Porter Wagoner, the rhinestone-clad Grand Ole Opry star who helped launch the career of Dolly
Parton by hiring her as his duet partner, died Sunday, October 28, 2007. He was 80.
Wagoner, who had survived an abdominal aneurysm in 2006, was hospitalized again this month and his publicist disclosed
he had lung cancer. He died at 8:25 p.m. CDT in a Nashville hospice, a spokeswoman for the Grand Ole Opry said.
Country singer and Opry member Dierks Bentley visited Wagoner in the hospice over the weekend and said Wagoner
led them in prayer, thanking God for his friends, his family and the Grand Ole Opry.
"The loss of Porter is a great loss for the Grand Ole Opry and for country music, and personally it is a great
loss of a friend I was really just getting to know," Bentley said. "I feel blessed for the time I had
with him."
Pete Fisher, vice president and general manager of the Opry, said the Opry family of musicians and performers was
deeply saddened by the news. "His passion for the Opry and all of country music was truly immeasurable,"
Fisher said.
Wagoner's illness came after a comeback that saw him recording again and gaining new fans even as he reached his
80s.
In May 2007 he celebrated his 50th year in the Opry. After years without a recording contract, he also signed with
ANTI- records, an eclectic Los Angeles label best known for alt-rock acts like Tom Waits, Nick Cave and Neko Case.
The CD "Wagonmaster," produced with Marty Stuart, was released in June 2007 and earned Wagoner some of
the best reviews of his career. Over the summer, he also was the opening act for the influential rock duo White
Stripes at a sold-out show at New York's Madison Square Garden.
"I was thinking while on stage last night, 'This is the biggest, most well-known arena in the country, and
here I am performing at it,'" he told The Associated Press at the time.
(AP) Country music legend Porter Wagoner performs during a concert Tuesday, July 24, 2007 at Madison...
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The Missouri-born Wagoner signed with RCA Records in 1955 and joined the Opry in 1957. "It's the greatest
place in the world to have a career in country music," he said in 1997.
His showmanship, rhinestone suits and pompadoured hair made him famous, with his own syndicated TV show, "The
Porter Wagoner Show," for 21 years beginning in 1960. It was one of the first syndicated shows to come out
of Nashville, and it set a pattern for many others.
"Some shows are mechanical, but ours was not polished and slick," he said in 1982.
Among his hits, many of which he wrote or co-wrote, were "Carroll County Accident,""A Satisfied
Mind,""Company's Comin',""Skid Row Joe,""Misery Loves Company" and "Green
Green Grass of Home."
The songs often told stories of tragedy or despair. In "Carroll County Accident," a married man having
an affair is killed in a car crash; "Skid Row Joe" deals with a once-famous singer who's lost everything.
In 2002, Wagoner was elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame.
To many music fans, though, he was best known as the man who boosted Parton's career. He had hired the 21-year-old
singer as his duet partner in 1967, when she was just beginning to gain notice through songs such as "Dumb
Blonde."
They were the Country Music Association's duo of the year in 1970 and 1971, recording hit duets including "The
Last Thing on My Mind."
Parton's solo country records, such as her autobiographical "Coat of Many Colors," also began climbing
the charts in the early 1970s. She wrote the pop standard "I Will Always Love You" in 1973 after Wagoner
suggested she shift from story songs to focus on love songs.
The two quit singing duets in 1974 and she went on to wide stardom with pop hits and movies such as "9 to
5," whose theme song was also a hit for her. Wagoner sued her for $3 million in assets, but they settled out
of court in 1980. He said later they were always friendly, "but it's a fact that when you're involved with
attorneys and companies that have them on retainer, it makes a different story."
At a charity roast for Wagoner in 1995, she explained the breakup this way: "We split over creative differences.
I was creative, and Porter was different."
He said in a 1982 Associated Press interview that his show "was a training ground for her; she learned a great
deal and I exposed her to very important people and the country music fans."
She was present at the ceremony in May 2007 honoring Wagoner on his silver anniversary with the Opry. At the time,
he called Parton "one of my best friends today." She also visited him in the hospital as he battled cancer.
