Porter Wagoner - Wagonmaster [2007/VBR176]-RTB

Description

ARTIST: Porter Wagoner
TITLE: Wagonmaster
LABEL: Anti Records
GENRE: Country
BITRATE: 176kbps avg
PLAYTIME: 0h 52m total
RELEASE DATE: 2007-06-05
RIP DATE: 2007-05-09

Track List
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1. Wagonmaster #1 0:48
2. Be A Little Quieter 2:25
3. Who Knows Right From Wrong 3:17
4. Albert Erving 4:18
5. A Place To Hang My Hat 3:24
6. Eleven Cent Cotton 2:39
7. My Many Hurried Southern Trips 3:19
8. Committed To Parkview 3:40
9. The Agony Of Waiting 3:36
10. Buck And The Boys 0:52
11. Fool Like Me 2:51
12. Late Love Of Mine 3:11
13. Hotwired 3:35
14. Brother Harold Dee 4:24
15. Satan's River 3:21
16. Wagonmaster #2 1:08
17. Untitled 6:04

Release Notes:

One of the major problems with modern country revolves around the fact
that--save George Jones, Merle Haggard, and Loretta Lynn--almost all the
characters who poured the foundation for post-World War II hillbilly culture are
dead or no longer recording. Which brings us to the miracle of Porter Wagoner's
new album, Wagonmaster, produced by Marty Stuart. Wagoner, who kept his
corn-yellow pompadour piled high, wide, and handsome, was as wild as Johnny Cash
in his prime, but hid most of his sins behind his smooth, pitch-man persona. You
can hear it in the music all along the way, though, particularly in the weird
"Rubber Room" era of the '60s and '70s. Now nearly 80, Wagoner--the man who
brought James Brown to the Grand Ole Opry--is still as theatrical and out-there
as ever, even if his once-strong and well-modulated baritone has crumbled to a
husk. Stuart, who loved Porter's old syndicated TV show, frames the album with
an opening and close that recalls those halcyon days, a Mac Magaha-style fiddle
dancing behind it all. In between, the thin man from West Plains, Missouri,
moves through a riveting collection of Southern Gothic numbers, starting with
"Be a Little Quieter," in which a man is so haunted by memories of his lover
that he imagines her walking the halls, taking a bath, ratting the pots and
pans. But that's kids' stuff compared to "Committed to Parkview," which Cash
sent to Wagoner nearly 25 years ago on learning they'd both spent time in the
Nashville mental hospital/drug treatment center. Wagoner opens his spoken-word
introduction as if he's playing for laughs, but quickly turns poignant, and the
bloodletting hardly lets up: Running through the album are a couple of Bible
beaters ("Brother Harold Dee," "Satan's River"), a reprise of "My Many Hurried
Southern Trips" (a song about a bus driver's slice-of-life that Wagoner wrote
with former singing partner Dolly Parton), and an affecting word portrait of a
man from Wagoner's childhood ("Albert Erving") who was so isolated and loveless
that he conjured an imaginary companion. Wagoner takes time for a quickie
instrumental tribute to his old banjo sidekick Buck Trent, but he's too mired in
pathos to highlight the humor in Shawn Camp's "Hotwired." Yet who's to quibble?
Much of this is wonderfully creepy ("The Late Love of Mine") and underscored
with the kind of weepy pedal steel that fell out of favor when Nashville set its
sights on crossover gold. Stuart, his own generation's premier hillbilly
throwback, deserves kudos for getting this to the marketplace. And Wagoner,
virtually forgotten after Dolly moved on, is to be revered for hanging in there
when so many rhinestoned rednecks who put the "path" in Music City's patented
brand of pathology chose to check out.

In a world where the term is overused, Porter Wagoner is a true legend. He
kicked out hard-hitting honky-tonk anthems in the 50s; pioneered music
television with the amazingly long-running "Porter Wagoner Show" 1960-1980,
where he discovered Dolly Parton; started the Nudie suit craze; influenced
everyone from Johnny Cash and Dwight Yoakam to the Byrds & Gram Parsons; and
recorded seminal concept albums in the early 70s, populated with the lonely,
addicted, and mentally ill, capturing the imagination of nascent punks like Alex
Chilton with songs like "The Rubber Room." Last year, Marty Stuart, longtime
Johnny Cash sideman and torchbearer of traditional country music, approached his
longtime hero with an unrecorded song Johnny Cash had written for Porter, called
"Committed to Parkview." In the tradition of Porter's haunted ballads,
"Committed to Parkview" is the first-person account of a tenant of Nashville's
legendary sanitorium, listening in on the tormented cries of his fellow inmates.
Porter and Marty decided to build an album, Wagonmaster, around the song,
revisiting the classic feel of his chilling concept albums, interwoven with
stomping barroom honkytonk that rides with the best of Hank Williams and Ernest
Tubb. The results are magnificent, a record of raw beauty capturing a proud,
ragged man looking back unflinchingly at his life. At 79, and celebrating his
50th anniversary at the Grand Ole Opry, Porter has never been more vibrant and
relevant.

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