Wagoner was born in West Plains, Mo., and became known as "The Thin Man From West Plains" because of
his lanky frame. He recalled that he spent hours as a child pretending to be an Opry performer, using a tree stump
as a stage.
He started in radio, then became a regular on the "Ozark Jubilee," one of the first televised national
country music shows. On the Opry since 1957, he joined Roy Acuff and other onetime idols.
At one point his wardrobe included more than 60 handmade rhinestone suits.
"Rhinestone suits are just beautiful under the lights," he said. "They've become a big part of my
career. I get more compliments on my outfits than any other entertainer - except for Liberace."
While he continued with the Opry, and even had a small part in the 1982 movie "Honky Tonk Man" starring
Clint Eastwood, his recording career dried up in the 1980s.
"I stopped making records because I didn't like the way they were wanting me to record," he said. "When
RCA dropped me from the label, I didn't really care about making records for another label because I didn't have
any say in what they would release and how they would make the records and so forth."
After his New York show in 2007, tears came to his eyes as he recalled the reaction.
"The young people I met backstage, some of them were 20 years old. 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. To have new fans
now is a tremendous thing."
**********
When he thought he had the right audience, Porter Wagoner liked to reach into the inner breast
pocket of his electric-blue sport coat and remove a slender electronic device.
"iPod!" he exclaimed. "One thousand songs! My entire career is on here."
Like everything else Wagoner did in public, it was a beautiful piece of showmanship. It surprised people who were
inclined to think of him as a spangle-wearing singer of old-fashioned country songs such as Company's Comin', reminding
them that he was a bit of a technology geek — a country-music television pioneer and forward-thinking producer.
It also let them know that he was still keeping up.
Wagoner, who died Sunday night in a Nashville hospice at age 80 from lung cancer, had a career that didn't fit
into any kind of container.
Wagoner's working life began in a butcher's shop in West Plains, Mo., where he occasionally stopped to sing for
a local radio show. He made his earliest records, including his first No. 1, A Satisfied Mind (1955), at a radio
station in nearby Springfield, but he eventually moved to Nashville.
In 1957, he joined the cast of the Grand Ole Opry and celebrated his 50th anniversary with the show this spring.
He eventually became the radio show's public face.
He was best known, perhaps, for his flashy, custom-made stage suits that cost thousands of dollars. He sometimes
joked that the suits forced him to stay thin, saying he couldn't afford to replace them.
In 1960, he launched TV's syndicated Porter Wagoner Show, on a budget of less than $1,000 an episode. It predated
Hee Haw and CMT. At its peak, it aired in more than 100 markets, making it the most important country-music TV
property of its time.
Wagoner introduced a young Dolly Parton in 1967. They recorded many duets together, including The Last Thing on
My Mind and Just Someone I Used to Know. Wagoner produced some of Parton's early solo hits (1975's The Seeker).
The partnership ended acrimoniously in 1974, but Parton wrote I Will Always Love You for him as she left.
More than anything, Wagoner loved a song that told a story. He favored sentimental recitations and macabre tales
of murder and insanity, like the cult favorite The Rubber Room. Between 1954 and 1980, he had 20 top 10 country
hits, including Green, Green Grass of Home, The Carroll County Accident and The Cold Hard Facts of Life. He won
Grammys for three gospel albums with the Blackwood Brothers. In 2002, he became a member of the Country Music Hall
of Fame.
Wagoner this year recorded a final album, Wagonmaster. "It's the kind of country that defined what real and
true, pure, authentic country music is," says Marty Stuart, who produced Wagonmaster. "It's the remnant
of that old cloth that so little is left of, from the Hank Williams era. It's just a tiny remnant of that. But,
man, is it a good one."
**********
Porter Wagoner, the Thin Man from the West Plains, was a case of an artist often
ahead of his time who has always appeared hopelessly behind the times. He wass among the most immediately recognizable
figures in country music, largely due to his exploitation of TV -- and flashy costumes -- a good 20 years before
the video boom. And while he's forever perceived as the man who tried to hold Dolly Parton back from pop success,
he was also responsible, in many ways, for putting her in a career position where the issue could even arise. As
for his music, since signing with RCA in 1952 he has produced a wealth of superb hard country, and just as much
of the most wretchedly oversentimentalized tripe you'll ever want to hear. The latter, of course, is half the reason
he's loved.
Wagoner was born in West Plains, MO. As he grew up, he fell in love with the country music he heard over the radio,
teaching himself guitar so he could sing and play along with them. When he was a teenager, he landed a job at a
local market, where he would frequently sing when business was slow. The owner believed that Porter's singing was
actually helping the store's reputation, so he arranged to sponsor a local radio show that would feature the fledgling
vocalist. Throughout the late '40s, Wagoner was singing on the local West Plains radio station. Eventually, a Springfield
radio station called KWTO offered Porter a show in 1951. Around the same time, Red Foley was beginning his Ozark
Jamboree program, which was based in Springfield and broadcast both on KWTO and national television. Foley brought
Wagoner onto his show, which helped the young vocalist land a record contract with RCA Records. In 1954, his ninth
single, "Company's Comin'," hit the Top Ten. It was followed in the spring of 1955 with "A Satisfied
Mind," which stayed at number four for four weeks. At the end of the year he released "Eat, Drink, and
Be Merry (Tomorrow You'll Cry)," which climbed to number three in early 1956. In 1957, he joined the Grand
Ole Opry and moved to Nashville, where he formed his backing band, the Wagonmasters.
For the rest of the '50s, Porter continued to record, but he never broke the Top Ten again. It would take another
television show for him to return to the top of the charts. In 1961, he began hosting his own television show,
which was syndicated out of Nashville. It was the most popular country show of the '60s, growing from 18 stations
in 1961 to over a hundred stations in the early '70s. Wagoner often sang with Norma Jean, a new female singer he
introduced to the country audience, on these programs. The look of Porter's television show defined country music
for much of America's general public during the '60s, although his music rarely departed from traditional country.
In 1967, Norma Jean was fired from the show and replaced by Dolly Parton, who was then an unknown singer. Not only
did exposure on Wagoner's program kick-start Parton's career, it provided a boost for Porter's as well. Parton
was enormously popular on the show, and their first joint single, "The Last Thing on My Mind," rocketed
to number seven at the beginning of 1968. The song launched a string of Top Ten hits that ran more or less uninterrupted
until 1975, when the duo stopped working together. In 1968, the Country Music Assocaition named the duo the Vocal
Group of the Year; the CMA would award them Vocal Duo of the Year in 1970 and 1971, as well.
Although the duo of Wagoner and Parton was successful, it wasn't stress-free. Porter continued to have solo hits
during the late '60s and early '70s, though none of them was as big as his songs with Parton. Furthermore, he resented
her attempts at a solo career; on her part, she felt musically restrained by him. The tensions culminated in late
1974, when she parted ways with Wagoner. RCA issued two singles in 1975 and 1976, and both of the songs -- "Say
Forever You'll Be Mine" and "Is Forever Longer Than Always" -- hit the Top Ten. The pair would continue
to duet sporadically over the next decade, highlighted by the number two hit "Making Plans" from 1980.
After Parton and Wagoner separated in 1975, Porter continued to film his TV show and to chart singles, but all
of his hits were minor. In 1976, he retired from touring, choosing to concentrate on producing his own studio,
Fireside. Wagoner sued Parton in 1979 over various contractual problems; the suit was settled out of court the
following year. For the first few years of the '80s, Porter had several minor hits, but he stopped recording in
1983.
In 1981, Wagoner and RCA Victor parted ways after nearly 30 years, and his television show went off the air. He
mounted a minor comeback in 1982, appearing in the Clint Eastwood film Honkytonk Man and recording an album, Viva
Porter Wagoner, for Eastwood's label imprint at Warner Bros. Records, Viva, that made the country charts and produced
a couple of minor country singles chart entries. After that, he only made occasional recordings for small labels.
He toured with the Right Combination, an all-girl band, for several years. In the late '80s and early '90s, he
became increasingly active on The Nashville Network, to the point that Opryland named him its "Goodwill Ambassador"
and he was a regular host of the Grand Ole Opry radio and television program. In July 2000, he released his first
new album in many years, The Best I've Ever Been. In 2007, as Wagoner turned 80 and some 55 years after his first
recording, the Marty Stuart-produced Wagonmaster was released on Anti Records.
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